Archives of “stephen covey” tag

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Inspirational Quotes

  
Education, Life
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1. “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” – Albert Einstein

2. “Act now. There is never any time but now, and there never will be any time but now.” – Wallace Wattles

3. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle

4. “The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering the attitudes of his mind.” – William James

5. “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” – Charles Darwin

6. “There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” – Nelson Mandela

7. “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.” – Robert Frost

8. “You’ve got to win in your mind before you win in your life.” – John Addison

9. “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” – Anais Nin

10. “An ounce of doing things is worth a pound of theorizing.” – Wallace Wattles

11. “The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” – Winston Churchill

12. “Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.” – Stephen Covey

13. “The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.” – Joseph Joubert

14. ”Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.” – Winston Churchill

15. “Don’t wait for a light to appear at the end of the tunnel Stride down there and light the bloody thing yourself.” – Dara Henderson

16. “Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” – Jim Rohn

17. “Vision without action is just a dream, action without vision just passes the time, vision with action can change the world” – Nelson Mandela

18. “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” – T.S. Eliot

19. “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” – Oscar Wilde

20. “Freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose yours.” – Paulo Coelho

21. “Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” – John F. Kennedy

22. “I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.” – James Joyce

23. “I have learned that it’s not WHAT I have in my life but WHO I have in my life that counts.” – Unknown

24. “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” – Henry David Thoreau

25. “If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” – Jim Rohn (more…)

5 Trading Psychology Quotes

  
  Education
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“To succeed as a trader, it is absolutely necessary to have an edge.  You can’t win without an edge, even with the world’s greatest discipline and money management skills.  If you don’t have an edge, all that money management and discipline will do for you is to guarantee that you will gradually bleed to death.  Incidentally, if you don’t know what your edge is, you don’t have one.” Jack Schwager 

“Environmental distractions and boredom cause a lack of focus – All of us have limits to our attention span and these are easily taxed during quiet times in the market.”  Brett Steenbarger

“If there is such a thing as a secret to the nature of trading, this is it: At the very core of one’s ability 1) to trade without fear or overconfidence, 2) perceive what the market is offering from its perspective, 3) stay completely focused in the ‘now moment opportunity flow,’ and 4) spontaneously enter the ‘zone,’ it is a strong virtually unshakeable belief in an uncertain outcome with an edge in your favor.” Mark Douglas

“The ‘making money’ part of trading is simply a by-product (end result) of a focused and precise utilization of our trained psychological and mechanical resources to successfully find and manage trades. Under the most intense circumstances, the best results will be produced only with a deep concentration and focus on the task at hand.” Chris Lori

“The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person.  Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment.  Proactive people are driven by values – carefully thought about, selected and internalized values.” Stephen Covey 

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Futures Traders

  
  Education
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Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People has been on the national best-seller lists for years–first as a hardback and then as a paperback. I wondered how its list might relate to commodity futures trading.

My interpretation of Covey’s agenda is as follows: 1) Take responsibility for yourself and your life, 2) Act in light of your vision of success in life, 3) Act with proper attention to the correct priorities, 4) Act in a way that maximizes benefits for everyone, 5) Try to understand the other person before putting your point of view across, 6) Exploit the potential for cooperation among the people in your life, 7) Pay attention to maintaining and refining your physical, mental, social and spiritual dimensions.

While there does not appear to be any direct relationship between my commodity trading list and Covey’s overall life experience list, there are some definite similarities and differences. It is well known that normally successful approaches do not work in trading. Additionally, life in general requires involvement and interrelating with other people, while trading is a more solitary endeavor. Here is my list of successful habits for traders.

ONE. Understand the true realities of the markets. Understand how money is made and what is possible. The markets are what is called chaotic systems. Chaos theory is the mathematics of analyzing such non-linear, dynamic systems. According to Edgar Peters, author of Chaos and Order in The Capital Markets, mathematicians have conclusively shown the to be non-linear, dynamic systems. Among other things chaotic systems can produce results that look random, but are not. A chaotic market is not efficient, and long-term forecasting is impossible. Market price movement is highly random with a trend component. (more…)

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