Dear Friends and Fellow Traders,
After four years as a trading instructor, it becomes more clear to me every day that trading is not really about methods, charts, stock picks, and executions. Trading is about what a human does when confronted with the emotions "fear" and "hope". How we deal with those emotions will determine our success or failure, I believe, even more so than the methods a person uses to chose their trades. If you are only correct in your choices 50% of the time, but can keep losses small in relation to the potential of your trades, you will be successful. So why are so many losing? Why do so many hold and hope to the point of heartbreaking loss, against all common sense and logic? Why does fear grip so many traders to the point of preventing them from even entering a trade for long periods of time? Why do self-destructive tendencies enter our trading? And most importantly, what can we do to change these bad habits and remove emotion from our trading? Those are the questions that plague me, and in starting this thread I am hoping to make new friends who are willing to explore those questions with me.
I only have a few requests:
1. Please be respectful of others. I see so often in these threads people resorting to personal attacks and I think it discredits their ideas, which may in fact hold value. It is also hurtful. If you have nothing nice to say, please say nothing at all.
2. Please be supportive of others. We are all in this together, and will benefit so much more from constructive and helpful ideas than we ever will from negativity. Losing money is a very sensitive and personal issue, and it takes bravery to share that pain. Please respect that.
3. Please keep on topic and refrain from stock picking, as that is not really the point of this thread. I could pick stocks all day, but I truly believe that giving someone a trade will help them in the long run far less than if you can teach them the skills to pick their own trades and help them build the discipline to trade consistently on their own.
(This thread is moderated, not to inhibit free speech or exchange of ideas, but rather on the outside chance that someone might repeatedly refuse to abide by the rules.)
Sincerely,
Shawn Wolff-Klug
MTrader.com |
