Agree. Prolonged positive confirmation is a good base for confidence and confidence leaves less and less place for fears and doubts over time. The main issue is most people never get there, cause even if they get a working system at their hands, it still takes extremely hard period emotionally of trading it with full discipline in order to receive objective confirmation of positive outcome. I witnessed traders who developed great systems they worked on for years, which excellently work in simulated environment (and don't depend that much on fills, so sim or live is technically irrelevant here), but when they try to make a living trading their system, emotions kick in and lead to a wreck after wreck. All for pure emotional reasons and a lack of belief in that following rules is the only path to success.
The more successful you become, the less emotional you will feel. When trading is tough, then even small losses can feel overwhelming. When trading is going well then even large losers are easily forgotten. If you are a newer trader who has never experienced sustained success, then trading will always feel emotional.
Absolutely. But then again a trader can only experiment "sustained success" IF and only IF his/her strategy has a winning edge to begin with, and we are back to square one. I said it a million times and I will say it again: without a fully tested system the trader will spend the rest of his live trading on emotions and second-guessing every single trading decision ("Should I buy here or here? Should I liquidate here or here? Should I place my stop here or here? The market is moving against me, what should I do now?....")
Yes, but does it not seem strange that very few people actually make it beyond these initial stages of emotional constraint? As I have already stated, the historical performance of any given system or method, should by no means act as a future guarantor.
In any case, historical performance is the only objective criteria of any trading system performance.
Quite true, however, we must always try to maintain a realistic and logical philosophy, relevant to our future aspirations and undertakings.
Absolutely agree. But the only relatively objective trading system measurement tool I know is extrapolation of past results into the future, while being fully aware it's far from being ideal and absolutely reliable. There is always a chance that some system "stops working". For such cases, provided we have no way to see future, risk management probably makes the most sense. Like: compare the current draw-down to historical draw-downs and have a rule to admit the system as not profitable preferably before all the profits previously gained are given back.
xelite777 "The only way."..your mistake is right here, the only way is similar to never and always,an absolute...excepting it as one shuts off or stymies growth(brain keeps improving when you think you have control of it),control is another misnomer... the only way is just one of many i have add, think it was adhd when in grade school high school,no longer bouncing off the walls, anyway,there is a chemical your brain overproduces,norepinephrine, which most often acts negatively on the brain and alters emotions ,also some belief that the overproduction causes under production in dopamine and seratonin,which would be uppers,that are lacking now with that thought process, i look at myself as a chemical makeup with negative or depression tendencies,, i prefer cream in my coffee, thats a choice, the brain chemicals can be combated but the bodies urge to keep over and under producing persists,not a choice, which would make all the i cant's and what an ass for making that trade,all the deabilitating negatives louder if you think of yourself as a self,one of millions,not myself, then these emotions are just something that you tend to like clipping your nails,it's just one of the things a human needs to tend to, they are no longer a big deal,you dont blame yourself, you take the i,me,my..out of it, you recognize the self and it's natural human tendencies, you just stand outside of the self and macro manage those tendencies, the choice is yours,outsmart yourself edit...similar to a shrink observing a patient