All our lives we are taught to be subjective. Pick a side, stick with it and defend it no matter what the real underlying truth might be. In our social and business lives, we are oftentimes defending a flawed side. For example, a family member gets themselves into trouble and you defend them although the family member was clearly in the wrong. As I read all these different blogs and message boards, I sense that many do not have that power of objectivity. They have a learned behavior of being subjective letting opinion and emotion flow...defending flawed sides because they were taught to pick a side, stick with it and defend it no matter the true underlying cause. I am coming to find that the strongest behavioral trait of a trader is having the ability to step back and simply be objective. Look at the chart and tell me what you honestly see no matter what strategy you took before...no matter what happened in the past. So I ask you...honestly...do you have the power of objectivity?
yes it's amazing. People pick a side and then find info to support their opinion. Ignoring all else. I have a friend who is a Perma bear.....Gives me reasons every day why she is so...I simply look at the Nasdaq chart and wonder why.
From the beginning of April until sometime in May i was a permabear and blew out a decent chunk of my account. It's still something of a fight for me. Like when we closed above 1050 on the SP 500 a week or so ago i had to absolutely FORCE myself to go long again since that had been my plan leading up that point.
I am an opinionated, politically incorrect, prejudiced, mean spirited, totally subjective individual, and AIN'T ashamed to proclaim what everyone who knows me is fully aware of. But my subjectivity is exclusively directed at interpersonal relationships that I see as predominantly political and pretentious as is HUMAN NATURE. The market is a BOTTOM LINE game. The market does NOT have a personality. My babyboomer brethren were raised on the claptrap of anthropomorphism promulgated by the man on ice for the ages, Walt Disney. If you give animals human qualities, then it is easy to do so with the "market". The market doesn't know me, doesn't give a twit about me, and it does what it does as irrational and random as it might seem. I CANNOT kiss the market's ass. It does not give Mulligans. And unlike the commercials for the Jerry Springer show, there are not scumbag personal injury lawyers, who will sue for me when the market mugs me and takes some of my money. There is no place for crybabying in baseball although the lying cheating, juicing likes of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens may think so. And there is not place for whining in trading, if you are really trading for a living that is.
I've found that being objective is not at all easy to do... I was developing systems for a long time.. I developed a real knack for picking the part of the chart data that would support my ideas... I kid you not, I don't know how many times I had this "wow, 85% winners and wins are bigger than losses" moment only to discover that it was random over a longer period of time... We are trained from childhood to be "right" and we develop unconscious mechanisms to ensure that this happens...
Look at the chart and tell me what you honestly see no matter what strategy you took before...no matter what happened in the past. So I ask you...honestly...do you have the power of objectivity? ----------------------- Okay, look at the chart Ask yourself any questions about the chart and choose an answer from the list below. 1)True, 2)False 3) Not sure Then you'll have objectivity.
The short answer = yes â I do The longer answer... Funny thing about becoming objective⦠it begets becoming detachedâ¦. Becoming detached begets becoming unemotionalâ¦. Becoming unemotional begets the removal of all indicators and crap from oneâs chartsâ¦. Removing the crap frees one up to actually trade⦠Being free to trade ultimately allows one to trade robot like â mechanical if you prefer⦠Of course from there the sky is the limit How many times have I posted; âI do not know what the mkt will do tomorrow â nor do I care - I will just trade it and either lose or make money" Yep sounds pretty dog gone objective, detached and unemotional â to me Or stated another way if you prefer I simply observe, anticipate, and react â to what price is doing⦠because I absolutely know â what I think, hope or want â does not matter one damn bit.. Take you pick â or ignore it all â the choice is yours â as always And on a final note⦠Does not matter what you think â only how⦠ever Does not matter what you think â only what you doâ¦. always Regards RN
Thanks so much for this post. I hope it sinks into my heart. My heart feels what you have said is so true. Thanks again