Thursday, March 27, 2003
A Different Mantra
The market is shredding not only accounts but confidence.
You are following your plan, you are focussed on your set-up, and are in good cheer. You put on the trade, but things don't go your way. In my case, it seems to be more than often enough, taking the trade and getting stopped out one bar before "it" goes to plan. Booking a small loss, I then watch what would have been a sizeable gain unfold, without me holding a ticket.
Long before I started trading, I learned the value of learning from a mistake and improving "the process". So, with patience at hand, I'll go back to the chart and and look for what went wrong. But sometimes the chart isn't really "wrong", nor was the interpretation. Sometimes it really is something "inside" that interfered. I feel then that I, of all people, "should" know that. But we aren't simply humans, we are students, for life! All things considered, I like that. So what does a student do? They study.
I highly recommend Mark Douglas' book, Trading in the Zone. For those willing to acknowledge that thoughts do shape our actions and lives, the book presents practical methods to get out of the trenches of timidity, sloth, and cynicism and into the reality of confidence, discipline, and a winning attitude.
I had fun making this "mantra" and printed it on a little card to place in front of me as a reminder to focus on what is right, even when things don't go "my" way.
At last, over the rim
of the waiting earth
the moon lifted with
slow majesty
till it swung clear of the horizon and rode off,
free of moorings
- Kenneth Grahame,
The Wind in the Willows
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