Archives of “happiness” tag

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Cutting your losses and going with the trend – emotionally

  
  Education
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There is the famous old adage that as a trader you should cut your losses short and let your winners run. 

The best are able to do this. 

BUT it’s a very easy thing to intellectualise and yet quite another thing to execute in the real world.  After all if it was so easy there wouldn’t be all the writers, books, blogs, tweets, coaches, mentors etc in the trading world.  They would be obsolete.

HOWEVER IT ALSO APPLIES TO LIFE AWAY FROM THE CHARTS.

The ego and subconscious are often key adversaries to us gaining flow in our lives and achieving abundance.  This is true in both trading and normal life.

If you are unwilling to accept you are wrong and move on it is all too easy to not keep your losses small.    (more…)

Money Can't Buy You Love, but What about Happiness?

  
Analysis, Education
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This Great Graphic is from theEconomist. It is based on the work of two economists, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers. A recent research paper looks at the relationship between self assessments of one’s well being and the self-reported annual income.  
 
For nearly 40 years now the conventional wisdom is that money can’t buy happiness.  Stevenson and Wolfers challenges that view.  Their work finds that consistently in the various countries they look at people were happier (claimed to have higher levels of “life satisfaction”) as drew higher incomes.  Moreover, there does not seem to be a point of diminishing returns:  the more income the greater the “life satisfaction” ratings.    (more…)

What Trading Teaches Us About Life

  
  Education
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Trading is a crucible of life: it distills, in a matter of minutes, the basic human challenge: the need to judge, plan, and seek values under conditions of risk and uncertainty. In mastering trading, we necessarily face and master ourselves. Very few arenas of life so immediately reward self-development–and punish its absence.

So many life lessons can be culled from trading and the markets:

1) Have a firm stop-loss point for all activities: jobs, relationships, and personal involvements. Successful people are successful because they cut their losing experiences short and ride winning experiences.

2) Diversification works well in life and markets. Multiple, non-correlated sources of fulfillment make it easier to take risks in any one facet of life.

3) In life as in markets, chance truly favors those who are prepared to benefit. Failing to plan truly is planning to fail.

4) Success in trading and life comes from knowing your edge, pressing it when you have the opportunity, and sitting back when that edge is no longer present.

5) Risks and rewards are always proportional. The latter, in life as in markets, requires prudent management of the former.

6) Happiness is the profit we harvest from life. All life’s activities should be periodically reviewed for their return on investment.

7) Embrace change: With volatility comes opportunity, as well as danger.

8) All trends and cycles come to an end. Who anticipates the future, profits.

9) The worst decisions, in life and markets, come from extremes: overconfidence and a lack of confidence.

10) A formula for success in life and finance: never hold an investment that you would not be willing to purchase afresh today.

M. de la Rochefoucauld’s 15 maxims -written 400 years ago

  
Education, Life
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  1. “It is a kind of happiness to know how unhappy we must be.”
  2. “In their first passion, women love their lovers; in all the others, they love love.”
  3. “In jealousy there is more of self-love than love.”
  4. “One is never so happy or so unhappy as one fancies.”
  5. “Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily.”
  6.  “Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.”
  7. “Everyone blames his memory; no one blames his judgment.”
  8. “There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other.”
  9. “It is almost always a fault of one who loves not to realize when he ceases to be loved.”
  10. “When a man is in love, he doubts, very often, what he most firmly believes.”
  11. “There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.”
  12. “If we resist our passions it is more from their weakness than from our strength.”
  13. “We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves.”
  14. “Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire.”
  15. “When a man must force himself to be faithful in his love, this is hardly better than unfaithfulness.”

Happiness and Quality of Life

  
  Education
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1) Inner Abundance – This relates to self-care and maximizing one’s energy and internal resources;
2) Quality Time – Time spent by oneself, for oneself;
3) Finding Meaning – Having goals that give purpose and significance to life.
The key idea here is that happiness is not just something that happens to people. It is the result of one’s relationship to oneself. 
I encounter many traders who lack a sense of abundance–they are forever fearing that they will miss market moves and opportunity. I find many traders that lack quality time: they are slaves to the screen and experience more frustration than joy in their efforts. I also see many traders who derive little sense of meaning and purpose in their work. If they’re not making money, they are not happy. (more…)

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