Psychology is BS for most of you, it's about skills

It is true that if you do not have an accurate and reliable methodology to deploy then any psychological ingredients that assist or hinder successful trading are irrelevant. Hence it follows that where the pyschology forum is inhabited, as it almost always is, by those who have psychological barriers in trading, these are those that do not have the necessary certainty in their trading modus operandi to allay or to remove the pyschological problems that apparently bedevil them.

So in short the extent to which there is uncertainty in your trading MO is the extent to which you can or will suffer psychological problems. Your mind is thus reflecting the doubt your MO warrants.

If you devise or adopt a methodology where you can depend on its reliability and accuracy for successful trading then you should not have any psychological gremlins plaguing you. When I use the description reliable and accurate I mean very high probability; this is where your signalling system has very very few false 'reads' and if false you have the next set of signals to correct you. So in effect you don't actually have any false signalling; you merely have signalling which on a very few occasions is quickly overtaken by counter signalling. For example a buy signal is superseded by a sell signal.

Then take the above and deploy it, where it belongs, in a liquid and usually volatile market (eg ES,YM,CL) where you are buying the upmoves and selling the downmoves sequentially.

 

Great points. Most of the posters seem to agree that you need both skills and psychological control.

So... getting back to my original question:

1. At what point can you acclaim that you have the necessary skills to consider psychology as an option?

2. I can imagine people saying, "When you have an edge." as an extension to Q1..... Markets always change regardless of systematic or discretionary trading. So how is perceptiveness and psychology related? Isn't perception more important... more-so isn't all this conclusion about psychology, actually about perception (alertness towards perception is one thing... psychology "control" is another...)?

3. Trade management may... be... the key. But in reality "Risk management" is a protective delay for you to realize that your so-called "edge" sucks. You need to be "in-sync" with the market to make money. So let's keep that out of the picture...

Though... RISK is very important in this business... more than anything... so...

What is risk? How is that applicable to psychology? Are you as a trader, a risk of it own? There are great discretionary traders and I personally do fairly well trading discretionary... so this won't be the case (for me... at least)....

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INMO and FWIW


1.) Don’t know because psychology is a fully integrated part of my trading skills

2.) Having the proper psychology makeup, among other things, allows me to see (perceive) the market for what it is, not what I want, wish or hope it to be

3.) To me risk is bungee jumping, sky diving – Trading is not risky – a trade either makes money or loses money. And I have complete control of just how much a trade loses (slippage not withstanding of course)

4.) Yes on occasion I’ve run red lights – stone sober.

4a.) Not sure I can answer the difference between an undisciplined trader and a red light runner – because I would first ask what’s the difference between an undisciplined trader and anyone incurring any infraction of any law, rule, regulation, or guideline

5.) If nothing I am human – I am always at risk – of being a risk – to my successful trading - But I know this and do a preflight check every morning



I think I have answered all your questions Sir


Regards
Redneck