Question to trader who really trade?

momotrdr · Dec 9, 2002

WD-

I think that whatever "Homework" or after-market studying
you do to mentally prepare yourself for the next day is
important. Moreover, as you stated, not so much so for the
retaining of the actual material studied, but moreso, for the
benefit of the mental exercise itself.

I say this to you now after about 1.5 years of going through
those same motions. However, in the last 6-months of my trading
career I have not bothered to study or even look at any market
information once the end of the trading session. Which for me
ends @ 1:00pm PST. I have found that not forming opinions or bias into my head by overstudying the previous session or considering too much the lines of supp. or resist. that were drawn, has resulted in my trading being more consistent
and more importantly more profitable.

At first you might think that I am in fact contraindicating my first
advise to you. However, this is not so. More specifically to the point is that maybe in fact "Market" information needn't be the actual material you go over in order to feel that you've done your "Homework" and therefore have attained that mental state
of preparedness so sought after.

Make sense?

Hopefully so, but maybe not. I could have stared at one too many tick bar charts!

Basically, look for a way to do an information dump of the previous session, in order to start fresh each morning and ready
to make new decisions based on what market is doing for the here and now.

all the best in your trading-

momo

Quote from WDGann:

I was chatting with a friend a while ago and we got into a debate why traders lose and why traders win.

We agreed that it's not about the edge the person has. I trade Gann with a system signal and he trades using LBR's Street Smart's material. Some people try to use Gann but they can't and some claim LBR's material is not viable.

We had came to a point that:

1. It doesn't matter what kind of edge or technique you use. It's a matter of getting better at using something. For me it's Gann, for him it's other technical analysis. We have a deeper, realistic, and practical understand of what and how we use it.

2. Knowledge and Experience leads to Discipline. Discipline leads to Confidence. Confidence leads to Persistance. Persistance leads to Comfortability. When I mean comfortability, I don't mean just slacking and easy. We are used to keeping are cool and we just do it without much(not none) strain.

3. There's a groove. Groove... Mojo... it's an attitude or a mental state of flow that you get when you are on the roll. It's the time when every trade turns out well. We try to intentionally bring our minds to that state. Some of the ways we do that is listening to music, stretching, reading particular books, meditation, talking to other traders with the groove, etc. etc..

4. Doing homework. After the market closes we do homeworks. Actually when the market starts it doesn't really matter whether I did or not (like today... TS broke down). Still, there is a peace of mind I have when I am more prepared. The fact that I'm doing the homework is more important than the information derived from it.

---------------------

Well, there are some of the things we came up with. I was wondering if there are other psychological points that separate us from profitable and not. It's a very thin line between it but it'll be nice to hear from other profitable traders about this matter and some extra things you do intentionally bring you there.

I think it will help aspiring traders and also profitable traders too.
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harrytrader · Dec 12, 2002

I totally agree and in fact study I read shows that undercapitalisation is the first reason of failure. And implicitly the novice trader is not conscious of that, but this will translate into fear and lack of discipline. So I think that for some traders the psychological reason has a more profund cause. I don't think all people don't stuck with a system only because they lack of discipline intrinseqly, but because they are afraid of the drawdown and they are afraid of that because they are undercapitalised although they are not directly concious of that.

Quote from praetorian2:

My opinion is that most traders fail because they are undercapitalized. I have seen many people who give up when they get very near to the breakeven point b/c they have nothing left for the final push to breakeven.

Second largest reason is just that most traders come into the game without any real knowlege of how they will trade or what system they'll use. Buying something in motion and hoping it stays in motion is not enough to make you profitable in the long term.

Third largest reason is that someone doesn't follow his system, but dabbles in other systems that seem hot at the moment. If a system has had good results in the most recent time period, most likely, it's period of outperformance is just about over. Chasing what's hot is almost doomed to failure.

Fourth, most people think that trading is something you can do for 20 minutes a week. I know a lot of very profitable traders. Most of them are online and doing research at 3am on a saturday night. In fact, I often drop ideas on them at around that time. This is the reason for their success. They are a slave to their trading. If you don't intend to be that dedicated, just write a check to me. It will save me the commission costs. Trading isn't an effortless get rich plan.

The final reason is just sheer stupidity. Lets face it, 95% of all traders fail. I'd say that about 95% of the population is completely retarded. I think there's a similarity in the two statistics. Some people just lack the simple intelligence to trade profitably. Somehow most of these people seem to make it onto CNBC despite their best efforts to squander the retirement money entrusted to them.
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Question to trader who really trade?

momotrdr

harrytrader