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HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
>From everything I've heard or experienced, success in trading
is quite similar to success in almost any field; it takes
time, effort, and an unrelenting desire to succeed. I've never
heard of anyone who was an overnight success. Perhaps they
exist, but I doubt it. Others with larger experience have said
that it takes 3 years minimum to make a trader, and I tend to
believe that's about right.
WHAT DOES IT TAKE?
Experience, and learning from it seems to be the biggest factor
in trader success. There are many different styles that seem to
win, from the highly-technical-cognitive to the person who can
just trade from watching price action as a number on a screen.
And there are those who are hot one day and dead the next. But
those who exhibit long term survivability seem to have an
ongoing ability to continue to adapt and learn based on their
recent experiences and the changes in the market.
WHY?
Trading seems more like a performing art than deterministic work.
Most of us are brought up to believe that you go to work, you
put in your time, and you get paid. Our schools teach that there
are right and wrong answers. We are conditioned into a black
and white binary deterministic world view. This clearly is not
the case for trading. In trading, you're more like a hunter.
You have costs of going out. When you're out, you may or may not
see game. If you do, you may or may not have the ability and
tools at hand to take it. There's no guarantees. It's also like
being a performer or athelete. You can't predict what the
conditions are going to be like or what the other side (if there
is one) is going to do. You're live. There are no right or
wrong answers.
I believe that getting over this binary deterministic reality
model is one of the hardest things people must do in becoming
traders. It goes against everything our society conditions us
to believe. (Buy the car, get the girl; work hard, get the
American dream, etc, etc.)
Another central realization that is hard for people to get
is that traders have control over nothing except themselves.
We are hung up on control as people. We try to control our
businesses, our spouses or relationships, our children, our
lives, our cars, or whatever. Control is almost always
directed at things external to ourselves. Make it happen.
Make the sale. Get them to do this or that. We're full of it.
Traders can't do any of that. The market is like the ocean.
It has it's own way. We are like sailors. The wind and tide
does what it wants; our lot is to make of it what we can.
This also goes against the grain of conventional conditioning.
It's often said that cognitive types have a problem with trading
because they are given to overthinking a situation. Conversely,
it's said that military people often have an edge in trading.
Personally, this has been a big challenge for me. Word has it
that engineers and scientists are often handicapped by their
tendency to look deep into causality, being unsatisfied simply
with an empirical approach. I can relate here. To get over
this one must learn to balance this curiosity and desire to
understand with the knowledge that at times, perhaps most times,
simple action even without deeper understanding is more effective,
nay necessary for survival.
In the military you're typically taught to take action, often
without knowing why. You're taught survival and management of
risk from a most personal perspective. And you're taught the
value of action versus inaction. Officers are typically taught
if you're taking fire to advance or retreat but don't just sit
and get cut up. Think back to your own experiences and consider
how your trading improved when you learned to just simply get
out when you're wrong. My own performance took a big jump up
when I took this doctrine and applied it.
When we can break out of some of these preconditioned ways
that are inappropriate to the nature of the trader's world,
we achieve a necessary but not necessarily sufficient enabler
to trading success.
I personally know of nobody who started out this way. It seems
we all had to learn from the markets themselves.
Wayne Moody wrote:
>
> At 10:13 AM 8/20/97 -0700, Rick Ratchford wrote:
> >I thought Norman brought out some interesting points that I have to
> >agree with.
>
> Me too. It would seem that success in the pit or away has little
> to do with IQ or education. But what's going on when an untrained
> newcomer does nothing but watch a quote display and knows when
> to buy and sell? A certain orientation to do the opposite of the
> crowd? An ability to see what the market wants to do from the
> flow and sequence of trades?
>
> Who on this list feels that he/she is a natural trader, who could succeed
> with nothing but access to a quote machine? How do you describe what
> it is you see? Or is it what you do with what you see?
>
> Who else has known a natural trader? What was it the trader had?
>
> Has anyone here started out poorly, but learned how to trade by just
> watching the market, getting a "feel" for when to trade?
>
> For the rest of us:
>
> Is there anyone who has not been deep into studying a method, or doing
> their own research, and wondered "Geez, why is this so hard"? How far
> do you widen the search when looking for your own convictions?
>
> Simplicity does seem to be the thing. Your stuff tells you what's likely
> to happen next. You trade. It happens or it doesn't. You exit. After all,
> there's only 3 possible outcomes: up, down, or neither. Good trading is
> reacting properly to what it does.
>
> Nobody knows the next move. Some people know the probability of the
> next move. Some of those people know how to speculate on probability.
> And some of those people can control greed and fear. You can hack
> your way out of the loss column with the right attitude, but it's
> a long uphill climb. Probably leaving some of us a little jealous
> of the pizza delivery boy who stumbles into the pit and discovers
> his gift.
>
> I'd like to see input from those who did well right from the start.
> What exactly is the nature of this talent?
>
> Wayne Moody
> wlm95@xxxxxxxxxx
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