The burning $$ bill exercise can also be done mentally. If you really visualize (Waterboy style) you will feel the same feelings as if you actually did it in reality. It is imperative that you know what money means to you, what having it, losing it, etc. truly signifies for you. Only then can you re-learn and adopt a healthy attitude towards it. IMHO the best attitude towards money is to think of it as a tool. ---------------------------------------- Faster, Gee, Katrina, TradeRX, whatever.....care to get a life?
"as a tool", babak says??? try to digging a hole with a dollar?? or pounding a nail?? dollar bill dont make a very good tool. :-(
But when you put some of them together, it makes a girl like Katrina take her cloths off. Very powerful tool indeed
All jokes aside, Matthew and Vulture both make valid points. You have to harden yourself mentally to "forget about the money". Otherwise your losses will control and paralyze you. On the other hand, you can't get too complacent/numb towards losses. You still have to be able to feel some "pain".
instead of burning, send katrina a thousand dollar bill and i promise she will send you back a very revealing picture in her birthday suit!
The stock index futures are not more volatile than individual issues. They are in fact much less volatile than all but the slowest movers. The danger in futures trading comes from the fact that much greater leverage is possible. But you don't have to use that leverage. I would never want to devote more than 1/3 of my account to margin in futures. The beauty of futures, particularly the emini's, is the fact that they are highly liquid and you can always get in or out, provided you're not trading during a Fed announcement or other market moving event. A newbie can concentrate on reading the market and not have to worry about execution issues. Plus, any profits have favorable tax treatment compared to short term stock profits.