Quote from Redneck trader:
How do you get someone to overcome the internal (psychological) road blocks â so they take the appropriate actions regardless of what their thoughts are telling them? (taking all signals, and exiting all stop losses immediately â come to mind)
Short of sitting there and doing the actual trading for someone â I do not know how one person can âforceâ another to trade properly, orâ¦.
RN
Truly most distinguished brother Red of consistently well thought out posts steeped in and born out of a bottomless pool of luculent trading gems, if I may try to throw out an answer to your question...
How 'bout this, someone lucks into a friend of a friend or has a mentor assigned to them when they join their prop and learns a trading strategy that makes it extremely difficult for even the most psychologically troubled or blocked to not follow the rules close enough to make at least 4 loaves of bread per month? I am a firm believer that this trading game is predominantly psychological with the correlation increasing with the amount of factors left to the discretion of the trader. However, the more confidence the trader has in the probabilities of said dark gray box system they may have learned, the more likely it is to help even the most neurotic trader break through whatever would have been inhibiting their success. Perhaps, through trading, they will work through their neuroses. Yeah, that's it, take up trading as a path to self-actualization and enlightenment.
OK, my argument is disintegrating, still, I know you get the point.
Even in some philosophies/religions, like Buddhism, there are those schools that say you merely go and ardently listen to a "realized" teacher (like Oliver Velez, perhaps)and through their grace, you will quickly advance along the PATH and then there are schools that say no one, not even the Buddha/Buffet himself, could give you enlightenment and you must walk the path alone as it is only this illusory YOU that keeps you from your goalless goal. Still, whilst some may figure it out by themselves, most everyone needs a little (or enormous)light somewhere in the distance to get them walking in the right direction and as all is impermanent, even the most seasoned traders need the light or maybe just a perpetually curious mind, to constantly adapt.
In support of your "force another to trade"argument, I have sat with a trading savage of the 7 figure per year order for weeks on end, asked heaps of questions to which he was gracious enough to throw me detailed answers and after it all, I could most unequivocally NOT do anything that he was doing. I think my psychology prevented it or put another way, it just wasn't a style that worked for me. Even with him calling what he was doing, either my opinions got in the way or more, I wanted to know exactly WHY I was taking this or that trade so that I could actually use it when I got back to my own wee trading closet and in the fray of the day, I surely wasn't going to ask. Truthfully, outside of a totally automated system, the trader still has to push the execute button when the "IF>>THEN" signal comes or if a complete slacker, may not be aware of the signal so still many ways to thwart any near perfect trading system.
Just like 99% of the stuff out there on any subject, I reckon it is just repackaged second hand knowledge. In this case, I just took your words and painted them in the colors of cosmic crap
BigArrow, that is what i came on ET for, to find people to bounce trading ideas off of. Outside of and no doubt far superior to ET, it seems as if trading in some prop offices could provide just what you speak of regarding interchange of trading ideas, etc. Failing that, even remote trading with a group connected through IMs or better, skype, may also work.
