I agree, but it seems to be so popular that I assumed it was just me. I'm curious what you think about Brett Steenbarger. I, personally, found all his books very insightful.
His books are interesting, but a little too clinical for me. He seems to focus on integration quite a bit. Ultimately, I find his books good reading, but the HOW is really missing for me. I also have his video "A Traders Guide To Self Discipline". Once again, good information, but lacking the HOW.
thank you .. I will get this book asap... I totally agree,,, the Mental Game is the last thing that is holding me back from trading successfully for an extended period.
Unfortunately, this video is about what he covers in his book and course. Rande does videos fairly long videos all the time, but he doesn't go through the techniques on these videos.
Like I said previously, give it some time. And be patient. If you already have good technical skills that give you an edge, then absolutely, the mental game is the last thing holding you back. I wish more traders talked about this side of trading. I really wish that trainers would really cover the mental aspect also. I have yet to find any trainer out there who does more than just gloss over the mental side of trading., most barely even do that. It irritates me to be honest because if I realized that the mental part of trading was such a huge deal I would have worked on it years ago when I was learning the technical side of trading.
A lot of people (the majority?) struggle already to get over the technical part and never get so far that they encounter the mental side. So they have no clue what you are talking about. I had problems with the mental side too, but at the same time it was a good thing as it forced me to heavily improve my trading. The better the performance the less pressure I had mentally. Thanks to the mental problem I have now a good instead of a mediocre system. So the time was not really lost.
In order to make $ in trading you need the edge (long term investing is different) Simple as that. Everything else comes secondary. I read most "mental" books out there. Did not help me one bit. People just fooling themselves thinking that if only they get in right state of mind chips will fall in places. Edge/System is needed above everything else.
Yes, edge is needed but it's only a part of it. You also need to properly utilize the edge, imho. You will have times when your "system" works better and times when it doesn't. How do you properly press it in good times? What do you do in draw downs or slow times? I think the big difference between automated and manual traders is that manual traders have the ability to spot rare moments of fleeting opportunity where they can put the pedal to the metal and achieve outsize returns with controlled risk. You can't really program automated system to do that. You can decide to allocate more or less money to it, but it's a manual decision(I'm not talking marginal auto-adjustments as per your money management rules).