Why traders keep trading after blowing-up 50%+ of their account?

Discussion in 'Psychology' started by crgarcia, May 7, 2009.

  1. ER9

    ER9

    because they want to become rich and are to inexperienced, ignorant, blinded by ambition or stuborn to stop trading.

    the lure of the potential riches and/or the ego is enough to wreck some people before they even get the chance to succeed.

    the one fatal potential of this game is how quickly money can be lost. inexperienced traders simply cant or wont comprehend this until it is too late. sometimes experienced traders...
     
    #21     May 16, 2009
  2. Since you obviously don't/can't trade why do you keep starting these rediculous threads on this site?

    e pollo
     
    #22     May 16, 2009
  3. From NMW p 133:
    "When behavioral psychologists have compared the relative addictiveness of various reinforcement schedules, they found that intermittent reinforcement - - positive and negative dispensed randomly (for example, the rat doesn't know whether it will get pleasure or pain when it hits the bar) - - is the most addictive alternative of all, more addictive than positive reinforcement only. Intermittent reinforcement describes the experience of the compulsive gambler as well as the futures trader. The difference is, just perhaps, the trader can make money. However, as with most of the "affective" aspects of commodity trading, its addictiveness constantly threatens ruin. Addictiveness is the reason why so many players who make fortunes leave the game broke."
     
    #23     May 16, 2009
  4. And if that's not enough:

    "It is a fact that our brain tends to go for the superficial clues when it comes to risk and probability, these clues being largely determined by what emotions they elicit or the ease with which they come to mind. In addition to such problems with the perception of risk, it is also a scientific fact, and a shocking one, that both risk detection and risk avoidance are not mediated in the "thinking" part of the brain but largely in the emotional one. The consequences are not trivial. It means that rational thinking has little, very little, to do with risk avoidance. Much of what rational thinking seems to do is rationalize one's actions by fitting some logic to them."

    Nasim Taleb "Fooled By Randomness", p. 38
     
    #24     May 17, 2009