I was discussing why so many traders are unwilling to share their system in this thread. I'm now wondering what you guys think about this: Given a winning system, how likely is it that a trader can be successful without conquering the emotions of fear & greed?
Fear and greed are motivators and necessary. Maybe you need to lessen their impact on whatever you do, perhaps by making something else more important, like determination or confidence, education, skill, experience.
As stated, motivation is necessary. Clothing may vary, too. Induction and thinking inductively support being motivated by fear and greed. The Black Swan came from an inductive process; it may be related to the fear and greed you deal with. Why doesn't critical thinking include induction? It is simply ruled out. The other dominos that fall, subsequently take fear and greed off the table. What is the motivational aspect of thinking critically? By stepping past the boundaries of induction and inductive thinking, one can find out. Making money can take care of itself. By being free of making money as a goal, a trader becomes very expert in doing what is required to make money at the rate that the market offers. Not something to think about with respect to the OP's topic, but it is important to step aross the line and see how others think, at least occasionally.
True indeed. I often find more pleasure in small things. For example, I had a decent day on Friday. After the market closed, I went out to Wendy's and ordered myself $2.99 value meal. It couldn't have tasted any better.
Jack, another gem. Getting to this point has taken me a long time, but what a transformation it inspired in me. Having a winning system, testing the crap out of it in my sim account for months, and manually back testing bar-by-bar every day, is helping me reach a point where I'm starting to trust my trades more, because I realize that if I give up a profit because I'm trying to let a winner run, my system of trading will present another opportunity shortly. It's no longer this desperate feeling of "I have to get at least something out of this trade." Fear and greed are gradually become less and less of a factor. My larger fear now is not allowing a trade to reach my profit target. Recently I have more and more days where I patiently allow my trades to reach target. All this seemed so foreign to me for so long. I had a lot of Aha! moments this year.
Super congrats, Donna. I am so glad to see you put milestone after milestone behind you. Trading becomes more and more coherent as piece after piece falls in place. It is such a great emotional shift.
I have a winning system: It's long term sentiment trading (be greedy when others are fearful, and viceversa) I overcome fear by thinking fear in the masses makes the low prices I need to buy low, and greed makes the high (even absurd) prices I need to sell at a premium.