Do you have any drills or practices a trader can do to help stay mindful in the NOW and execute their trading plan without fear?
1. Have only your trading-related windows in view; no email, chat (unless that's a source of signals), phone, porn, etc. 2. Before you're ready to trade and once your platform's open and you know everything's running and set up for trading, do some sort of routine that prepares you for intense focus. I spend 20-30 minutes outdoors where I do several yoga stretches and read my favorite "mindset" pieces* 3. As soon as you're officially ready to begin trading, describe out loud what you're seeing as if you're teaching a class on how to trade your method. This keeps you focused and on track to trade your plan. * Here's some of my favorite pre-trade reading: Being disciplined in the past isnât good enough: on each and every trade you must be disciplined. Forever. Like a drunk in a program you can NEVER slip off the wagon. - Pa(b)st Prime From Cornix: With regard to the psychological training of professional athletes, particularly professional shooters: To limit stress (which is a fatal factor for any serious competition), professional shooters give themselves the right to make mistakes. More exactly, they set their goal to make a correct shot technically, not to hit the target. They even inspire themselves that outcome is not that important at all, but correct technique is what only matters. And that little trick leads to great results. The shooter stands, focuses on the pleasure of the technically perfect shot and does it literally without stress, being focused on the process, not the outcome. Ironically, the chance of target being perfectly hit increases dramatically in such a case. If the pro shooter's mental focus was to hit the target, he would get overstressed and likely have the opposite result vs. desired. This is a proven technique used by pro shooters, power lifters and in most other kinds of sport to limit stress during the competition. Also from Cornix: Look, for example, at this elegant little experiment. A rat was put in a T-shaped maze with a few morsels of food placed on either the far right or left side of the enclosure. The placement of the food is randomly determined, but the dice is rigged: over the long run, the food was placed on the left side sixty per cent of the time. How did the rat respond? It quickly realized that the left side was more rewarding. As a result, it always went to the left, which resulted in a sixty percent success rate. The rat didn't strive for perfection. It didn't search for a Unified Theory of the T-shaped maze, or try to decipher the disorder. Instead, it accepted the inherent uncertainty of the reward and learned to settle for the best possible alternative. The experiment was then repeated with Yale undergraduates. Unlike the rat, their swollen brains stubbornly searched for the elusive pattern that determined the placement of the reward. They made predictions and then tried to learn from their prediction errors. The problem was that there was nothing to predict: the randomness was real. Because the students refused to settle for a 60 percent success rate, they ended up with a 52 percent success rate. Although most of the students were convinced they were making progress towards identifying the underlying algorithm, they were actually being outsmarted by a rat. From Mark Douglas: "Trading a technical methodology or a technical pattern does not have anything to do with being right or wrong. Itâs just an odds game. Youâve got to be able to take every single trade because you donât know the sequence of wins and losses. Youâve got to be able to identify what your risk is and thatâs simply âHow much am I willing to spend to find out if other traders are going to come into this market and bid it higher than my price or offer lower than my price if I sold? "When you put on a trade and it doesnât work, all it really means is that some of the traders didnât come into the market that had the same belief that you had, or the same conviction about this market doing whatever it is you thought it was going to do. "We canât predict collective human behavior. âThe methodologies that we have access to, these mathematical formulas, do that for us. But you have to understand that thereâs no possible way that these mathematical formulas can predict the outcome of these patterns on a trade by trade basis, only on a series of trades. So when I get a signal from my methodology, at the most fundamental level what this is telling me is that the odds are in my favor that somebody is going to come into the market (this is what the pattern means) and bid it higher than here if I bought or offer it lower than here if I sold. Thatâs all that itâs saying. Now theyâre either gonna come or theyâre not, and so as a result I donât look at this as being a ârightâ or a âwrongâ; I look at this as âHow much distance am I going to give the market to move away from my entry point to tell me that theyâre either going to come or theyâre not, and any further is not worth the cost of finding out.ââ The 5 Fundamental Truths of Trading: 1. Anything can happen. 2. You donât need to know what is going to happen next to make money. 3. There is a random distribution between wins and losses for any given set of variables that define an edge. 4. An edge is nothing more than an indication of a higher probability of one thing happening over another. 5. Every moment in the market is unique. The 7 Principles of Consistency: 1. I objectively identify my edges. 2. I predefine the risk of every trade. 3. I completely accept the risk or I am willing to let go of the trade. 4. I act on my edges without reservation or hesitation. 5. I pay myself as the market makes money available to me. 6. I continually monitor my susceptibility for making errors. 7. I understand the absolute necessity of these principles of consistent success and, therefore, I never violate them.
You cannot avoid fear. Fear is good. Without it you cannot function. You just want to learn to minimize it.
While it may SEEM like your question is all about trading, it is not. It is about YOU and YOUR beliefs about who are are, what you do, what you want, and what you are willing to "pay" for what you want. While NoD's response contains some solid niche information (mostly within the quotes of others), it is unlikely to be breakthrough. Maybe I'm wrong about that. After all I don't have any knowledge whatsoever about you other than a screen name, a date you registered, how many posts you've made, and maybe a whiff of insight -if- I spent time searching for and reading those posts. But then again, maybe I'm right. (Hey, that sounds like discretionary trading!) Anyways, my suggested starting point is not about trading, it is about everything... here... http://johnnybtruant.com/the-universe-doesnt-give-a-flying-fuck-about-you/ When/If you get it, you're welcome. I have no affiliations with or responsibilities to any of the links I've offered.
jh has definitely good ones. I picked up from him. It must have been special day for his star sign as he wrote something meaningful. this guy seem reasonable but not same league http://www.brettsteenbarger.com/
Awesome, this was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you! Any other stuff would be appreciated Thanks, do you have any of those things he mentioned?
I think Jack could maybe live with the first few lines of this whole list but the further you go down this list the less it becomes compatible with the way Jack trades. The list was created by CW traders for other CW traders. A SCT trader doesn't need all of this and knows it is wrong. Using Jack's method provides comfort and support and you know at all times what you are doing and what must come next.
I would do my best to listen to "NoDoji", I read through his posts and he is authentic, he knows his stuff and I have no doubt this brilliant Trader knows how to "stay in the moment". It's hard to Buffulo a man who was trained by Harvey Houtkin, I bid you to listen to someone of "NoDoji"s caliber, I often wonder why there are people like Jack H. and NoDoji who are kind enough to help us knucklehead traders. Thank's Jack and "NoDoji", you are real! May I butt in for a moment, are you watching TV, listening to the radio and talking with family members and posting on message boards like stupid me? It's a quick way to lose cash, look up the link Ms Debby posted about the old Trader who became a hermit to remain in the moment!