I completely get the whole we have to trade without emotion. But i think its a lot easier just to say get rid of the fear and switch your mindset to being a winner - especially if your somebody that’s living in that light at the end of the tunnel. For most here, their still struggling and its hard just to up and change a feeling which comes so normal to every human.
Personally, i think its something we have to accept that no matter how good our trading may become - everyone is susceptible to taking a loss. It’s learning to have that skill which allows us to go back to ‘neutral’ whether our trade closes for a win or loss is something im trying to adapt to…
Feeling like a loser might come naturally to you, but feeling like a winner comes naturally to me.
People here DO NOT LIKE confident winners, look at how many times I have been called arrogant or “high & mighty” simply because I am a confident winner.
THAT is what is so toxic about this forum! Do you see it now? You surround yourself with losers, identify with them, and then wonder why you can’t break through into the fearless world of a winner!
In an environment full of losers, it will be more comfortable to be a loser. You will gain acceptance from your peers, and THAT is what comes natural to human beings. Surround yourself with winners, and you will be more comfortable as a winner. Being a winner doesn’t come naturally to me because I trade a lot of money, it comes from surrounding myself with people who are winning, and expect me to be winning as well
Being expected to do something & actually achieving it on a regular basis are two very different things altogether.
It’s all very well providing of course you possess the aptitude, skill set & wherewithal to hold your own in that company.
If you don’t then you’re nothing more than a loser mixing it with a bunch of winners.
I can guarantee you if you feel pretty depressed as a loser in the company of other losers, wait till you change environments & become one of the few losers in a large company of winners – that my friend is the definition of depressing!
I agree wholeheartedly. All I am saying is that we as humans feel the most comfortable when we “fit in” with our peers. Obviously you can’t be peer pressured into becoming a winning trader, but if you believe you have all the ingredients of a successful trader, and yet you keep coming up short… perhaps it is the company you keep. You could very well be subconsciously holding yourself back, so that you do not lose that feeling of acceptance.
Or perhaps it’s the fact you’re just not good enough (yet?) to cut it as a trader.
I can believe I’m the best performer on this forum & only hang out with the other top performers, but true evidence of that will be reflected in my on-going % uplift. If I’m drowning in debt I can believe whatever I like, it’s not going to make me a profitable trader.
I can believe I’m the best candidate for a funding position with an investment collective, but if my stats & personality don’t ring their bell at interview my belief is worth diddly squat.
At the end of the day it all comes down to skill set, aptitude & best fit.
If you haven’t got what it takes, no amount of belief will pull you through.
It might make you feel upbeat, but that’s as good as it gets.
That’s why in the real world all this positive, ra ra psychology is nothing but a croc.
Positive psychology looks real nice on the pages of a book & sounds real nice being delivered by a slick seminar salesman, but if you’re a crap trader, you’re a crap trader - period.
What does my trading edge got to do with anything?
That post isn’t/wasn’t about me, it’s simply an observational comment in reply to his quoted text.
Keep up.
Recently, as I’m sure most regulars on this forum remember all too well, we were graced with the presence of a man who was only too prepared to tell the world what a great trader he was, that he was making a pile of cash from trading and had developed his trading “skills” from 18 years of doing battle with the markets.
And now he knew it all, he certainly was not living in fear of the markets. He was as sure of his abilities as the new pope was that he’d soon be wearing a white dress.
And then he went and linked his trading account to a live verification site and made a complete and utter horse’s arse of it.
Confidence is all well and good, surrounding yourself with winners may be good, believing you live in the realm of the winner may be good, but none of these things means you ARE a winner.
Just because I think I can fly don’t make me Peter Pan.
Confidence has it’s place, over confidence gets put eventually in it’s place.
Hog - the other side of the coin, lack of confidence and what it can do.
This afternoon on the protraders thread Kuzia posted that he could see a market reversal profile in the making on fibre, I could see it too but with lack of confidence - I posted:
‘Maybe - I’m long at the 50 with very tight stop because it’s friday and maybe I’m not just so confident - IF it goes up to 80 I’ll exit, if not and in profit at 16.00 hrs I’ll exit, if it drops to 44 my sl will exit for me’
I was stopped out at -8 pips -yes I know about too tight sl etc etc, the point is why the tight stop - the evidence is in my post - a properly thought out and confident stop would have been perfect at 20 pips for a nett gain of 30.
So I have learned a lesson today - it’s something about confidence or lack thereof in a setup.
Not that I completely agree with how everything went down with ICT, but his account was up 30% for March. So he must know something. And ICT’s stuff is the only form of forex “mentoring” I’ve ever got and I watch the tools work day in and day out. But for some reason for the past 2-3 weeks I’ve been making a mess of it.
I completely agree with peterma’s post. I was in that exact same trade waiting for the the market reversal with a pretty tight stop. Then I saw Kuzia’s post, contemplated making my stop loss a little bigger because ‘if someone else is seeing what I’m seeing then I must be right and I don’t want to get stopped out prematurely.’ But then I fought off that urge, kept my stop tight, got stopped out, watched it go up to about 1.31 which is what I was waiting for all day long.
I wouldn’t mind being overconfident about my trading though. Sound like a nice place to be.
I have not seen anyone be able to make consistent gains, I personally don’t believe it is possible to make money year on year, profit after profit because if it were many of the worlds investment banks would not collapse so frequently. I wish it were possible but there you go.
If you believe your a winner OP then thats cool, but to get anyone reasonable to believe you proof needs to come. I checked this thread because of the title and maybe the circlejerk would come to a halt a bit with honest losses declared with mature discussion without excuses to keep ego intact.
But nope apparently OP is once again an incredibly profitable forex trader apparently come to educate the masses being sure to offer himself plenty of compliments along the way.
I know what you are saying about gurus etc, but it is a shame that you feel this way overall. Do you really believe that this whole industry would exist surrounding retail trading with nobody making any money?
Investment banks etc collapse for far more complex reasons than our small area of trading. The global currency market is an enormous pie, and for any of us to claim an extremely small piece of that pie is far from impossible. We don’t need to so what investment banks do - we just need to capture a small percentage of a handful of the moves that go on each year and we will make good money.
It is tough, but it absolutely does work. I try to avoid discussing results on here, these days, as it’s all ‘myfxbook or stfu’ and I don’t do myfxbook etc, so I try to restrict myself to generic advice where I can. So feel free to dismiss this as the ravings of another guru, but I have no agenda to push at all other than trying to be helpful when I say that I have been profitable for three years, I’m full time at this and it simply works if done right. I know a number of others who make consistent money, too.
I just don’t believe that this whole infrastructure would have grown up around something that doesn’t work, so I hope that even though I have no interest in evidencing my claims, others will see the world similarly and keep the trading faith even when things sometimes look bleak.
I take losses, naturally - I’ll happily post some here when I’m back from holiday - but overall currency trading is an enormously liberating and lucrative profession, when it all aligns neatly. But it does take dedication, as JCP has said.
Sorry to ramble - I just don’t like seeing people say that it can’t be done so hope this post is seen as helpful rather than hollow.
Yep, I see what you’re both saying, but for me that’s a different thing from being “over confident”. For me, what you’ve both described is a lack of faith or conviction in your own judgement. A sort of unwillingness to fall on your own sword so to speak.
As Sanj mentioned in an earlier post, that sort of thing is what makes us human. The point we must therefore strive towards is confidence in our own analysis or judgement, and the willingness to take whatever comes our way, based on decisions we have made ourselves regardless of what others think.
But over confidence is a different thing. Having the balls to take on any trade, in the belief that I am indestructible, that still turns out to be a loser, doesn’t make me a better trader. Having the conviction to trade according to my own criteria or entry rules does that, regardless of whether it’s a winner or loser.
If then, over the course of time, my trading rules prove to be unprofitable, I will be free to admit I was wrong and adapt or change my rules. Over confidence may see me hang on to my rules too long, because some-one as good as me can’t possibly be wrong, to the point where I only admit I was wrong when I get margin called, if I even admit it was my fault at all.
There are certain arenas were over confidence is almost a necessity. If I enter the boxing ring, I’d better be bloody confident I’m going to destroy my opponent. I’m not so sure that attitude works with trading though.
Confidence and self belief ?..yes. Arrogance and over confidence?..wee bit like searching for landmines with a mallet.
ST - I’ve read many of your posts, enjoyed some, disliked others, but can I say that the above post is perhaps the most inspirational that I’ve read in a long time.
I hope you and your friends are profitable and are making a living from it.
I just have no reason to believe the claims anyone makes when it comes to such things. Methods are kept vague and accounts hidden from view, while requests for proof are rejected often with ad hominem fallacies and or excuses.
People are making money from retail ForEx traders there is no doubt there, it’s just the only winners I see on record are the brokers, the rest is all hearsay.
This is what I’m grappling with, was it lack of confidence in my own judgement that I’m setting tight stops as exampled by today or is it because I’m reading too much into what others have to say about the source of my judgement, the actual setup.
I have thought more about today’s trade than perhaps any other trade that I’ve ever taken ( thanks to Johncarpainter and his probing).
I’ve had losses much greater than today, back in the last century (wow but true) I’ve seen (notice not suffered) losses in the market many, many thousands greater than today - this is a loser’s thread so I’m talking greater than you can imagine.
Do I have confidence in my own judgement? - I brim with the stuff, every loss I’ve ever encountered somehow, usually with help of the One who made us, somehow have two-folded into the opposite.
So HOG, when the time comes, as it surely will, when you walk onto that site, you are doing your H&S audit, you see an old timer ‘doing it the way that it always has been done’ and you have to act - and you know he’s thinking ’ arrogant so and so’ - when that happens - remember - have confidence.
For profitable people it is irrelevant what you believe or don’t believe.
Producing full trade documentation for 100 trades minimum plus trading account log sheets as a minimum requirement matters to people who run the rule over you.
If you measure up they will let you undertake a rigorous selection process that includes cognitive testing, behavioural simulation exercises, technical assessment and attitudinal review under highly demanding conditions.
If your successful and still measure up (99,9% don’t) you have the “privilege” to trade within the first year under supervision.
What do you think it took those people to get there in the first place?!
What do you think it takes for those people to stay there and measure up - day in - day out?!
Methods are kept vague
JP has give you all what you need in one post in this thread.
They sound extremely painful.
Do they offer some kind of local anaesthetic beforehand?
And what qualifies as highly demanding conditions?
It used to take an Ivy League education or a large dollop of nepotism, provided you were privy to the ‘secret handshake’ & could recite your 13x tables without taking a breath.
These days 12 year old computer geeks are slouching around the joint in flip flops.
It’s the brave new world!
A pocketful of hard drugs & a devil may care attitude.
I think in a way, for me, JCP has raised a valuable point. (probably not the one he intended to raise but it’s something I have taken from this thread) The dangers of a forum site like this, IMHO, is not so much spending your time with losers and so sinking into the loser mentality yourself, but having your own decisions influenced by comments made by another forum member.
I’m pretty sure, if we were all honest, most of us would admit to taking a trade, not taking a trade, ending a trade early or doing something which we never initially intended to do because we read someone say something and we thought to ourselves, “Oh God, they must know something I don’t, I better do what they are doing.”
I freely admit that I have done it. I’ve taken trades without even looking at a chart purely because I saw what I perceived to be a “more knowledgeable trader” say that they thought such and such was about to happen. A couple of them have won, most of them have lost.
But if you give yourself a moment to reflect peterma, answer me this my friend. Which losing trades hurt the most, the ones you took after doing your own analysis, or the ones you took blindly on the say so of something you read on a forum site?
I’m at a point now that when I make a losing trade, a trade that was taken because of my own decision making, I’m a little disappointed it didn’t win, but as long as I’ve kept my money management under control and traded what I saw, I’ll live with it.
But when I’ve made a losing trade, a losing trade that I have taken purely based on something I’ve read on the internet, I genuinely feel anger that I could have been such an idiot in the first place.
If I’m going to lose peterma, I’d rather do it on my own terms
