Emotional Resilience – The very successful traders have a great attitude about losing. They know it’s going to happen. They don’t take it personally. If anything, they try to find learning experiences from losses. Elsewhere I have written about how good traders view a losing trade as “paying for information”. A trade with an edge that doesn’t go their way either tells them something important about the market, or it tells them something about their execution. Either way, it’s a potential learning experience. Resilience means that the excellent traders trade well out of a hole. They can be down money for day, week, or quarter and continue to make the same good trades they would normally make.
Creativity – We normally think of creativity as a trait that belongs to artists, but it also is quite noticeable among traders who have been successful over many years. They find edges in the most unlikely places. They look at interesting relationships within the market they’re trading, and they find unique relationships from one market to another. One trader very recently told me of a strategy that exploited the way one market was priced related to a similar market at certain time periods. I would have never thought of that idea in a million years. He was making consistent money from the concept.
Archives of “Positive psychology” tag
rssPassion & Hope -Two Key Drivers
The two key drivers of success in any endeavor is passion and hope.
Passion creates the energy to do what we need to do to get to where we want to go. Many times money is just the side effect of the work we do driven by our own passion and desire for success with little thought given to the monetary reward that could happen during the battle for success. When we are passionate about something we just love doing it, we just love the game itself and everything about being in that game and playing it. True professionals do not use their bank account as a daily motivator to work, they are doing what they were born to do, they are just being who they are and what they are.
Hope is what gets us up in the morning and keeps us working toward our goals. Hope gives us the ability to do hard work today for a potential reward in the future. Hope sees an account at $0 and sees that it could be over a million dollars if the right plan is followed. Hope gives us the energy to work hard in our present circumstances believing that we are receiving an education that will show us the path to where we want to be. The greatest cause of depression is being realistic about the present and future and the loss of hope in tomorrow.
being better than today. Know what you want, and understand how to get there. If you are willing to do what you have to do and be willing to pay the price that your goal costs you can have what you want.
“A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.”
― Bob Dylan
Optimism for Traders
- When good things happens to an optimist, he says it’s permanent, pervasive, and personal. When a bad thing happens to an optimist, she says it’s temporary, specific, and not personal.
- Because the optimistic trader looks with bright enthusiasm towards the future, she is able to be realistic about what has happened in the past and is happening in the present. A pessimistic trader who has limiting doubts about his future trading, may be unwilling to admit what has happened or is actually occurring.
Timeless Qualities Essential to Speculation
- 1. Self-reliance: A man must think for himself and must follow his own convictions. Self-trust is the foundation of successful effort.
- 2. Judgment: That equipoise, that nice adjustment of the faculties of one to the other, which is called good judgment—essential to the speculator.
- 3. Courage: That is, confidence to act on the decisions of the mind. In speculation, there is value in the dictum: Be bold, still be bold; always be bold.
- 4. Prudence: The power of measuring the danger, together with a certain alertness and watchfulness, is very important. There should be a balance of prudence and courage; prudence in contemplation, courage in execution.
- 5. Pliability: The ability to change an opinion, the power of revision. He who observes and observes again is always formidable.
10 Characteristics of Successful Traders
1) The amount of time spent on their trading outside of trading hours (preparation, reading, etc.);
2) Dedicated periods to reviewing trading performance and making adjustments to shifting market conditions;
3) The ability to stop trading when not trading well to institute reviews and when conviction is lacking;
4) The ability to become more aggressive and risk taking when trading well and with conviction;
5) A keen awareness of risk management in the sizing of positions and in daily, weekly, and monthly loss limits, as well as loss limits per position;
6) Ongoing ability to learn new skills, markets, and strategies; (more…)
M. de la Rochefoucauld’s 15 maxims -written 400 years ago
- “It is a kind of happiness to know how unhappy we must be.”
- “In their first passion, women love their lovers; in all the others, they love love.”
- “In jealousy there is more of self-love than love.”
- “One is never so happy or so unhappy as one fancies.”
- “Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily.”
- “Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.”
- “Everyone blames his memory; no one blames his judgment.”
- “There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other.”
- “It is almost always a fault of one who loves not to realize when he ceases to be loved.”
- “When a man is in love, he doubts, very often, what he most firmly believes.”
- “There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.”
- “If we resist our passions it is more from their weakness than from our strength.”
- “We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves.”
- “Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire.”
- “When a man must force himself to be faithful in his love, this is hardly better than unfaithfulness.”