Search results

Yeah, and it is related to any kind of human professional activity, not only trading... Some posts in this thread sound like: "It is impossible to become a successful neuro-surgeon, because I tried to do that for 3 months, my pet rabbit and a few rats died under my scalpel, so I am now sure...

You basically wrote, that losses or profits left on the table do not cause you to feel stress, so you do not have to tolerate it at all. :) And that is true, confidence is able to effectively cope with stress associated with losing trades and other psychological issues of trading. And...

What percentage of people who play golf (or you can substitute it with any other kind of sports) plays it well enough to make a decent living solely by their play? Does it mean kids should not even try to become professional athletes?

I wouldn't trust anyone's signals except my own. :D

Yes, staying focused is one of the key components of successful discretionary trading.

Yeah, don't see the point to criticize you for "after the fact trades", when that was exactly what the chart poster asked everyone to show.

Can you backtest the play of champion athlete or talented musician?

Wasn't that exactly what chart posted asked for?

Beauty of life is that it's fair. You don't need them if you put enough efforts into seriously learning profession of a trader.

IMO, TA is not some "magic indicator". Rather skill set, which is very close to traditional definition of tape reading, but using price, volume or some indicators as tools, instead or in addition to T&S (aka "tape"). I am pretty sure magic indicators do not exist, but even more sure that a...

May be the case with you, but for many people every time they are proven wrong (not only in trading, but in any other area of life as well) is emotional micro-trauma. Internet forums are very illustrative example. Often people, who obviously don't have any money interest in their point of...

Not only then. Many people are very stressed to be wrong, even when money value of their loss means nothing for them. But being proven wrong again and again can be extremely stressful for those who are not used to deal with it as normal part of trading business.

There can also be specially designed trading exercises geared towards development of certain self-control skills. Similar to what M. Douglas described in his books, like you take some system and execute 20 trades in a row flawlessly... There can be many professional training exercises like...

Probably meditation and having religious faith are able to cope with fear and greed based emotions (the fundamental emotions of any trader/investor). Especially meditation, which includes visualization of correct trading behaviour, to make it "imprinted" into your subconsciousness. But...

Thank you for such a positive feedback, Mark. It turned this way, that I became a trader while being a psychologist and this combo makes me analyze all trading actions and reactions from the point of view of a shrink. :) So all conclusions are based on real life experience...

Our temperament, most of instincts and emotions cannot be entirely removed or completely changed, they are bricks of which our personality is built. But we can learn to control emotions, cut negative influences of them and develop those, which lead to positive influence on our trading.

Ya, natural instincts are what does not let the most trade profitably. :) Control over your emotions while trading is probably even harder task than developing and using a decent strategy.

Also, if whatever activity makes you blow up (even demo) account in just one day, that's one big red flag meaning that something is wrong with your risk management.

You should have a strategy with a set of well-defined rules, which would not let you do something wrong and simply repeat your trades as they appear over and over again.

I don't get it, what is the bottom line profit in pips for strategy in total? And if you trade so well, why question your day trading? Can't download file, something is wrong with how it's attached.