In summary, everyone one of us has the inherent "ability" to trade what you see and not what you think. Thus, it is those who has the "talent" to sidestep his/her belief systems (those beliefs that get in the way of trading) that will have a better chance to trade successfully by not thinking while trading.
Well, "inherent" is absolutely the wrong word to use if you accept, as most traders do, that good trading typically requires one to do things contrary to our nature. But your implication that everyone has within themselves the ability to become a good trader is on par with saying that anyone can grow up and be a senator or anyone can be a writer or a golfer. This is true when you talk about a baby. At the moment of a healthy birth, the possibilities are almost limitless. Thereafter one's chances are increasingly subject to forces that take those possibilities and discourage some and encourage others. Some of the discouraging forces can be self-imposed by our own perceptions--I think everyone agrees on this.
Now I can agree with you that all people have the ability to talk about modifying their perceptions. But because these perceptions have been shaped by many sources, it follows that one cannot modify one's perceptions as easily as you imply. It’s not all “programming of our mind” as you say. That implies we can un-program specific areas on demand. Can we? For example, people say, “I don’t have to change my childhood, I just have to change my perception of it.” But that very ability is only as strong as the sum of your life experiences has made it. Maybe you can and maybe you can’t.
Philosophically, this is the middle ground in the argument between free will and determinism. It's common sense. You have the power within you to change many significant things about yourself, but within certain limits that your learning and environment has already and continues to set.
It's a strange idea to assert that everyone has the ability to learn to trade (or "trade what you see" as you put it). So for those 90% or more who never succeed, are they just stupid? Did they not try hard enough? WHY did they lose their self-control at critical moments?
To me, having a framework that says anyone can succeed in this business is an unrealistic expectation. It's a bad thing for a new traders to think because it puts pressure on them to be something they might not inherently be. When I started trading, I clearly recall thinking that soon enough I would find out if I could do it or not, and if I couldn't do it, I would find something else to do. Sure I had things to learn and experience to gain before I would know if I could trade well, but there was never a question in my mind but that I was hoping to discover a skill within myself, not hoping to acquire a skill, and not hoping to develop a skill that “everybody” has buried within. I believe this helped me relax (I have never pounded a table, broken a keyboard, thrown a mouse, I've never shouted, and only twice I think I've actually said "Fuck!" out loud) while trading. Because it's never been my "fault" for losing money. I believe it takes skill to play this game and when I lose I get no more upset than when I lose a game of chess.
Chess is perfect game for traders to play because there is NO LUCK in a game of chess. When I win or lose a chess game it's because that's who I am. All the time I trade a stock that goes up five points and I made eighty cents or a buck-oh-three. I don’t get mad and think that I should’ve done this or seen that. I saw what I saw and did what I could and thankfully I made a profit. Traders who talk about how something they did was their fault have not yet fully grasped that their skill or talent is not as developed as it should be or that the other traders in the market were simply more skillful.
I.e. Was it Bryon Russell’s fault that Michael Jordan hit that jump shot to win the NBA championship?
I guess my point about trading being a talent leads me to advise new traders to look at trading the same way they’d look at any other job that requires talent. If you want to be a concert violinist, you take lessons and practice, but at what point does it occur to you that you aren’t going to make a living at it? At what point do you see that you can? And, from the beginning, don’t you admit that not everyone has the ability to be a concert violinist? |
