Nice post. You certainnly moved the thread forward. There is a lot of "professional" repair work done for those who can afford it. Two themes emerge. Yours for above the neck and the other for below the neck emotions. The comments centering on edge and emotional discipline were disappointing. I think it is possible for a person to "grow" and bring his decision making and behavioral actions into the better balance if he measures his personal efforts above and below the neck. Below the neck, reality is a consequence. The consequence does not have to reign any longer than the trader wants or needs it to. RTH is a short portion of the cognitive day. I recommend using the non RTH to permit trading "growth". Make two lists. I place skills in the left column and limitations in the right column. Here is an example: SA is a skill and opposite it is edges as a limitation. A scorable ratio of skills/limitations may be had by giving a value to each item on the two columns. This means a spectrum of ratios may be found to exist. "Growing" would be defined as moving to a better place over time on the spectrum. The place occupied by OW's three step skills/limitations could be moved to a better place by changing the cause of needing steps 2 and 3. All this means is that a limitation is converted to a skill. OW comments on those with poorer skills/limitations acquiring a better ratio by buying what he sells. Think of the price of a system that has few limitations. Most likely it has overcome limitations and converted their consequences to assets called skills. sociopathic and killer mentalities may not be skills because they have consequences. Very wealthy people have neither of these characteristics as a rule. I have built, purprosefully,C corporations of people exclusively coming out of a specific sherrif's incarceration program. They also had to join a 12 step program and have a library card. The corp was designed to increase the skills/limitations ratio very rapidly. I always looked at their children's report cards. I always co-signed for their rent, power, water and telephone. Once I had to instruct a bank manager on an error he made. He declined to open an account where the inital deposit was a check I signed. I improved his skills/limitations ratio. Anyone can make the lists in the columns. Anyone can improve their ratio during non RTH hours. How hard is it to figure out that an edge is a piece of the system of the market's operation. Some people would have drawdown as a limitation. But wouldn't trading a drawdown segment actually be an opportunity for a profit segment? If you move the drawdown from a limitation to a skill, you would have a higher ratio of skills/limitation. In Behavioral Finance (BF) anxiety, fear and anger are called "signals". We all monitor and analyze signals. BF uses these signals to cause a process to begin. The process is named "iterative refinement"of the trading approach. The OP of the thread is doing iterative refinement. He is asking about a below the neck condition or context. It could be there part time as some suggest. If so it is a smaller signal than if it is there all the time. I was trained to not care if someone could not learn a skill or some knowledge. In my training I had to learn it was not my fault. The majority of posts in ET are on the topic of limitations. Thread topics are NOT limitation threads always, some are about other things like skills and knowledge. Working on a personal skill/limitation ratio is not a possibility for most; it is a self examination type thing and can be very defeating for people with closed minds. If you want a real wake up call, read the Wikipedia definition and posted knowledge on a topic named Technical Analysis. What a total screw up. Part of it was actually used in ET for some purpose. Markets operate as systems. The variables have granularity. Keynes and Carnap dictate that non continuous systems are finite systems. The algebra for fintie systems was invented as an Algebra in the 1800's by George Boole. So....... etc. ......... All the above items relate to skills. Anything else is a limitation to be overcome. Potential traders fail because they use myths primarily. Using myths is a limitation.
I became more successful/relaxed during trading after achieving what I would call artificial sociopathy. One of the reasons I used to trade was because I hated my job. So I would trade in hopes of getting out of my job. Each trade was very important and very emotional because of this. When I decided I was going to quit my job regardless of my trading success, I started trading well....for a while. Then something else came up that I cared about and was linked to my becoming rich via trading. When trading is for me only and there are no social consequences (wife freaking about losing money, fear of friends saying I was foolish to mess with stocks/options, etc), then I have reached artificial sociopathy. It's a state of total agility and flexibility in the market. When you can buy a stock for no reason just like you would buy a flower just because it is nice to have, you know what I'm talking about. Two days ago I was holding long and my intuition said I should keep holding. But, for no other reason than just that I didn't feel like holding anymore, I sold. Total apathy. The next day, I bought puts. Had I "needed" to win, I would have held long and lost big. Most people would say my reasoning for selling is not reliable, but I feel that it is more reliable than all the other methods combined. It's not even about apathy really. When you throw away an old flower, you never fear that someone is going to call you a fool for doing it or say you could have made more or lost less if you had just saved it one day longer. There's no fear of social repercussion. That's the real key to agility in the market. Every decision is for you and for you only.
No. I see no role for conscience when trading electronic markets... In fact, you are doing a lot of social good by providing liquidity. In contrast, poker REQUIRES that you be a SOCIOPATH... Because you seek out the Halt and the Lame... And take away their rent, food, medicine money.
I've been trading for a living for almost 21 years. I can't see how being a sociopath would make me a better trader. My trading edge is in my analysis/statistical approach to trading, not in my personality. My trading psychology is based upon knowledge and discipline, not upon being an emotionally empty shell. The best hitters in baseball fail two-thirds of the time they step up to the plate. Many of the greatest basketball players in history missed over 50% of their shots. Do they need to be sociopaths to succeed? Perhaps some are, but most are not. They do what successful traders learn how to do -- stay focused and perform under pressure. I have a wife, children, friends and a great life. Being a sociopath would not improve my life or my trading in any way.
The problem is that you chose trading as a life's path. Once you thus make the next trade, you need that trade to be a winner, to validate your decision. Especially after a string of losers. Because if the next trade is a loser, you might have chosen the wrong life's path and thus fail in life. I think that's what most think unconciously, and it is very hard to get out of it. The continuous search for validation of your trading which has alot to do with insecurity.
I don't feel that way, but I guess it is hard for me to blowup since I trade mostly unleveraged. It's hard to get comfortable with statistics and risk, but once you do it seems most emotional issues get resolved, unless of course you never had a statisical edge.
I like the athlete analogy, but it would be more accurate if baseball players had to pay every time they struck out. My favorite analogies are football players. Cornerbacks have to forget failure very quickly and move on and quarterbacks have to process information and make decisions quickly.
I played a lot of baseball growing up, so I was thinking about trading in terms of knowing that if I got my at-bats, I would get my share of hits. I hated it when I struck out or even if I hit one on the button that just turned out to be a long out. But I also knew my hits would come over time. No ballplayer judges his hitting on the basis of any particular at-bat. Same with trading. I can't predict the outcome of any particular trade and I dislike losing trades as much as anyone else, but as long as I get my "at-bats" I'll have my share of winning trades and the profits that come with them. There's no reason to get stressed out over losing trades, and certainly no reason to believe that being a sociopath would have improved my hitting or my trading. The people who should be stressed out are the traders who don't have an edge or aren't properly capitalized.
well well well... who really wants to have a brain deformity ? http://arabiangazette.com/psychopath-brain-deformity-study/ all the more that psychopaths have also a lack of self control .... as example of a few "problems". definitely not sure as two good places to find them are: - psychiatric hospitals/prisons -prisons ( 20% are disgnosed as psychopath)
you might like this books then... The Mental ABC's of Pitching: A Handbook for Performance Enhancement Coaching the Mental Game: Leadership Philosophies and Strategies for Peak Performance in Sports and Everyday Life The Mental Game of Baseball: A Guide to Peak Performance