zdo

mechanically ??? "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” – Albert Einstein “To trace something unknown back to something known is alleviating, soothing, gratifying and gives moreover a feeling of power. Danger, disquiet, anxiety attend the unknown – the first instinct is to eliminate these distressing states. First principle: any explanation is better than none… The cause-creating drive is thus conditioned and excited by the feeling of fear …" – F. Nietzsche “Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds – justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.” – Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat )

Refining the use of the ‘d’ word… ’discipline’ is not needed unless there is conflict, and by in large, those traders who are “printing five figures a day” only rarely have to use ‘discipline’ to stick to their trading plan… and Yes, if one of them is pressed to explain, he might even use the ‘d’ word … basically trying to say what he thinks the asker wants to hear though … and only because he does not yet have language or concepts to articulate what is really going on. Please make up your mind … unless you are trying to say ‘money management discipline’ is 99% of the game.

well, eXsCUuZe me ! Actually, my (rapidly fading) personal ‘commemorations’ of that 'time' is always of the Thursday afternoon of Oct 15th ....and what I 'knew' ...and what I did and didn’t do on that day… Obsidian - I remember Oct 28th, back in 1929…

... was just skimming http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/money-management/14530-position-sizing-diversification.html ... someone mentioned TIPS Easing back into a short USDINR position Currently at ~ 5% loaded and orders resting above and below… Have a great weekend all

Hey folks, Here we go… :rofl: ...and remember - “…Sometimes someone can say something very different to what you've interpreted…” … and In typical zdo fashion I don’t have time to build a good case or to explain it fully or even adequately. … and in a fashion atypical to a ‘laboratory’, I will assert though that the best sample size is a sample size of one – You. One consolation: don’t worry - you would only get this kind of reply from one in 10000 ‘psychologists’ or trading coaches, etc. In the modern paradigms, the “mental” aspects have taken ascendency. “Relax", "de-stress", "meditate", "stretch", "get in shape" yada yada … ‘Medicate’ / suppress your symptoms so you can fix your thinking. Fix your thinking and you have fixed your life… yada yada… In my experiences of the last decade, all that misses the mark Instead - here we go… Short answer = “Thou art that” Only when you be, feel, think, and sense that seamlessly do you get closer to seeing things as they really are. A longer (but still very incomplete) answer = The Body In the modern world, the most dominant obstacle is the body. The primary, (unapproached, avoided, unconscious) element in the body is compromised biotensegrity of the various types and ‘bags’ of myofacsia that develop from adaptations to threats and stress. Bound flow in the myofascia spreads to create structural malformations…which leads to degradation of functionality in perceptions and muscular and neural performance... Again, I’m not attempting building a solid, influential case for this… If you want to explore this in detail see the works of Stephen Levin, Thomas Myers, Stanley Keleman, etc. If you want to skip investigation of the theoretical bs and begin actual clearing work, PM me for an unaffiliated referral. My point herein is that each perception, each ‘neural chunk’ is made up as much from movements, proprioception, patterned reactions, centered ‘out’ in the body as it is brain processing of sensations like sight, etc., thoughts and emotions. These residual tensions, fear reactivity, sensory motor amnesia, having “chair shaped” front and back ‘lines’ etc, etc block flow. Flow is our natural state… our birthright… which we give up gradually… and which is our responsibility to reclaim… and only in flow can we see the world as it is. Note: Don’t confuse the content above to be about flexibility, relaxation response, etc etc, or ‘fitness’ as it is currently defined… or limit it to the 'flow' of Csikszentmihalyi... and it is not ‘martial’ either (… although much can be garnered via the ‘martial’ . In flow, styles become indistinguishable.etc etc…) The Brains Our wonderful capacities to generalize, build off previous similarities and differences experienced, see ‘trends’, tendencies, etc, etc. in a stim filled world can push the more simple, pure awareness – simply seeing what is with ‘new eyes’ – into a recessive, rarely activated, mode. Practicing mindfulness gets us to where we can see in real-time how and when we have learned to rely on our concepts of reality more than our observations of reality. Mindfulness is a choice to become aware of and break the loop of inevitable confirmations you will find if you are examining reality with a preconceived idea of what you will find. It is a choice that takes about 1000 - 10000 quality tries before it starts to get some sustainable traction. The concepts and projections, and predictions continue, but they can, when needed, be left more in the background. Also and unfortunately, the exact same capability that makes our analytical brains perfectly suited for its deductive reasoning tasks makes them completely vulnerable to being deceived into thinking they can judge right or wrong, good or bad. So certain ‘parts’ of our brains (without getting all ‘hemispheric’ or ‘religious’ btw) often conscript ‘judging’ as a role. But whenever we try to be the analytical expert on what’s wrong with something, we are blocking our capacity to 'see' reality as it is. The analytical brain’s role is simply to present to the whole a representation, an as accurate as possible replication (sorta like holographic ? a duplication ?) … another skill that takes about 1000 - 10000 high-quality attempts to advance from the ‘cognitive’ level of performing a task to the ‘associated’ level where the process begins to become automatic in nature. … and, btw, 'personality' is potentially a hindrance, but only a minor one. ...and emotions - once the blocks are cleared are also and usually only minor obstacles. … the task with them is to simply bring the lucidity and adaptation enhancing ones to the training (and living and the trade station, etc) … a “team”, as our ‘psychologist’ friend Rande H. calls it, of the best emotions to put out on the field... then, emotional 'reactions' become valuable 'soft' data sources... not obstacles... The ... Progressing along … starting in utero, as we ‘co-create’ our 'self ' / as we ‘leave’ unity… we make “decisions”’ around polarities that, unless neutralized, cancel our ‘seeing of the world as it is’ for our whole lives. Neutralizing your individual set of these polarities opens up domains that normals consider to be metaphysical or supersensory, etc…. but really they are normal… not meta or supra at all… notice above I did not use the word Mind at all… the real Mind is one of those realms… Soul is too… Spirit,too… none of them are ‘special’… Again, this is not the place or the audience to ‘explain’ ... Anyone who has questions, PM me for references and referrals. As the rap song goes “You can take the bitch out of trading… but you can’t take the bitch out of trading”

re: "How do you get closer to seeing things as they really are?" going out the door in a few minutes ... will try to post a reply tomorrow ...

Hm - and this is coming from a guy who said: "...In the same way that pointing out that you need to find a strategy that fits your personality* (which also is kind of silly imo)..." :rofl: ;razz; re: "... Is it ____ ? Is it ____? ..." It's all of the above and more ... and you forgot 'Is it beliefs?'... 'believe what we do when we don't know... We cannot possibly come to the same "conclusions" if we can not possibly form the same neural 'chunk' for a perception of an event as someone else. ... and further... We can never experience / see the "'world"... we can only experience / see our representations of it. The work is bringing those representations into closer and closer alignment with 'reality' - so that our acts take on qualities of incisive clarity and mature 'power'. “Find your own way” is a primary choice … once that choice is made, making the secondary choices to orient twds consciousness via mindful awareness becomes increasingly seamless ie needing to stop caring about how someone else is ‘seeing’ and "concluding" (and knowing, and sharing, and understanding, and teaching, and trading, etc etc) becomes progressively rarer. *personality - one more time... it goes far beyond personality... :haha:I believe the use of that term herein is revealing of limiting beliefs

To Pristine’s credit, re : “handful of traders” – he does seem to be acknowledging the tiny niche he can actually help. ... however it looks like he immediately backslides from that with "...We want to make sure that you stay with us..." = delusional... "staying" for most will be a waste of both party's time... re: Excellent points… I take them even further. The really thriving traders I know are ‘rule makers’ not ‘rule followers’. They are not AND NEVER HAVE BEEN good candidates for ‘trading education’… am pretty sure this fits into Tharpe’s profile / test (and stats) … but don’t know exactly how re "there still remains the process of converting that information into a format that suites the trader" Rule of thumb: The more similar a 'trading education' is to 'normal education' (which is in itself also fuctup) the more useless it is... // Re mentors: “…their first mentorship experience was a flop, because they were learning from a mentor whos trading style was not going to work for their own personality.” It goes way beyond ‘personality’… and I understand you may have just used the word for brevity, but the few who might be mislead by the term’s usage are unfortunately among those that need not to be mislead the most:roll eyes: More refinement re mentors…if you are 'learning' from a mentor, you are not being mentored yet. A great mentor has the perfect question from his pile of questions at the ready… but he does not provide one single answer.

Don’t quite get what this has to do with the price of beans in china … but Three Things Investors Don't Know About Europe | ZeroHedge EUR_ _ _ ... till Nov 6... a promise is a promise

Disclosure: David, the OP, is probably long gone now so this post is targeted to those few who are in quest of thriving at pareto of pareto levels. If you check my posts re: sim’n, you’ll find me to be one of the foremost sim-bashers on the planet. Sim-bashers are in the minority… that right there should tell you something… ie 'normals' can ignore Sim’n is the epitome of under training. Period. Undertraining usually leads to as much ‘injury’, pain, and diminution of performance as does overtraining. So here’s some advice. Sim has its place – but you should never revert to sim because of ‘performance’ issues again … reframe your game… play for real to start with ... No matter how unambiguous your ‘rules’ are, the markets always has ways to make them seem iffy and the markets always have a way of belying the odds of your edge :haha:… and guess when the odds of the markets doing those things are ??? For the first few ‘epochs’ in a trader’s development, the odds are always with the first few trades after he goes live :crap: … it seems perversely diabolic … until one day you realize how you’re actually setting yourself up by not getting fully in touch with your own internal ‘runs’ of perception and adaptation … and you can never really get in touch with them if you sim.

noobs, whatever you do, don't listen to this nonsense. ... because only 1% really 'understand' and 'agree' with him. ... and if he happens to say anything about how the emotions get stirred before the winning or the losing and what to do about it - don't listen to that either... :wnkwink:

before I leave for the weekend… To answer the original OP question Is Discipline Enough to Succeed? In a word - No. I think it was goodoboy who said ‘discipline’ is everything. He’s not alone. On the internet, if there’s one post or article pumping ‘discipline’ there are 10,000 or more. Throughout the thread I serially substituted several words – for “discipline” in the content of Negotiator's OP Is Motivation Enough to Succeed? Is Commitment Enough to Succeed? Is Perseverence Enough to Succeed? etc These ?’s start to get at the following points… The costs of repetitive self implemented / instrumental ‘discipline’ never produce sufficient, sustainable offsetting benefits. In my experience, traders need to grow a personal model where the development of toughness * , not ‘discipline’, is central. In such a personal performance model, ‘discipline’ becomes a subset, available as an option to be utilized in a limited and strategic way - like the PowerBoost on a A1 race car AND not as a habitual resort to be 'forced' into to prevent "tanking", "getting pissed", or "choking", etc. Thriving traders hold ‘discipline’ in reserve for opportunities – not to habitually apply to uncertainty, (fkn ‘rule’) conflicts, stress, or even sudden adversity. I don't give a sht if this is " correct views in the field of psychology" or not - the 'discipline' pumped in the 10000 posts and articles leads to breakdown period ! Earlier I begged for some clarifications on exactly how they were using the term from those who were asserting positions about ‘discipline’. Only Steve46 responded. To give those that didn’t clarify the benefit of the doubt, let’s just assume they ultimately want you do to the same thing I bang on a lot – Create your own personal contructs for all of your performance development for yourself. Create very clear self compatible contructs! … immediately breaking from the crowd again ... a need to 'apply' discipline arises when one must choose between immediate gratification (/or relief) or remain in discomfort (/ stress) for a what possibly might be a more meaningful payoff. ...over '9500' of those '10,000' posts, et al. emphasize mental aspects and prescribe excluding / avoiding /denying the MAJOR EMOTIONAL** components of these dynamics. If you want to be a high level performer, you will go toward – not go away from – your emotions!!!!! If you have to crank up the ‘discipline’ more than once or twice a month in your trading, take that as a clear sign your trading ‘rules’,systems, methods, etc are not sufficiently compatible with your self – with your talents, skills, inclinations, attractions, etc. An extreme illustration: ‘Coach’ is playing you at cornerback when you would be performing much more effectively on the offensive line. With traders, the contrasts are usually not so blatant and extreme as in that illustration - but the effects are! *** The main point - needing to apply ‘discipline’ to stick to your ‘rules’ usually means you need to make (major or slight) slide shifts in your methods / ‘rules’ **** … and NO, that does not get you off the hook in the work of strengthening yourself . Thriving traders are forever working to improve edges AND improve ‘self’ . Improvement in one always requires development in the other… development and refinement of new and existing skills etc. in both methods and personal toughness. Have a great weekend all zdo * If you’re serious about developing toughness, in lieu of the ‘discipline’ rat hole, one good place to start is with the (early, but not earliest) works of Dr. James Loehr … I would post more about it but there's really no need... 95% will stay in the crowd and the others - thankfully, they don't really need me much...they will find it on their own ** and MAJOR physical components = another thread ***Although I think he fcks it up pretty bad in his first article (mainly because he doesn’t get how passion and alignment significantly obviates the need for applying ‘d’to all those things in his next to last paragragh- ie he’s giving explanations, not reasons, traders ‘fail’ ie it is a “philosophical dissertation” after all), Pristine’s article at http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/markets/14450-what-causes-failure-part-two-three.html is another good way to study the limits of ‘discipline’. It gets at the ‘alignment’ issues I brought up above through the perspective of (attentional and) focus challenges . Now place yourself in it. Do you really want to spend your life focusing on something that is not compatible with you? Intimately explore your own talents and inclinations as deeply as you explore market representations (charts,etc) and “education” on systems, methods, and techniques. ****’rules’ another term we traders tend to act like we’re all talking about the same concept - but we ain’t!

My memories and results of that day are posted elsewhere… One image I haven’t mentioned elsewhere… I remember glancing out the window of home office and seeing my bride swimming laps in the pool – totally oblivious while what today would be about a 3000 point drop in the Dow … ... one lesson: It wasn’t the first and it certainly wasn’t the last… but it was a significant nail in the coffin of my ‘Normalcy Bias’ … thankful for that.

Re: Political and religious leanings corre. trading acumen Don’t know… don’t really care… leary of even attemping to be objective ... ( it wouldn't be much better than saying something like Tebo is a better qb than Sanchez bcse Tebo is a 'Christian' ) Why do you ask? Have you noticed the HUUGE discrepancies/ polarities/incongruities in internal belief sets some ppl can maintain and still be ‘functional’ in (day)trading (and life)…? I have :missy:

Bogle appears to be as delusional as the real / cnbc talking heads these days... I used to be high on his products... Tams, hoping you're not sipping this "nvstmnt" koolaid - it is really just trading slowed way down ...while tripping out on this "nvstmnt" concept ...it poisons you to death... If the indexes just barely kept up with curr. 'inflation' / debasement Dow, etc. would be over ____ If rates (were allowed to stay) 'kept up' with curr. 'inflation' / debasement, yields would be ____ % (compared to less than 0 now) ... = balanced portf - my ass Meanwhile, the list of 'risk' types (beyond curr) unseen by retail 'investors' just continues to grow... Old ,but still New!, alternative viewpoints he didn't mention ... The Great Game, Gold Arbitrage and Three Little Pigs | Daniel Amerman | Safehaven.com ignore this ... cause I'm not an 'authorized agent '

Today is the 25th anniversary of “Black Monday” Anyone in here trading that day? Memories? Lessons? Thx.

Cute. I particularly liked the spoofn … brings up - which half you do believe in?One half gets you a republic (if you can keep it) the other half gets you a mob democracy (if you can keep it) and of course :tongueincheek: Obama has completely disclosed and thoroughly explained his tax plan a spoofn of his site wouldn't even show a button to try catch… Tax plan by inflation… debase debase debase Tax plan the whole via socialization and redistribution – works every time … related: “picking losers, one sector at a time…” ie selective penalization of wealth… Example: Taxpayers To Recover $0 On Solyndra | ZeroHedge (and only a tiny percentage of that ‘investment’ ended up in the hands of ‘working’ taxpayers.) Tax/control via debt... Example: the student debt issue - some O talk, no policy action to alter its course... would be a cute equivalent spoofn of O's site. From the very few minutes of the debate I watched it was made clear that the chances of either one of them really understanding something like charles hugh smith-The Hidden Cost of the "New Economy": New-Type Depression is nil Again - rather than playing 'helpful idiot' whacking at one or the other, why don’t we wake up (yep, u2 Bitch ) and see that neither the Republicrats nor the Democans have any intention of re-forming our relationships with the financincesters, of cutting deficit spending, of reducing the reach of government, or of curtailing costly wars and 'empire building'. Neither of them will help you break your denial 26 things to get done before the global debt collapse :haha: Don't even try to out ridiculous me

Steve46, I understand but I daresay that even in these tough economic times if we were privy to how it unfolds, many of those you are using as examples ultimately become ‘faders away’ . I have just seen it too many times. .. (and I’ve know too many guys who are brighter and more talented than me who don’t stick because they never really get self and method aligned, etc etc.) and…was not in any way implying that it’s “coming to us on a platter” ! On the contrary, the ‘find your own way’ traders I’m talking about typically have to deepen several more levels of toughness than the ‘found someone who will teach me to be profitable’ types. …and are required to ‘change’ more profoundly than the ‘teach me’ trading students ever do! And I’m going by numbers when I make these claims. Maybe our differing conclusion are from evidence diverging by pure chance, (or maybe you attract more conformists than I do ) . My sample is comprised of about 2000 developing traders I have been exposed to close enough to develop some insight into their processes and p/l's– ~ half as a broker with a book, and the other half as a fellow broker, as a trading trainee, as a trainer/vendor, as a firm principle and employer, as a fund manager with clients who also traded their own money, etc. as a peer of all of the above and of traders, as a mentor, etc. ie It’s not just a sample of one. But fwiw - my own case: In the early days, I had the episodic, but luckily sufficient, ‘discipline’ to stick to a way that was not my own – rather inflexible, seasonal trading. It was very profitable. I was extremely lucky ... Also, I went through an extreme ‘search’ stage… spending more USD on training, systems, books, seminars – other ppl’s ways- than most … even more than many traders ever lose or make… we’re talking 6 figures… But - windfall profits via someone else’s ways or not, and exposure to a multitude of others’ methods or not – ultimately I had to find my own way or get out of trading … much shorter term trading, developing MarketTyping, and developing a ‘portfolio’ of systems to exploit the MarketTyping ... So again I will assert that from the whole of samples, most of the small percentage of those that survive and thrive do “find their own way” - a ‘way’ that is closely matched 1) to the representations of the auctions they perceive best, 2 ) to the way they mentally process things and 3) to the levels of stress they can ‘metabolize’ and 4)…

Thanks Steve46, but my questions were going back to posts made by Negotiator (and goodoboy and …) about how they are defining / using the ‘discipline’ word…I should have clarified that… nonetheless good post. One point of disagreement with your thinking: It has been my experience that the preponderance of the small sample of those who do survive and thrive are in fact what you’re calling "do it yourselfers" at their core… (and, secondarily, they are also simultaneously open enough to seek teaching help, and guidance, when necessary) … and that in the whole of the sample I’ve been exposed to, I’ve discovered that no amount of “find someone who IS winning and get them to show you how its done” will save 80% of those who initially choose that route. It's partly because, as DBP just posted, “Unfortunately, most of those who claim to be willing and able to help him will only make things worse.”. But much more importantly, as I have previously pounded on many times, a trader who learns methods and even internal skills that are not compatible with his true self typically ends not in failure but in the fade away (and btw - fade away' s are a part of the failure 'stats') (Note: generally - I’m talking about independent traders, while it seems you are primarily focused on teaching ways to succeed as an employee for a firm. Yours is a valuable perspective to add into the trading forum mix and I’m glad you contribute on TL.)

bump fwiw ... asking sincere, not frivolous, questions ...

Is Persistence Enough to Succeed? This is probably a question which is more broadly applicable than to just trading and it would probably be helpful to hear from those well versed in current (not always necessarily correct though) views in the field of psychology. Is it enough to be just very persistent at something in order to become successful at it whilst not having bucket loads of natural ability and possibly more importantly, the passion for it? I would note that by success I mean replicable positive results, not necessarily be at the very top of the tree so to speak. My feeling is it depends. Probably a great deal on the type of guidance the individual receives. I think that natural ability is only fulfilled with persistence. Clearly therefore, there will be some individuals with very little need for external influence to experience some degree of success. Yet there will be some who are extremely persistent who lack the flair and intuition (or whatever you want to call it but please, that's a different thread!) to know what they should be doing and there are those who have the flair and so on but not the persistence. How important do you consider each factor?

Back off topic “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.” Sinclair Lewis 14 defining characteristics of fascism: The U.S. in 2012 - Madison Independent | Examiner.com … “... sometimes nothing happens for a whole decade. Sometimes a whole decade happens in a week” Lenin Why Are Americans So Easy to Manipulate? "...don't call me austrian, not fit to The picture kept will remind me don't call me austrian, not fit to be The picture kept will remind me"

Back on topic Chart Of The Day: Hourly Earnings, Or The Lack Thereof | ZeroHedge

Fiat Currency and the Emerging Police State | John Rubino | Safehaven.com wtf … maybe when I get Austrian figured out I will write a book … How To Be An Austrian And Not Even Know It… but will probably never get past wtf… too many Austrians are ‘gov’t austrians’ – they're one dam ‘academic’ trick from being tricked into the Key again - ‘forever’ … how many really see to really ‘live’ that the left is collectivism, etc ‘imposed’ from ‘below’ and the right is collectivism, etc. ‘imposed’ from ‘above’? … that they are a fake opposition? it’s amazing so much 'Austrian' bled through in that post… the intention was only to out – ridiculous dbp ( who, btw, did take a pretty good swipe at ridiculous) I did it for TL. No one cares if zdo is uber ridiculous, but if dbp looks ridiculous it becomes sort of a "say it ain’t so, Joe" moment

Thanks a lot for the label. What’s an Austrian? … speaking of aust… ‘austerity’ I was just fussing over in a trading psych thread how the word ‘discipline’ takes on many different meanings… while in the conversations we act as if it only has one meaning … looks like ditto for the ‘austerity’ word :confusedmuppethead?: Will someone please clarify for us what the financial press, the political talking heads, etc, etc. mean when they talk about ‘austerity’? like …in this article, ‘austerity’ is “needed” AND it won’t “work” Christine Lagarde On Austerity: 'It's A Very Narrow Path To Be Taken' Thanks.