This is pretty interesting: The old adage that we "learn more from our mistakes" could be wrong, with new research showing our brain only learns from experience when we do something right. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5934013/People-do-not-learn-from-their-mistakes.html
What you really learned was that your hand burns when it is put on something hot. Not only will you not touch a hot stove again but you will not touch anything that gives off enough heat that will burn your hand. You learned from your action of pulling your hand away and not from touching the stove, so you actually did learn from doing the right thing and not the wrong thing as you did not know the difference when you touched the stove, otherwise you would not have touched it.
Let us try and apply this concept to the markets. A person puts on a trade and risks $2,500. That person will remember 2 things very clearly 1) the price at which the trade was executed 2) the price at which the trade was closed out. How long the person will remember these two things will depend on how serious the person is about trading. If the person loses the $2,500 then the memory will last a good bit and if the person wins $2,500 the memory will not last that long. Now the person will want to make more than $2,500 on the next trade and if the price drops back to where it was before it might jolt the memory and the person might even double the size now risking all of the profit plus the initial $2,500. Did this person learn from doing the right thing when the person won $2,500?
Someone else can easily post and show that they are also right, for it depends on how you write the words. With trading, there are too many variables to work out a near certain thing, but for some silly reason the spin doctors have actually convinced most people that any person can become a profitable trader just by listening to their words. The person who will take naturally to trading is one who listens to no one and tries to see trading for what it actually is, a means to keep the economies operating so that people may produce more goods and then buy them back in some other form, a bit like the monkeys getting rewarded with the bananas for doing something right. I do not know why they just don't use humans for these experiments?
I learned this decades ago from shooting baskets. I found that if I did not at all focus on what I did wrong when I missed [and pay no attention when I made a basket] but rather only focused on what I did right, my shooting abilities increased and oddly enough, people thought I was a good shooter without even tallying the score, I just made it look good... so there is hidden plusses to this type of thinking... Something interesting to me is the contrast between how depressive people think versus non depressive people. Depressed people attribute their wins in life to the situation and their losses to themselves, non depressive people do the opposite.. so what you have is two sets of deluded folks really. I'm sort of depressive and have always worked really hard to overcome what I saw as my faults. What this will result in, and did for me in every arena, is that you look around and realize that all these successful people in your environment are truly mediocre but they just don't know it, how can they, they are deluded.. working with all these mediocre people is what drove me to trading really, I know I can excel but they will not give me much reward for it, trading otoh gives wonderful rewards to those that excel...
I had to drive form point A to point B. Guess what, missed my exit, I got lost. What did I learn from my mistake? Bring a map. Plan ahead. Focus. Wrath of being late for appointment. Saw new restaurant, I might try. I always wondered where that road went. Note to self: Remember not to do that again.
How many times has a driver got lost driving to somewhere new and still goes out without a map or GPS navigation system? How many times has a driver taken the correct route to work?