How should a trader feel about losses? Is a trader supposed to love losses? The worst aspect of losing is that it tends to create pessimism. Traders should feel bad when they lose money only if they fought the market trend, or violated their own trading strategies. The best traders have a healthy "so what, big deal!" attitude that maintains a sense of humor about losses. There is no reason to feel bad about losses, if the trading discipline was correctly used. On the other hand, there is no reason to learn to love them either. Analyze losses, then let them go, move on, that's the best thing to do. Understanding man's relationship to time is one of life's most important challenges. When man becomes free of time's constraints, he lives life to the fullest and achieves goals on his own terms. Pessimism traps traders in the past, destroys their present and robs them of the future. Imagine a world without time where the thought of death is not a finality of existence. If money were not the reason for your work related behavior, then who are you? Where are you and what are you doing? Who shares this existence with you? In the philosophical sense, man creates himself and his existence, when he takes responsibility for his actions and his time. Think how any individuals create order, structure and discipline in their lives. How will you allow a trading loss today affect your life five years from today? Thinking the wrong way can become self-fulfilling. The trouble with self-fulfillment is that many people have a self-destructive streak. Accident-prone drivers keep destroying their cars, and self-destructive traders keep destroying their accounts. Markets offer unlimited opportunities for self-sabotage, as well as for self-fulfillment. Acting out your internal conflicts in the marketplace is a very expensive proposition. Traders who are not at peace with themselves often try to fulfill their contradictory wishes in the market. If you do not know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere you never wanted to be. Joe Ross
Trading Educators Inc |
