The use of the word “trading” might be the cause of many failures.
As most people know, our thoughts only exist because of language.
We don’t live in the world.
We don’t experience the world directly.
We all live in a unique and subjective representation of the world.
That representation is based on our past experiences that have shaped our biases.
Those biases influence how we value and interpret everything around us.
Also, the process of biases influencing our language and language reinforcing our biases is cyclical.
1 : Your feelings create biases.
2 : Your biases label things with subjective choices of words.
3 : Your choices of words reinforce your biases…
4 : …who reinforce your subjective representation of the world.
In short, the way you call something defines to yourself and to others your representation of that thing and that thing exists only through your choice of word.
It is often simplistically mentioned with the good old “half full or half empty glass” philosophy.
Back to trading. The word trading is an action word. It implies that it only exists in movement and suggests, on the contrary, that immobility cannot be included in trading.
Like many others, I’ve learned that trading is not trading. It’s waiting.
Once you start thinking of trading as waiting, the action or I should say the inaction of waiting changes from a negative thing to a positive thing.
If the absence of action becomes your new normal, then you’re not a trader anymore. You have become a “profitable waiter”.
Since the rest of the world call the activity trading I’m going to keep calling it trading too. Yes, you have to wait and follow a carefully planned strategy that has an edge. But if you never trade your don’t get a chance for your strategy to earn money for you.
Yes, waiting is important. We need to wait for the best opportunity at the best time. This demands discipline obviously during the period of waiting, but more important is the planning before you even start to wait. You must know what you’re waiting for and what you will do when you see it.
I remember seeing a film once of a house in the US being constructed within 1 single day. They proved it possible to start with bare earth and move into a completed comfortable furnished house 24 hours later. BUT the planning took a year.
You may do well to consider the use of the action word “investing” as a substitute for your profitable waiter description. A profitable waiter in my mind conjures up a guy who serves you in a restaurant and pays attention to you as a customer in the expectation of a tip for good service.
So how do you tell the difference between a trade and an investment? It’s timeframe. And because traders have big variations on their time horizons for a trade, and investors sometimes realize the boundary conditions of their initial assumptions have changed, there is an overlap in timeframe of intent between an intended trade and an intended investment. My opinion only.
I am into language and grammar myself, and although I am not a native English speaker, I believe the word “trader” is referring to “someone who trades, or is involved in trading”. Trading can mean any form of trade; blankets on a street market, jumpsuits online, or currencies. It does not imply that the trading has to be immediately and non stop. Now, to take this one step further, one can ask if what we do is actually trading. Are we bringing something to a market, to sell to others? Are we offering clothing on the web? Does not matter. As someone mentioned, it is the word everyone agrees to use for what we do, so I think it works fine. You can refer to yourself as the occational trader, if the lack of constant action does not fit (can’t believe I let myself get involved here…)
Kinda weird philosophical narrative, but perhaps a certain sense is lurking behind it…
Trading is a word, jajajaja, you can google it and find the definition in any dictionary you desire.
Process of exchanging goods or services, the very short definition pops up in my mind any time I see this word and actually it’s really like that, the process fully repeats the meaning of the word.
So it’s not in my interests to seek concealed sense in something that doesn’t have it, cheers.
Ever thought trading’s more about chilling than doing? It’s like, instead of always jumping in, we’re mostly waiting for that perfect moment. Kinda turns us into ‘profitable waiters’, right? Patience is the real game here. So, let’s ace the waiting game and watch the magic happen!
Interesting perspective, Shifting from “trading” to “waiting” does offer a fresh mindset. Patience and strategic inaction can indeed be powerful tools.
pipsology to philosophy. trading is just trading. the less you put too many meanings behind it will just confuse you long term. usually i dont even think about it. goodlord
If you don’t get philosophical)), then we really don’t trade Forex. We do not buy currency or sell it physically. We trade currency rates, betting on when and in which direction this or that currency pair will move according to the terms and rules of our trading strategy.
One could almost say we are playing a strategy game.
I was so glad to reach the point where I could have a very wide stop loss. I think the wider that stop loss the better chance of success. It opens up the trading/guessing to what I think are high probability guesses.
A trade I know will probably be open for several days or even some weeks gives many more opportunities to strategize.
Once we realize that we are in control of what happens, life is good.
Since the rest of the world call the activity trading I’m going to keep calling it trading too. Yes, you have to wait and follow a carefully planned strategy that has an edge. But if you never trade your don’t get a chance for your strategy to earn money for you.
(can’t believe I let myself get involved here…)