Perfectionists tend to look for Holy Grails and exact tops/bottoms. Perfectionists are so self-confident that often they leverage, and hold to losing trades forever, to avoid having to admit they were wrong.
To use a sports analogy to underscore your point, in basketball there are shooters and there are scorers. Shooters sometimes fall in love with their shot and look to shoot when they are allowed to shoot the shot they want. Scorers on the other hand are usually good shots but they are looking to score at all times, and sometimes they score ugly and get baskets at garbage time. Perfectionists often get lost in the process, pure traders are looking at what the bottom line was at the end of the trading day not spending too much time obssessing if they took their profits pretty or ugly.
agree, the perfect setup does not exist, bottom line is consistency, and by that i mean regular money falling in your pocket.
Perfectionists can have roller-coaster profitability as a result of making money and giving it back with large losses. They tend to overlook set-ups that are less than perfect. They "lose" time and opportunity from indecision.
What can a losing trader do to transform himself into a winning trader? A losing trader can do little to transform himself into a winning trader. A losing trader is not going to want to transform himself. That's the kind of thing winning traders do. -Ed Seykota (Markets Wizards by Jack D. Schwager) ___________________________________________ -Stephen
Ed S was always full of sound bite ... (rhymes with) For the person who asked "how does a perfectionist stop it causing losses" you need to reframe your perfectionism. Define perfection as ... 60% of entries by the system, correct stop & target in 70% of the time, trade managed exactly to the system 60% of the time. When you can make the numbers (slack them off slightly if you can't) for a week then make the ones you're hitting 10% harder. Hitting the number = PERFECT. Whenever you hit one of the numbers --- celebrate
__________________________________________________ I don't know who said it first, but the quote: "The only thing worse than being wrong is staying wrong." ...may be a better quote for the poster. A winning trader cares primarily about making money. Holding on to a losing trade because one is so sure one is right indicates pride. Don't let self-pride, self-confidence, arrogance, self-regard, self-respect, dignity, self-admiration, vainglory, self-glorification, or whatever word you're comfortable with, get in the way. P.S. I got those synonyms at the site below. Sometimes when dealing with psychology, a certain world might click with the individual, while 10 others won't. http://thesaurus.reference.com/ -Stephen
actually ... if a trader focusses on making money ... thats another way of screwing up for most. a winning trader cares about executing his tested and documented system/strategy/method/trade plan as well as he can. he or she knows that if they do that then over time they will make money. its like a shop owner .. you focus on giving good service .. not trying to suck dollars from this customer ... if you want to make money in the long term. Focus perfectionism on gradually improving your process ... a winning formula.