Disillusioned

Thx It's true isn't it?

 

"Question: If you won a large sum of money, or if your annual income suddenly became your monthly income, how would you feel about it?

“That would be AWESOME!” is what most people blurt out initially. I have news for you: As bizarre as this may sound, I guarantee that if your old self-concept was still locked in place, you’d do everything possible to get rid of your new-found wealth. You’d make bad business decisions. You’d be unsuccessful in sales. You’d have an uncontrollable urge to go out and spend the money, splurge on things you didn't need, invest in things you knew nothing about, lend to people who wouldn't give it back or even flat out lose it! Just look at what happens to most lottery winners.

Even though everyone SAYS they’d like more money, that’s only on the conscious, surface level. The problem is, your behavior is NOT controlled by your conscious mind; your behavior is controlled on a deeper level - from your subconscious mind where your self-concept is located. If having a lot of money isn’t consistent with your self-concept, it will sooner or later lead to some form of sabotaging behavior to bring you back down to your comfort level.

Most people stay inside a comfort zone that’s consistent with the concept and image they hold of themselves. They rarely rise above it or allow themselves to fall below it. Any time you try to make a change in your life, whether it’s losing fat or earning more money, it will stir up resistance inside you because you’re attempting to move beyond the safe, familiar and comfortable.

To earn more money, you must see yourself as capable of earning more money and worthy of keeping it. If you see yourself as a $24,000 per YEAR person, you’ll NEVER earn and keep $24,000 per MONTH unless you see yourself as a $24,000 per month person."


The above is so true and seems to be overlooked. I was a Sales Manager in another life once and saw this play out in people so many times. I think what many don't realise is that to be successful in trading you have to overcome many non trading specific barriers to success and self advancement in addition to the trading specific ones.

 

Another fantastic post, ET is great

 

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator amplified the same basic messages in your post. It's also obvious when you watch CNBC and read popular financial magazines that they are either completely ignorant or deliberately misleading to feed the financial services machine. But my question for the group is can the game be beaten or are the odds too one-sided in favor of the house?

Like the original poster, I also get the feeling that charts, indicators and fundamentals traders obsess over just provide a false sense of security. Stock prices go one way or another not because of what Ben B. has to say, the price of a barrel of oil or the phase of the moon, but because of the herd mentality. One of the herd decides to run off in a direction and the rest think that's they way they're supposed to go. Obviously that can't be predicted, but can one run with the herd without being trampled?

 

Most books on trading seem to have been sponsored by people who make a living running stops.

 

Or people who make a living writing books on trading and hosting seminars :eek:

 

Tsk, Tsk. Sounds like a bunch of sour grapes by people who haven't been making any money in the markets. I guess if you cannot make money then it HAS to be rigged? Only 5% of the people can make money long term. If you can't be one of them then just trade mutual funds and etfs. The market is not easy for if it was everyone would have their own island.

 

Actually it often is rigged at the micro level. That is what I look for to trade along with. In my local market I know who the manipulators are, which stocks they control and who they deal through.


If you don't think there is anyone ever rigging things then I suggest you pay attention a bit more. Just because YOU can't see it does not mean it is not there.................

 

Of course there are things not on the up and up with the stock market, but that does not mean you cannot make money. To be successful you have to figure out how to do that. It cost me a lot of money in time and effort to figure it out. Once you throw away all the indicators, back testing, elliott waves, or whatever and keep it simple you would be surprised as to how much money you can make, rigged or not.

 

KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid is not my favorite quote, but it does apply in many aspects of trading...

Okay, here's a story that starts out like a joke, but its not: Four Traders walk into a Las Vegas bar. None of them knew each other before the LVN Traders Expo. Trader A was in his 40's. Trader B was a former Division 1A Quarterback that made it for a few seasons in the CFL, he was in his early 30's. Trader C was a very classy lady (gorgeous) that I had just met (picked up) at a booth, she was a complete Noob and still attending UNLV. Trader D was me, just two years into the Trading Game. Trader C and I sat together through one of the many free seminars, and had some very in-depth conversations about the importance of the intricacies of trading, which to me back then was everything from Fib, to EMA, to Gann, to anything that I had just read about that sounded real sleek and technical. Ultra-cool. I was pouring on the BS. I had to, this lady was fine and I just had to impress her. Long story, well... less long, after the seminar the instructor, Trader A, invited about a dozen leftovers (with questions) to join him (later that evening) at a lounge bar in the hotel. Three of us showed up. Trader B wasn't very talkative about trading, he was more interested in the opportunity to just hang out with this A-List celebrity of trading. Trader B chatted up a storm of small talk, mostly sports and old muscle cars. I was listening to some of it, but I was mostly fixated on whispering in Trader C's ear. Trader A surprisingly didn't seem all that interested in talking about trading, really it seemed he was more interested in our backgrounds, where we were from, what we did before this, why we wanted to be traders, etc. For the better part of an hour, nothing much at all was said about trading. But, being that this was a bar, the more drinks that came, the more I started to press Trader A and B about exactly what it is they do. I poked and prodded about which MAs they thought were better to trade short term on, technical buy signals, sells, what other types of indicators do you use with Fibonacci angles? Stochastics? Gann angles still apply to trading? 90-day SMA on 5 minute charts? (that got a laugh ) Surprisingly, Trader A said next to nothing, outside of several smirks and a few chuckles, and Trader B fessed up to being an investor that was just interested in trading. He had no real experience of any kind, which is, unfortunately, when Trader C really started getting interested in sports and muscle cars. Needless to say Trader B and C left fairly quickly, shortly after he dropped blatant hints to the size of his former CFL quarterback retirement plan. I was pissed, but no more were B and C out the door than Trader A told me, in all of his infinite wisdom, the one lesson that I have never forgotten, "It's all about Risk Management." What? What the fuck are you talking about, that prick just left with my date. "No, he didn't. That football player just left with a gold-digger, because he arrived in a Vette, and you brought her here in a Honda." With that, Trader A rose from the table, and dropped a $50 for the drinks. A very wry smile, "Good luck kid."

Are you shitting me? A couple hours ago I was King-Ding-a-Ling. On top of the world. I thought I was a big-shot Trader in Vegas, that just picked up an 11+ hotty on a 0-10 scale, and was meeting one of the great Traders in the history of the markets for drinks. You know how high on my horse I was? And what happened? A bigger fish came along, and my prospect was gone. This guy, who so many traders envied, told me nothing about trading. No secrets. No Grail. Nothing. He just laughed my questions off and told me "Risk Management?" Seriously? No shit. I sat in that lounge for hours, I didn't say a word. I didn't even move from that table. What just happened? I'll tell you. I was still a Noob, and Trader C picked up on that. So did Trader B. Trader C was originally interested in me because she knew nothing about the markets, I was filling her up with all kinds of Jargon BS, and she was at a Traders Expo. She probably thought I was a wealthy, successful investment banker or something of the sort (I was very well dressed and at an investment convention). When we met this seminar instructor for drinks, it became obvious to her that I had been bullshitting my way through the entire day. Lucky for her, Prospect 2 had been a Pro Football player who was half-drunk and interested. So, what about Trader A? Why did he just scoff? KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid. Everything I asked him about, were the very things he was avoiding in his seminar. He had just preached about the brilliant simplicity of trading on Price and Volume, and all I wanted to ask him about was the very things he didn't care for. Moral of the story is this: If I had really wanted to nail the bombshell, I should have left the convention, had dinner, and went straight out on the town. It was Vegas. No way in hell you can't find something fun to do with a gorgeous woman on the strip. Instead, I took her to dinner, then met a couple of real investor types. Mistake? Maybe, maybe not. If I had really wanted to meet-n-greet with a trading legend, I should have made a rain check with the lovely lady (knowing full well that a UNLV student isn't going to follow through after getting a brush off so I could go meet an "old" man for drinks) and spent as much time with the trading legend as I could. Mistake? Maybe, maybe not. Truth be told, I learned several valuable lessons that night, some about trading, some about life. But more importantly, I learned that valuable life lessons really can make good analogies for trading.