Denise.. mmm. Remembering when Bond meets Dr Goodyear for the first time. "A woman," says Bond with inimitable Roger Moore innuendo. "Your powers of observation do you credit, Mr Bond," she retorts icily. (Moonraker)
I may have seen this on ET and it may not be that relevant, but I found it interesting: 4 types of FEAR 1. Fear of losing money 2. Fear of being wrong 3. Fear of being left out 4. Fear of leaving way too much on the table. Boy do these 4 scenarios really cloud my judgement sometimes. Steve
brilliant! i look forward to reading all the articles... most articulate look at the intuitive process i've ever seen bravo surf!
Steve, this talks right to me -- it is so relevant. I am sure most will see their own fears manifesting in these 4 forms. I agree with Hype - a mechanical system is the best way for the trader to take much of the psychology out of the picture. You would have to be clinically dead for it all to be removed homey. Admit that much - and I will support that your contribution was indeed germane.
this is not how i operate now, but how many newbs will relate to this: when you have a winning position, you tend not to close it until it is at break even again, or worse, a loser. when you have a losing position, you tend to close it when it comes back to even, or is a huge loss.
...I was perfectly serious about not experiencing fear while in a trade. Statistically significant optimized stops and takes are precalculated, so all I have to do is make sure the connection is running and be aware of when the signals will occur. Since I trade mornings only, and in LA, I have a hard time staying awake. However, I sweat bullets on the weekend rerunning reoptimizations, scared witless that the edges being traded are fading or were only random to begin with. If the optimization period starts and ends with a drawdown, the uncertainty and lack of faith are very palpable. The real anxiety is that the easy money flow will end and that the creativity which found the edges in the first place will dry up.
I understand what you're saying, but you seem to be bundling several different types of fear, and that can make addressing it/them and managing it/them more difficult. Losing one's self-confidence (fear of not being able to successfully complete the task) does not push quite the same buttons as fear of losing money, which in turn does not push quite the same buttons as fear of being wrong. There is also the factor of being just plain tired and not looking forward to having to re-adjust what had been a winning strategy. This can be confused with fear, or fear can be allowed to become a component. Having little triggers or markers or flags that remind one to be self-aware can at least put everything in its proper place so that it can be analyzed and hopefully put to rest.
hypostomus- It seem to me you need to deal with what you would do if you could not trade anymore. Perhaps you need to make a plan to save your capital. Put some into alternative investments. Save for a busines. Or if it fear of losing a hobby buy a boat. That way when its over who cares. There are lots of things to do. And if you are making unusual amounts of money ---save it.
personal honesty is a powerful edge. i'm not clinically trained, but from what i've read and experienced it seems clear that the subconscious does not understand deception. it simply doesn't speak the language. end result being individuals who are not honest with themselves in their assessments are unable to constructively dialogue with their subconscious. the level of communication is more like a continuum than an on/off switch imho, w/ zero being oblivious and 100 being perfect communion with one's inner self. the more we cultivate this connection, the more ability we have to control our emotions at will and tap into them as a constructive energy source. we also gain greater and greater access to sublevel input, enabling the trader to do more with the information he or she is processing. but the reason this process is so powerful is because the personal honesty caveat makes it a two way street. simply put, if you are in the habit of fooling yourself or lying to yourself, your subconscious will know and understand that, and will act accordingly by discounting or short circuiting your conscious commands. in this case, the judgment process is wholly internal. if you are in the habit of deceiving yourself regularly, then you ARE a deceiver in your own eyes- regardless of what you say or believe on a conscious level- and your own personal guidance system will register as such. again this is a matter of internal assessment rather than objective truth... but objective truth plays a role just the same, because at some point an inability to access perceived objective truth could lead to a "judgment not trustworthy" feedback loop. this is why some people appear incredibly 'aligned' while most do not- in accepting reality as fully as they can and striving to attain the greatest degree of personal honesty possible, they open a dialogue with their subconscious and are thus internally united on levels most cannot attain due to conflict. (deluded people can move with great purpose as well, but that's a different thing imho-in which they are being driven and herded by some impetus so powerful it drives out contemplation and eventually drives them to destruction, or they snap out of it one day and feel as if they'd been possessed.) for this reason i've always been skeptical of the tony robbins/napoleon hill "what the mind can conceive, the will can achieve" type stuff. while there is an element of truth in such sentiments, the typical temptation is to force feed your mind stuff that it is not prepared to believe, food that it does not want to eat. and while the conscious level is saying "yeah fool me, fool me!" the subconscious is going "yikes, i've got to protect this guy from himself." once you have a dialogue, though, it's amazing- conscious and subconscious can call truce and stop playing tricks on each other. no more fears you don't understand (or at least a lot fewer instances of fears you don't understand). no more seeing your emotions as a treacherous deceiver. you still have fear- but only when there is good reason to have fear. it becomes a precise navigational instrument rather than a blanket thrown over your head. as i think i mentioned in an old old thread, you have to climb the mountain yourself- you can't take a helicopter to the top. this means confronting all your areas of personal dishonesty, no matter how painful - and not just once, but on a continual basis - if you want to have access to the raw power that being fully aligned via emotions and the subconscious can deliver. the greater your ability to sense conflict in yourself and others, the closer you will move to a one to one correspondence with reality. "waking up from the dream" is a lifelong journey, but well worth it- reality is so much more glorious. careful though- a journey through one's inner depths is not for the faint of heart.
Mark Douglas explores this subject in The Disciplined Trader in the context of how one's belief systems affect one's trading performance. On the surface of it, one would think that his beliefs have little to do with market reality, but they play a much more important role than one might suspect.