Please... this is psychobabble. If I have a condition such as a brain tumor, then I'm going to take the medication to shrink it. I'll take Western medicine over that Far East bullshit any day to treat my condition so I can move on. It's far preferable to having needles sticking out of my ass every other Thursday.
I have only read to your post in this thread. Your comments really are on the mark. I was amazed thar neisykay did not pick up on the fallacy of hypostomus's comment on boredom. He is so unaware of trading possibilities and she fails to classify his "emotions" in the "trouble" column. While I do not use "edges' but instead use SCT, I flly agree with you that skill replaces emotions. Skill is hard to acquire but it does come from reason and well done cognitive experience. I will read the rest of this if I get a break.
...you have been generous in the past in commenting on what you considered to be errors in my posts. Would you be so kind as to elaborate on what you mean by "unaware of trading possibilities"? Specifically, if you were trading NQ this morning, did you take more than 13.5 points per contract in the first hour? Thanks, and it is good to see you posting again after some absence.
market surfer- I know about two years ago some top trading gurus and their kin were very high on clearing. I was like what the hell is clearing. Never really got the answer. Brought it up on this site and got some links to other sites. Never found out really--- what the process is, only what it is advertised to do. Now that I read my post perhaps you are right marketsurfer maybe it is based in scientology. Grob- I appreciate your comment. What is SCT?
I think the whole greed and fear (very subjective expressions) issue has been address by the psychologist, Daniel Kahneman,nobel prize winner for economicis this year, . trading is analogy of a "optical illusion" of our brain in dealing with probabilities, greed and fear that we experience is basically the byproduct of the framing effect, our heuristic bias in "framing" winners and losers. try to do a search on prospect theory or behavior finance,although he did not make explict comments on the relationship between trading and his theory, the connection is obvious. forget the rest of the psychobabble, psychoanaysis( I don't know anything about the its modern version, so I won't comment on it) , the subconsious, blah blah blah. All these terminology are very open to interpretation and unscientific.
anybody remember the 'all things scottish' skit on saturday night live? IF IT'S NOT SCIENTIFIC, IT'S CRAP! (read with thick scottish accent) let's just take it all the way home: unless someone with a phd has done double blind tests and submitted research results to a journal in triplicate, don't bother worrying your pretty little head over the subject. and while you're at it, start buying all of your food prechewed. after all, what's the point of chewing it yourself?
Time to shut up some paper traders... (well, most of them shut up when darkhorse came with the posts) Conclusion first... It's choice. Trading decisions are purely non-emotional. But the emotions come in with the lack of confidence in the basis of the decisions you make like: Will this trade win? Which leads to emotions or opinions like: Will the market move up or down depending on the pre-determined bias you are holding... Can this market go higher or lower... etc. etc. Just do it - Nike ... is the key to successful trading mentality. But this can be achieved only through cumulative experiences like what Kant (or was it Hume) says.... Simple stuff... weak mind will stay a weak mind.... But the mind always grows when you choose to grow it. 95% in ET aka paper traders are concentrating on the wrong direction. But they choose to move a certain direction because the basis of the direction they are concentrating is an individual compromise of what they percieve their character should be or is. Which is all a choice like what Dr. Phil talks about all the time. So... it's all about being honest with who you are, first... Then being a flexible person ( it's not flexible when you are trying, willing, or thinking to be but just being flexible )... Another point is you become emotional with your trades because you care. It's ironic that the more passion you have towards trading, the more pitfall are offered like the Zen saying, " Everything should be done effortless." It's a matter of how you focus your passion where you don't affect your trading. Again, simply action. Final point would be, all trading psychology seminars, books, articles, gurus, and etc. are BS. It's either you are or you are not... Well, just my 2 cents.
Another Zen saying, "The more you think, the more you are away from the truth." (well, there's several intonations of "think" in Japanese, it's between worry, think, look and seek put together... Japanese language is very colorful with these mental expressions )