I agree that a positive mind-set is great. Right now, at 3:30 AM Eastern Standard Time, I am up against one of the greatest programming challenges of my life. I am currently stumped on how to do something. When I get stumped in life, I usually stop what I'm doing and go for a walk. Focusing too deeply on any specific problem generally leads me to over-analyze a situation and my thought processes begin to breakdown and loop in an endless defeatist circle. However, if I start walking around and clear my mind, 95% of the time I'll have a MOE. What is MOE you ask? A MOE is a "moment of enlightenment." This is that common "Ah-ha!" experience. When you try to take a complex-system and program it, it becomes easy to get overwhelmed with the complexity of the system as a whole. The only thing you can do is breakdown the system into sub-components or "modules" and then link it all together like legos. ----------------------- I see a lot of posts on this board that say, "Trading is a mirror, etc." All of this, to me, is purely psychobabble and worthless. Why is it worthless? Because it is vague, undefined and non-applicable. If I went to work tomorrow and taught a new golfer how to golf by saying, "Golf is the essence of a good swing and the exclusion of a bad swing." -- The guy would leave, demand his money back and never come back again. It is pure horse-shit. Like anything else in life, if you want to get good at something, you have to work your ass off. Those sayings can be appreciated AFTER you learn how to be successful at what you are doing and not before. Trading and Golf are very similar. There is a basic concept of a correct and fundamental "modern golf swing." However, you will see guys out on the tour that have very different swings. What does this tell you? It tells you that what works for one person will not work for another -- one man's method to a million is another man's certainty to bankruptcy. "Yada yada yada ..." -- BUT, in the end, you've got to do your own thing and find your way. You're going to encounter a lot of people in your life who will make every attempt to shoot you down or tell you it can't be done. I have countless stories of Tiger Woods suffering from that on a daily basis as a kid / young adult player. Put yourself outside the circle of bullshit, psychobabble and endless river of "this is how you do it" systems and go take a walk, clear your mind and start from scratch. Sometimes we have to start from scratch. That doesn't mean starting at the very beginning, it means starting at a better one. Don't let people on this board tell you anything that you feel otherwise different about. Many people here are impressionable people and many people here are outright assholes. Just do your own thing and filter out the extraneous.
Great post.....but I dont think you understand some of this phsycobable....for example; "Trading is a mirror of you" is not worthless phsycobable and when you understand that you can definitely affect your outcome by getting in ur own way then u will aprreciate those statements........I for one think the trader can cause more harm to himself than the market or other traders can cause.....get me point...... p.s. "Golf is the essence of a good swing and the exclusion of a bad swing." .......I have to disagree with you, I think this is great advice.....
aphie, In some ways I agree with you. Having a great attitude is really not too much help if you have a lousy methodology. Same with golf, good attitude, poor swing mechanics, you are no where. What happens though is you tend to reach a point where you have the fundamentals down and it becomes a question of executing under the gun. Then you begin to notice a pattern. Maybe you hold losers too long, you cut winners too quickly, you can get your equity to a point but always hit a drwadown when you try to get beyond that. That's where the psychobabble comes in. A lot of it is nonsense , taught by people who can't trade but would like to be paid to tell you how to do it. But I believe there are valuable insights to be gained. Plenty of top tour pro's have psychologists working withthem as well. Any edge helps.
It can also be said that a great methodolgy with poor attitude/discipline may not get you far..... P.S. Let me know when you run out of them Cubanas
The AH-HA experience is correct. It is finding a path of going from frustration to one of understanding. There are plenty of people who are frustrated and just give up. Those that search themselves soon have understanding. Robert
Great Post Aphexcoil! Thanks for correcting the opinions of others with your facts. P.S. I believe myself to be one of the impressionable assholes who relies on others to think for me. Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated. By the way, which group do you belong to? May Your Trading Journey Be Lit By All Green Candles, Rogue Trader
I probably posted something similar to this a few weeks or months ago, I dont really remember, but I said that golf and trading can only become the proverbial "90% mental" once you have mastered the mechanics of the game...Unless you have a fluid understanding of the swing beginning with the alignment, set-up, the release, etc, etc what good is that statement that is always thrown out there that golf is "90% mental"...It certainly is for any guys who are scratch or better, to an extent...But I would also say that the Top 50 Players in the world are also better mechanically than guys who are still trying to make it thru the Q school...The differences in their game might be subtle, it might be the slightest difference in strokes per round, but that small edge adds up over the course of an entire year on the PGA Tour...Look next time at Scoring Average on the Tour Stats and notice how the slightest difference translates into a difference of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year...A guy with maybe two tents of a point difference has an exemption while the other guy is back at the Tour School... But this is the difference at the highest level...At the bottom it is enormous...I guess it also kind of relates to maxing out a trading strategy...Kind of like the Law of Diminishing Returns...you hit the ceiling and then its all about "tweaking" and fine tuning...just like Phil and Vijay and Tiger hitting fades, draws, etc, etc on the range after the round...Each shot looks the same to the untrained eye, but for these guys they can sense every slight difference...
Great post Vulture Just a matter of perception -- all you have to do to see that is look at the traders on this board that discount the "psycho" talk the most... It only sounds like jibber-jabber because of where they are standing, kinda like the "mirror" analogy once again PEACE Vulture, Commisso