Finding out how my mind worked couldn't be done by self discovery. Yes it is easy to grind through scoring (drawing out) the logic (for coding) on all the levels of how the mind works and precipitate behavior. For a period (18 years) I did keep a set of drawings and search for someone who could convert them to a clone that would work automatically. The PC was very helpful when it came along. In the 50's and early 60's I had worked by punching cards on an 024 and 026. But I settled for building my mind since it was more convenient. What has happened finally is discovering all the pieces for the puzzle of how to take a person from scratch to expert via building the mind. I did have to repeat the same process I did for my mind as the process I did for scoring expert trading of equities and commodities. In a word there is no way either of these things could be done by selfdiscovery without first getting the tools to do self examination. Fortunately, in completeing these processes I had a lot of help and that is where the tools were actually created. You can see here in ET two major things: There is no discussion among ALL the members or even ANY of the members of how the mind works. Second, no one is posting about any awareness of how their minds work or how they do anything remotely associated with self discovery. The financial standard of what success in trading is, is simply a statement of the whole industry not knowing how a person's mind works. Behavioually, what makes me tick as a trader is trading with sports memory. I should restate that in terms of neuroscience, I know. But ET doesn't deal in vocabulary and processes associated with the brain mind and critical thinking. What makes me tick as a person who knows what is going on is my life long orientation to critical thinking and inquiry. I always knew I had a flat response across the spectrum of the potential to do any thing I wanted without handicap. because I have been doing transference for 50 years, I have been focussed on who can get it and who can't. I know anyone can get it and I also know most people are exploiters of others. Today,a person can easily be assessed to set up the criteria for doing the steps of getting it. This is accomplished by using a mental examination. Once you know how a person's mind operates and doesn't operate you can do prescriptions step by step to take the person to expert trader. Unknowingly, I did these prescriptions by giving them to myself as a consequence of self infliction via critical thinking. So now I function looking at five screens. Two pairs of market things and a screen for fooling around. This screen I am typing to (or dragoning with). My counter in front of the screens is above the three sliding keyboards hooked to three computers via cable connected switchgear. On the counter are logs and a couple of references. No matter what (PVT or SCT) I do not think about what I see but I unconsciously, apparently, am cycling an unconscious routine. If I get out of line (meaning my attention is focused for a moment), I go into a mode of really regularizing my sensory input. My glasses are designed for the focal length to the arc of screens which are adjusted to eliminate muscle usage as I physically pivot CW or CCW. I check my balance sensors, then my eye movements to find what was not regular. I usually lapse back into sports memory trading after this check on what wasn't regular. I always regard the color of the backs of my hands since I know the color for each percent 0-2 going down from 100 to the high 80's. I use a three finger pulse measure so I have a good waveform analysis. I use an Invacare BP meter which is automatic and battery driven. I am at 115 /64 for example and pulse is 55. At 75 my walking is at 15mpm (minutes per mile) and I am at 4 miles per day as routine. Pulse goes to 100 and BP is relatively the same. My calcium build up in 9 identifyable locations of my heart is 4000 where 1550 is borderline emergency. Fortunately, I am an exception which I won't go into. So my mind blood supply is always notable, my blood has the stuff I need and my rate of mental cycling is totally unexpected by standard measures. For whatever reasons, say unintentional, I have used the optimum capability of my brain physiology to put in place cells and replacement cells and biochemical balances and supplies and waste disposal processes to make me unexpectedly different in my SOP. I use CD's on a computer to do tasks that afford me measures of my functionality and indirectly this confirms how my mind works and how it got that way prescriptively over time. My water intake exceeds the recommended slightly (a liq oz for every two pounds of weight. I make sure that in each meal I have the 6 Ayurvedic elements. My energy intake is on the mark and I only eat what is correct and of high quality, no exceptions. Unfortunately, my resperatory system is gradually declining so it is being helped with accupuncture, breathing exercises and inflammatory suppressants. I will be changing the breathing mix as and when required. Building the mind is one thing. Another thing is getting it to operate at its potential. These are two separate endeavors. About half way through my trading career, scientists began to make headway in how the brain and how the mind works. Subsequently, they also discoverd how to make repairs and do enhancements. They also found out when it was too late for some things. Autism is on the rise from 1 in 5000 in the past to, now, 1 in 150 children. But wobblers can now be cured and the blind can see and the deaf can hear. I took the trouble to do more and more research on the books I am writing. The two most affected were the "mind" book and the "effectiveness and efficiency" book. Here is where I had to deeply verify the ORDER of the prescriptions and the EXTENT of each prescription. Unintentionally, I measured children for about 10 years in two settings that turned out to have a bearing on supporting learning to be an expert trader. In one, I tangled with ETS on a mental growth impossibility and in the other I wound up before Congress and gave a lecture series in psychiatry to psychiatry faculty. In both cases, later, science was done that nowadays verifies what actually did happen. The mind is what makes a trader an expert in high velocity money making. The building part is most unusual and by this understanding it is very possible to explain how the large portion of potential traders drive themselves to ultimate failure. Since trading is not difficult (the using part), we see a large class of marginal traders. This group is described as successful traders by the financial industry. They are marginal only, however, by the standards of effectivensss and efficiency. Using the mind as an expert is very different than using it as a marginal trader (the industry's successful trader). Here is where the mind's tolerance applies to one and the mind's sensitivity applies to the other. Drills are the mind's prescriptions. To become an expert the mind's differentiation is developed using a principle of competitive neuroplasticity which leads to sensitivity. This is NOR a linear process of a series of prescriptions. The financial industry's successful traders do not become experts and sensitive. The analagous trip these people take is one of ever increasing tolerance. It is identical to the contemporary porn sequencing over time as seen in the use of the computer porn industry products by PC owners. Over the years I have explained how expert trading is easy. This is because of the mind's great sensitivity after expert is achieved. More is being done with less. At some tipping point this sensitivity appears to become like sports memory trading it is so sensitive from observation to "just doing it", the Nike sports memory slogan. This sensitivity is very very unlike tolerance in the mind's operation. Long marriages are the result of sensitivity. The ET expressed sexual needs and those spoken of in "Traders Monthly blinging" are expressions of tolerance requirements. tolerance is the name for "more and more being required" to achieve the same effect. CW type edge trading engenders fear, anxiety and anger. There is more and more of this as the continuing learning of failure occurs. See the OP's posts. Finally the Lizard Syndrome is learned by the mind with respect to the fear, anger and anxiety and the FREEZING of the body is added to the FREEZING of the mind. You can watch this closing down of the mind in many popular ET posters. They also switch from trading posts to character assassinations of those, who in their minds, depict a success of some kind that they have become mentally isolated from by their mind's machinations.
bah..... i talk about it alot...... but in plain language http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1985476#post1985476
This is what you posted: Its psychological. Check this out: Scenario 1 You are in trade and for some reason you ignore your stop, and began to take on a large loss. One hour before the close, you began to freak out because your trade is now $3,000 against you. But at the last trading hour, mkt begins to rally, and your loss shrinks to $2,500.â¦. Then $2,000, â¦. $1,400.. Finally, at the close, you are only down by $100 ! Scenario 2 You are in a winning trade, you donât adjust your stop⦠u decide to just let the trade run. By 3pm your are up $3,000. Then at the last trading hour, mkt takes a tumble⦠your winnings begin to shrink⦠$2500.â¦.$2000.⦠u refuse to close the trade⦠finally at the close your only up $100. Now, how do you fill at the end of the day for each scenario presented? On the 1ST scenario most people would be happy, not just happy but relieved they didnât have to eat the huge loss. On the 2ND scenario, most would be angry. Angry that they let just a huge win get away. But in actuality, you lost money on the first scenarioâ¦. Yet youâre happy, and the 2nd scenario you had a winning trade, but are angry. The emotions donât match the outcomesâ¦. See how hard it is to be unemotional? Emotions is what can ruin a trader before they even get a start. Itâs the greatest battle one will ever face⦠and one that has to be faced alone. Yet I see so many running to these inter-net gurus for answers.
Thanks for sharing. I started the thread as a joke, thinking the moderator would delete it soon afterwards, but some serious posts have showed up. Amazing.
Your post is gold. Maybe I was vaguely aware of it, but your post has made me realize how trading components fit together just like car components. Some days I concentrate on fixing psychological issues, other days on the method, not realizing they should all fit together.
after I read his books, I feel great: actually just naive. the next morning I threw a dart without any normal thinking or observation, I lost shit. Yes it is! tell a person who is not able to swim and encourage him jump into the sea is kind of murder! maybe some hidden rock just under the water or a shark waiting for his prey if you have experience and strong knowledge on the market, I bet your emotion will be well under control, you clearly know what you are doing so you will be very clam. the key is you need the skills and the knowledge and the experience, if you are not well prepared, like today, crude crashed and the markert boomed, you may just sit there and watch teh market all day, the market keeps climbing, and you are nervous to join.... to an experienced trader, he may just buy the market and put a stop, then trail the market.
Unsurprisingly this thread has related emotions to trading and in particular the effect on your 'mental health' of unsuccessful trades/trading. The interchangable emotions at work here are hope, anxiety and anger. You can eradicate these emotions, or lessen these emotions to negligible effect by knowing exactly what you are doing when trading. These emotions (particularly anger) are greater the greater is the extent to which you do not know what you are doing. Lets just follow that in daytrading mode. You have a set up. It works most of the time. Ok, so it appears. You enter your trade. Soon it shows that its not working this time. Fuck it, you think. Did you put in a stop? You didn't think you needed it. Loss accumulates. You hope that price will turn around and favour the direction of your trade. Price does turn at last and run in the direction of your trade. Anxiety as you see the loss reducing and you want to lift the trade without loss. But that doesn't happen. Anger as price again turns against your trade. OK take this example again. Trade is entered. Price runs in your favour. Hope and anxiety play strongly as you can't decide when to take your profit. You take a profit. The same direction of price continues and you blow your top because you missed most of the profit you could have taken. They are simplistic examples. But the point is you don't really know what you are doing. Uncertainty is your constant campanion when you don't really know what you are doing. Lets consider instead a professional approach. You will have an accurate methodology and you will read your market with that methodology buying the upmoves and selling the downmoves sequentially. In addition you will know the metrics of your market - the order and magnitude of the price gyrations moving along the time axis - and you are tracking where price will be going with your trading model. In such a professional mode certainty attends your use of a market and all that you are doing. Think harmony. Think serenity. Think calm and peace.
I didn't catch your post but the examples in my post I agree are very commonplace for the incomplete trader. I appreciate there are only amateurs at this site but only professional mode and practice captures most of what a market offers each day. That is the repeated theme I'm always suggesting in case there might be a serious player or two who one day, coming through ET, will also make themselves rich from use of the market.