Quote from Swan Noir:
db, not sure if I get what Seykota is trying to say. Surely very few winning traders started with profits. Are you using the quote to talk about guys that simply think like losers and that is tough or impossible to change?
I struggled for a long time before I had a clue. I look back on things I believed in horror and am sure I am still missing many pieces to the overall puzzle even though I'm making some money. At least now I know there is a sailboat and it's a light color! I say some money because it's still small and I'm now strugling with increasing size. It's easy to think you'll be as steady trading a 5 lot as a 1 lot but when reality intrudes just like Tampa (I like his candid voice) it's pretty easy to cash earlier than your plan calls for. And not following your plan is the snowball that will eventually lead to the avalanch. I like this thread as well as his.
I don't know you but I'm aware of you from the PA Strategies Fail thread and you asked a serious question seriously so I'll respect that.
The psychology of failure has fascinated me for years. These people are everywhere, not just online forums, and certainly not just online trading forums. They have a certain attitude toward life, and while this is not the place to get into it in any detail, or at all, it helps to understand that a great many people, for whatever reason, want to fail. They seek it out, they embrace it, they are actually troubled by success. Addicts of whatever sort are like this. But while many addicts inevitably slide back into the morass, many will pull themselves out and stay out.
A trader who is losing is not necessarily a loser. He may very well be a winner who is not yet ripe. The losing trader will do much the same thing as the losing businessman or the losing apprentice or the losing student or the losing player of whatever sport who wants to be a winner. He will read, study, work, train, do whatever is necessary to transform himself into a winning whatever it is. The loser won't do any of this. He will instead look for any excuse, any rationalization to avoid assuming the responsibility for his own failures. It's always somebody or something else's fault, never his. When it comes to trading, he won't even bother to put together a trading plan, or at least one which is thoroughly tested and consistently profitable. If he did that, he'd have to assume some responsibility. How much better to just throw a big bunch of it against the wall and see what sticks. And if nothing does, it's not his fault.
You see this in trading forums all the time, failed traders looking for someone to copy, someone to follow. But that someone has to have the bona fides or else why bother? Which is why you see so many demands for "proof" that the individual to be copied/followed has the goods. If after all they don't, why risk following them? But then if one had his own consistently profitable trading plan, why would he bother looking for somebody to follow in the first place? The answer, of course, is that he doesn't have one. That would involve assuming responsibility. And the loser of whatever sort will avoid assuming responsibility at all costs. To do so would be intolerable.
So beginners (and traders who still aren't making a living at it even though they've been "trading" for years are still beginners) will buy more software, attend another course, buy another DVD, read more books, invest in ever-more elaborate trading stations, go to any lengths to avoid going inside and finding the route to the success that eludes them (which it does quite easily because they really aren't looking for it in the first place). How much easier to focus outside the self and search for the answers "out there".
But the winner knows that the answers aren't "out there". They are within. And every day is a search for them. What did I do? Why did I do it? Was what I did part of my plan? Is my plan working? If it isn't working, what can I do to improve it? And he'll replay the day to see if he did in fact trade well -- i.e., followed his plan -- or if he allowed his ego to intrude and throw him off track. A loser won't do any of this. He'll just blame the market makers or the "big boys" or those Albanians or currency fluctuations or anything but his own lack of preparation and poor execution.
You appear not to be a loser or else you wouldn't even be thinking these things. I hope this thread will be helpful to you. But whether it is or not, I suspect you'll come out the other side just fine.
