What's Your Biggest Obstacle?

From what I have seen of ET (not talking about this thread btw) a major obstacle to struggling traders is a lack of common sense and being able to look at trading for what it is really is in simple terms and not what they read in a book.
 
Quote from Big Money:

Doug,

The biggest obstacle to success for traders is themselves without question. No other business punishes those who lose their cool or make what are seemingly minor mistakes in other areas of their lives as quickly as trading does. With great possible rewards, comes great responsibility. Markets provide tremendous freedom and with that freedom they cannot protect people from themselves (nor should they IMHO). There is the rub. Denial and the blame game don’t work in trading over the long run whereas you can get away with it in many aspects of normal life and employment.

Most people in all activities of life know what they SHOULD do most of the time. Everyone on some level knows how to lose weight. They know that they shouldn’t smoke or drink and drive and so on. Most just don’t have the discipline to do what they know they need to succeed. Today’s society seems to make it ok for people to distance themselves from the fact that they are personally responsible for themselves and they aren’t owed anything. The sooner someone takes personal responsibility for their actions in all of life’s activities, the more successful they are in whatever they choose to do with their lives. Until someone does that, they have no chance at success in trading. Just look throughout ET for examples of many who don't every day.

Good trading

BM
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BIg mOney,,

Hands down one of the top 3 best posts of all time in ET.. You nailed this business and most of life in general in this post,

Personal repsonsibility .

good work chap,

EF
 
Quote from Doug Allen:

I probably didn't explain myself well enough.

I had no problem developing and implementing trading strategies that are high probability, low risk, winning strategies.

The problem was being bored. I had a friend who was a professional card counter at blackjack and he said the same thing. Once you get the system, it's all mechanical after that and can be boring.

What exactly do you mean by the fight/flight response?
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Trading SHOULD be "mechanical and boring". If you're looking for excitement, go to Vegas.
 
Sometimes when times are boring I am just surfing this forum... but you Redneck trader, you made me join to congrat you on one of the best post I have ever read.

I hope that you will be able to stand close to your self even outside of the battlefield... ( life isn't a battlefield ? )

Thx for the sharing
 
Quote from TraderPlanet:

In any endeavor in life, you have up and down periods. Dealing with the market has many such up and down periods. In order to profit from the up periods, you have to tolerate or even “enjoy” the down periods. In order to enjoy the profits, you have to got through losses. And perhaps if would be useful if you could actually celebrate your losses.

I’m an NLP modeler. That means if someone does something well, I can figure out the essence of what they are doing by understanding their thinking. Thus, when such a person goes from A to B easily and effortlessly, I can determine how they do it and teach that skill to other people. Some people make money through trading easily and effortlessly and I’ve been studying those people for 25 years.

Read more tips and advice from Dr. Van K. Tharp on obstacles: http://www.traderplanet.com/index.php?page=articles&art_id=70
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Some people are probably built to lose to fulfill some kind of need or desire. Accepting a loss can help, but to celebrate it according to NLP... who are you modelling ??

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change"
- Charles Darwin
 
SNBthetrue / Jalee25,

Thank You both for the very kind words


SNBthetrue

No, neither life, nor trading is a battlefield – and actually life is pretty great…. well except for my two teenage sons at times
:eek: :p

Y'all Take Care
 
Complexity is my obstacle and my enemy.

Simplicity is my patron saint.

Profitability is found in simplicity.

But do not be FOOLISH, simple and easy are NOT euphemisms.

Traiding for a living is not EASY, but success in all thing is found by those who keep the DIFFICULT as SIMPLE as possible.
 
Quote from Doug Allen:

I'm just curious about what other traders think is their biggest obstacle to success.

I know my biggest challenge used to be boredom and over-trading even when all my signals were telling me to stay on the sideline.

Maybe if we all share what our biggest obstacles and challenges are we could see a common pattern and then fix it! :)

Doug
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My biggest obstacle is: myself as a discretionary trader - I lost money, every month, every year, for twelve years.

Having somewhat sensed this problem, after failing repeatedly for a few years, since 2002, I've started working on building trading systems. And, in 2005, I've started working on automating systems, which is taking it one step further. I am sure many others have come to the same realization, sooner or later, but I am also sure only a part of them has carried through with developing trading systems and even fewer automated them. So I can say that, whereas I am my worst enemy (I still am - I lost 30% of my capital yesterday, because of my discretionary trading) as a discretionary trader, I am my best friend as a system developer. Very hard-working, dedicated, meticulous, persistent - I've kept at it for over 7 years now.

In the past year, my systems have made money pretty consistently, every month. At the same time, I managed to lose most of those gains because I was doing discretionary trading at the same time. So right now, even this weekend, I am struggling very hard against myself, to find a way to stop myself from trading discretionary for the rest of my life. I am trying to make sure I will never again click that "Transmit" button on the BUY or SELL order.

It usually happens when I get home and find some losses from the automated system, and try to make a quick trade to recover that loss. Usually it works. But my problem when it doesn't work is that I do not conceive using any stoplosses, so my loss can go on for days and can even blow out my account (it happened a few times already). I say "why shouldn't I be able to make some money by myself? I am better than the system I've built". Most of the time I can make money. Like 3 times out of 4. On that fourth time of my discretionary trading, I lose everything I made in the previous 3 times, plus much more. It's a total disaster. And I repeat this pattern since years and years.

Now, why do I think that I can simply recoup my system's losses by trading discretionary? Simple - who built those systems that make money? I did. So deep inside, despite repeatedly losing for 12 years, I can't believe that if I was able to build a system that makes money, I won't be able to make money by myself by picking trades. And yet, amazingly, each time I fail.

At this point, it's clear to me that I have limits there's things I am overlooking, and so I will try to physically block myself from even looking at markets, but I don't know if I will ever manage it. Yesterday's loss was huge and it's fresh now, so I won't try to trade discretionary for at least a few weeks. But then I'll get cocky again and little by little I'll get closer and closer to the trading platform, look at quotes... insert orders... click transmit eventually. I am very afraid it will happen again, and I am positive, after failing for 12 straight years, and 144 straight months, I am positive that I will not make any money, I will lose it instead, and I will never learn to trade discretionary. There would have to be someone there beating me up each time I don't use a stoploss. Or someone implementing it for me, automatically, but that is impossible.

So basically I do not know what to do. Part of the solution may be to implement such a great automated system that it will make money every day and then I may - maybe - get the point that it's best to let it run and not interfere, by second-guessing its trades, sometimes reversing them, and losing as a consequence.

It's awful... this month the system made about 100%, but I lost all of it in two instances: yesterday I lost 30% and a month ago I lost 50%. Each time I fall for it again. This year I blew out my account twice already. It's a total disaster.

On the other hand, as I said, thanks to being so bad at trading, I developed a great system. The big problem now is letting it run, without thinking that since I am the creator I must be better than it is. Seriously, I do think deep inside that I am better than the system at picking entries. Then I see that it entered a position - I think it's wrong (I did friday), and I'll reverse it. At the end of the day I lost, whereas it would have made money if I had let it work.

It's a total disaster... I have the worst psychological make-up for a trader. And I don't fully understand why yet, or else I wouldn't be like this. Maybe I am self-sabotaging myself or maybe I really think it will work - but it's a fact that I failed at it for 12 straight years.
 
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