psychology
Expecting to lose – the sleep test
Nobody likes to lose – I can safely say. It’s been hardwired in us as part of the survival instinct, that we need to win. Financial trading is a very different ‘game’. You have to expect to lose, in order to win. This is not to say that we haveRead More
Change takes time
Most trainers talk about discipline. In fact they over-emphasise discipline so much that it becomes a ‘pain’. But there is another aspect to discipline which involves pain. Remember ‘No pain, no gain’? As a noob you really don’t appreciate that much what this ‘discipline’ is about. Well, the markets inflictRead More
The two most important things in trading
It takes some time for the two most important things in trading to hit home. It’s easy to understand the words, but the meaning and importance come later. Limiting loss with sensible stop-losses is of the utmost priority. With a 60 – 80% loss rate which is not unusual, that’sRead More
Separating missions, strategies, methods and goals.
In trading circles many new and seasoned traders use the words (or similar): strategy, method, targets, goals. But what do they actually mean? How do they all fit together? How are they organised? (see mindmap below). In this post I take the concepts apart and put them back into someRead More
Synthesis
What do I mean by ‘synthesis’? It’s about putting things together. Jeeeez – is that such a big word? So the pic below represents the result of synthesis. Synthesis of what? The method of binary options and harmonic trading principles. Huh? With Binary Options you only need price to stay away fromRead More
What people want – and why they won’t get it.
The more I study the true experts at financial trading the more I discover some common themes: 1.They struggled initially. 2.They failed repeatedly. 3.They never gave up. 4. They learned from painful mistakes. 5. They put in crazy hours over many years training their brains. 6. In summary they sharedRead More
Skill acquisition and training
It has been on my mind for some time, how new traders develop in their acquisition of skill. There are several different models out there on the net, not specific to traders but quite applicable. In the diagram below I present the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition (adapted from Wikipedia)Read More
The so-called Fearless State
Mark Douglas is commonly credited for coining the term ‘the fearless state’ in his book Trading in the Zone. Lots of other people have probably talked about this state of mind. But what is it exactly? I explore but I disagree with some of what he has said – orRead More
Totally sickened
I’m totally sickened by the fact that many so-called expert traders (self-proclaimed) have monetised their various websites by charging a fee for memberships or selling courses etc. I do not mean attracting income from advertising of independent sources. Some sites advertise and take a cut from advertisers if members signRead More