Hi there,
I'm just curious.
What valuable lessons did you acquire as you progressed from being a novice trader to one who consistently turned a profit?
I can start with a few ideas that could be newbie's mistakes:
- Starting with real money too soon rather than practicing with a demo account
- Ignoring Risk Management
- Chasing Losses by high-risk trades
...
Please feel free to drop your own experience.
Is Helene Keller your real name? Very interesting if it is.
In any case, in a zero-sum game, not just newbies but many experienced people lose. It is simply the nature of the beast. A small minority that make up the winning group are paid by none else than the losers. I would surmise that most people will never become part of the winning group.
A person whose posts I enjoy reading says above he is a losing trader. He hasn’t figured out why he is in the losing group. To figure out a problem, it must be identified. I recall from his prior posts that he’s been at it a few years, so being a newbie is not the reason for his losing. If he were a newbie, it sure would be simple to blame his losing on his newbie status.
Another member posts that trading is not a physical game. That is true. It is a game played in the mind. Specifically, it is played in the subconscious mind primarily responsible for perception of which the senses that are brought to bear at any given moment make up just a small part.
As an aside, wasn’t Helen Keller famous for being deaf and blind? Do you think she could have been taught to trade?
Anyway, since trading is a game played in the mind, and a minority of winning traders take from the losing majority, the winners ergo must be thinking and thus behaving differently than the losers.
Consider how losers think. The typical loser is focused on price. He uses various methods to analyze past prices and thinks trading is about predicting future price. The really hopeless cases focus on an aspect of price: their P&L. They make trading decisions, even whether to continue or stop trading, based on their P&L.
Consider how winners think. Winners focus on the losers. Winners know that’s where their profits come from. To be a winner in a zero-sum game is to know how losers behave based on their thinking or emotional unthinking (fear) and trade against them.
Describing how losers and winners think is easy. Changing from thinking as a loser to a winner is not. Losers are losers because they are unable to make the necessary changes in their thinking and therefore in their behavior.
