Skip to main content

Disciplined Trader Chapter 2

The following typical trading errors have a specific cause rooted in a thinking methodology that can be changed.
1. Refusing to define a loss.
2. Not liquidating a losing trade, even after you have acknowledged the trade's potential is greatly diminished.
3. Getting locked into a specific opinion or belief about market direction. From a psychological perspective this is equivalent to trying to control the market with your expectation of what it will do: "I'm right, the market is wrong."
4. Focusing on price and the monetary value of a trade, instead of the potential for the market to move based on its behavior and structure.
5. Revenge-trading as if you were trying get back at the market for what it took away from you.
6. Not reversing your position even when you clearly sense a change in market direction.
7. Not following the rules of the trading system.
8. Planning for a move or feeling one building, but then finding yourself immobilized to hit the bid or offer, and therefore denying yourself the opportunity to profit.
9. Not acting on your instincts or intuition.
10.Establishing a consistent pattern of trading success over a period of time, and then giving your winnings back to the market in one or two trades and starting the cycle over again.

SKILLS TO BE ACQUIRED 
To excel in any activity—whether it is mental, such as trading, or physical, such as swimming—we need to learn specialized skills. These skills give us the necessary requirements to look at, think about, and behave toward events in a manner different from what we may be used to or what we may have been taught.

However, beyond the sheer mechanics of the activity—which just about anyone can master—lies a particular thinking methodology or strategy that leads to excellence. Although few people have it, such a thinking methodology can nevertheless be learned.

Any thinking methodology requires a series of approaches to goals and problems. These approaches might be better described as mental techniques, even skills of thought application. For example, one such skill might be the ability to identify those conditions that are conducive to making a common trading error before it actually happens. Other techniques or skills include:
1. Learning the dynamics of goal achievement so you can stay positively focused on what you want-not what you fear.
2. Learning how to recognize the skills you need to progress as a trader and then stay focused on the development of those skills, instead of the money, which is merely a by-product of your skills.
3. Learning how to adapt yourself to respond to fundamental changes in market conditions more readily.
4. Identifying the amount of risk you are comfortable with - your "risk comfort level"-and then learn how to expand it in a way that is consistent with your ability to maintain an objective perspective of market activity.
5. Learning how to execute your trades immediately upon your perception of an opportunity.
6. Learning how to let the market tell you how much is enough, instead of assessing the potential from your personal value system of how much is enough.
7. Learning how to structure your beliefs to control your perception of market movement.
8. Learning how to achieve and maintain a state of objectivity.
9. Learning how to recognize "true" intuitive information and then learning how to act on it consistently.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Learning from adversity

 If they knew that every form of defeat, and all failures, bring them the seed of unborn opportunity, they would keep on fighting and win. Success usually is but one short step beyond the point where on quits fighting. Failure is a man made circumstance. It is never real until it has been accepted by man as permanent. Failure is a state of mind; Therefore, it is something an individual can control until he neglects to exercise this privilege. Failure brings a climax in which one has the privilege of clearing his mind of fear and making a new start in another direction. Failure proves conclusively that something is wrong with one's aims or the plans by which the object of these aims is sought. Failure is the dead end of the habit-path one has been following, and when it is reached it forces one to leave that path and take up another, Thereby creating a new rhythm. It gives an individual an opportunity to test himself wherein he may learn how much will power he possesses. Failure als...
 All great leaders in every walk of life are highly sexed, but they follow the habit of controlling their sex desires, switching them into a driving force behind their occupation. The person who has self discipline understands the emotion of sex, respects it, and learns to control and transmute it into contructive activities. Q: Just what damage is there in over-indulgence of sex? A: The greatest damage is that it depletes the source of man's greatest driving force, and wastes, without adequate compensation, man's creative energy. Controlled sex supplies the magnetic force that attracts people to one another. It is the most important factor of a pleasing personality. It gives quality to the tone of voice and enables one to convey through the voice any feeling desired. It serves, as nothing else can serve, to give motive power to one's desires. It keeps the nervous system changed with the energy needed to carry on the work of maintaining the body. It sharpens the imagination...

How to Build Better Habits in 4 Simple Steps

WHY YOUR BRAIN BUILDS HABITS A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic. The process of habit formation begins with trial and error. Whenever you encounter a new situation in life, your brain has to make a decision. How do I respond to this? The first time you come across a problem, you’re not sure how to solve it. You’re just trying things out to see what works. You’re taking in tons of new information and trying to make sense of it all. The brain is busy learning the most effective course of action. You stumble across a solution. You’re feeling anxious, and you discover that going for a run calms you down. You’re mentally exhausted from a long day of work, and you learn that playing video games relaxes you. You’re exploring, exploring, exploring, and then—BAM—a reward. After you stumble upon an unexpected reward, you alter your strategy for next time. Your brain immediately begins to catalog the events that preceded the reward. Wait a minute—that fe...