zdo

yep guys, that’s sage advice about having an office away from home. :!: Just as important is learning to make distinct clicks between ‘trader’ and ‘dad’ ie learning to really leave the family stuff at home and the trading stuff at the office. When I’m successful at that, my trading is completely unaffected by ‘teenagers in trouble’ etc. and also the family has zero impressions of what kind of day I’ve had… With those boundaries, discussing positions, etc. is definitely a no no. It didn’t take me long to realize she really doesn’t respect and admire me needing ‘support’ and that any temptations to ‘utilize’ her for that were clear indications that I needed to do some inner work and growing (up)…. really there are plenty of other worthwhile and important things to talk about or do… Way back when, my wife and I had to come to an agreement to have one ‘annual report’ meeting. For us, that has turned out to be sufficient ‘disclosure’… We dropped it because it is no longer really necessary now… On a related note - The very hardest thing for me to learn was to keep my mouth shut about her spending… to just keep my dam Amex aneurisms to myself. Most of the time her spending is quite ‘reasonable’ then come these inexplicable ‘binges’ Ultimately, I had to make the choice that the way for me to ‘win’ was to make it insignificant to the bottom line. btw NOT insignificant to the bottom line is out of state costs for grad school at a private university… These kids just don't get it...we both end up commiserating and doing ‘support’ with and for each other several times a year for that.

Traders That quote is the essence of, or at least a pretty accurate way of describing, what all the “trading pyschology” bullshit is about (and I say bullshit because the word ‘psychology’ is the wrong word!). Whether by really ‘clearing’, by ‘interruption’ techniques, by de-sensitization, or by ‘manipulation of conflict’ (via standing aside or throttling back, or ‘external’ audits and controls, … or whatever) – thriving in spite of the emotional peptide floods, the hormone “juices”, turning a profit despite the varying wetware limitations, is what “working on themself and their own psychology” is all about Many “new or fairly new to trading” have not experienced the full consequences of emotional imbalances. Also, and I can’t emphasize this enough, there are HUGE discrepancies in individual susceptibilities to fear and to ‘lack of fear’. Some traders can go for months, some even years, without susceptibility and then wake up one morning drowning in it. (A sign of them on forums are posters who constantly denigrate the psych threads, etc., etc… then one day you never hear of them again... Another example are 'quant' whales who do well for ages then all of a sudden take down the whole dang firm…) …On the other hand, some traders are painfully beset by the trading challenges leveraged by fear or euphoria on a daily basis, starting on their first day ever or first loss ever or whatever… A very lucky few are ‘immune to the stuff’ period. They can’t help the rest of us and the best thing they can do is keep their postin mouths shut… “where to start” Rather than look for “where to start” ‘out there’ in a book or technique, I think it's better to literally set up multiple situations where the ‘juices’ are released for yourself. No ambiguity here : That is where to start – period. “in particular … a useful way” do mindfulness in each of those “starts” you just created. ( and, if you need, practice mindfulness beforehand ) “explore specifics of how” by ‘journaling’ your own process really ‘measuring’ might be a better word than ‘journaling’ – what we measure directly impacts what we ‘get’… …and do it each time!… each time, each challenge, will repeat but each will also be distinct, different to some degree. if you’re mindful … not easy to apply across the board to all trading challenges either http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/trading-psychology/8410-edge-first-integration-first-both-first.html When you know what you must work with to survive and thrive and move toward your own ideals – when you really understand!, then and only then include ‘out there’ - books, coaches, youtubes, peers, whatever, for help working on specifics … but don’t ever rely on them!… you’ll be just plain ole lucky if you ever really get any help at all from ‘out there’ … Negoc8r, as a super moderator, one of the things you could do to differentiate TL is get the “psychology” word out of the sub forum titles, etc. Name it Trader Self Development or something… others may have better suggestions for a title. Point is, get the 'psychology' contructs out of it folks... for traders, both the hard and the 'soft' sciences fall far short... ... gone again, guys http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/trading-psychology/10549-they-don-t-schedule-championships-trading.html

it does say "Forum dedicated to fundamental outlook, intermarket analysis, and marco & micro analysis." but... where does this end and not just another release begin ? 20 Global Implications Of French Presidential Election | Daniel Amerman | Safehaven.com ...

Everything You Need To Know About Europe's Dilemma In 4 Minutes | ZeroHedge Actually the ‘’political’ aspects of this “dilemma” exist and will manifest more and more all over the world... MoGuvmnt VerSus (what could be called )’Peak’Guvmnt - > LessGuvmnt see charles hugh smith-We Have Reached Peak Government What does MoGuvmnt ultimately look like to you? Have we really swung anywhere near its extremes yet?

Only certain brains need to include auction constructs and ‘model’ it. Only certain types of thinking… Only certain perceptual frameworks. Most of the bulsht I ultimately learned about auctions wasn’t really necessary… but at the time it seemed to be an important part of my own ‘puzzle’… Was just relaying some of my journey… As some will be likely quick to attest, you certainly don’t have to be an expert in the in’s and out’s of auctions and auction types to be a great trader… (and with that said …) your’s is a great point about “people do not start out trading with the idea that markets are auctions... Or… don't fully grasp the idea….many strategies are "castles built on sand" …” A great starting place for developing traders is to get really conscious of just how ‘bid’ vulnerable they are to uniform pricing mechanisms in the online ‘centralized’ auctions most of us participate in…how their own situationally ( and mysteriously also not ‘situational’ but internal) variable and subtle personal flavors of unconscious ‘price desperation’ interferes with performance… for all traders one of the key differentiations between ‘practicing to be a master’ and a ‘master practicing’ now must tear myself from the screen to go for golf lesson … it will be interesting to see if I can transfer ‘master practicing’ to that today ie :crap: to ??

"Exactamundo... [!!!!!] ... Life's too short to dilly dally with the uncool." Maybe Sam L Jackson in PulpFiction... but probably The Fonz... ( Traders need more than two... Also - and hopefully this won't derail the "very basics" aspect of this thread - for a personal 'auction' representation/model to start being functional for me, I had to push my 'model' to include multiple simultaneous auctions, each with different 'structures' and 'competency levels' of it's members. This develops from differences along scales of centralization (and availability of options of whether to utilize the ' centralized' market or not ) and participants' vulnerabilities within an auction to uniform pricing mechanisms, etc, etc etc etc... )

... This is the Kobayashi Maru scenario on a national scale, and there is no exit if you stay within the rules of the game: euro or drachma, etc. Here's my "crazy idea that's so crazy it might just work": Greece should switch to the U.S. dollar as its currency while renouncing all debt denominated in euros. I don't mean a "haircut," I mean billiard-ball bald: 100% of all debt denominated in euros would be renounced. Not one euro will be repaid. ... [as] The world's favorite black market currency is of course the U.S. dollar. charles hugh smith-A Crazy Idea That Might Just Work: Greece's New Currency, the U.S. Dollar

True Trend followers have less natural inclination to ‘project’ , to ‘predict’ with all of it’s pitfalls… All the fear dimensions are still applicable. In this topic, we could have just as easily discussed Niederhoffer and Taleb (neither one a true trend follower). I don’t know much about either of them, but about ten years ago there was a good NY’r mag article comparing them and the sharp contrast discussed therein was that Niederhoffer didn’t operationally ‘believe’ in outliers to his downfall, but for Taleb, a dam outlier was just around every next corner. And ultimately he has burned slowly down / out (by 'peripheral 'fear' and) by paying too much for the (outlier) opportunities (that never showed – imo, because these days almost every trade is placed with (or against) the (apparent) stability of the ‘state’ :just how much more offtopic can I get in just two sentences: smiley) For most of the managers who blow up (or have to pretty up the record or falsify the books or whatever) it wasn’t fear (and btw it wasn’t ‘stochastics’ either) that got them. They were subjects out near the tails of the curve who never needed work with emotions and fear. In a way, they‘forgot’ fear, went blind to it, had it occluded by whatever … In the end, they didn’t fear enough to (in a word, TN’s word…) “prepare” A few posts back I linked to The Neurobiology of Fear There’s a small (and so typical) ‘fight’ over at http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/psychology/12958-illusion-control-first-step-emotional-sobriety.html about who needs to work with fear - some even questioning the need for anyone to ever have to 'work' with emotions. The points to be derived from those links (and from the ‘manager’ and other discussions herein) is the great variability within samples of traders on the dimensions of 1) when uncertainty starts to degrade performance, 2) the great variability within samples of traders on the dimensions of scope and reach / what uncertainties are ‘generalized’ by the system and to start degrading performance, and finally, 3) great variability within samples of traders on the dimension of recovery from upsets / turning the fear back off when it has been triggered… Out of place fear does lead to diminished performance. The underlying consensus in most discussion and even research is that diminished performance is caused by disorganized, unfocused thought processes, lack of self-discipline, lack of commitment and a passive task orientation, etc… see OP, etc. Throughout this thread, I have questioned those “causes” – particularly the assumptions that if you do something about those “causes” you will avert / avoid the fear and its consequences …I continue to challenge you to view these ‘causes’ as symptoms and to see that trying to abate the effects of fear by manipulating symptoms does very little to get at the core of it… ie in today’s paradigms, the power of the frontal lobes is way way way over estimated If you need it, here is a stronger prescription: -clear the body of bound flow. … as if memories have a “back up” in the body and the system is set to automatic restore. You can do all the thinking work you want with old patterns and ‘fear’ – and even add in the very best techniques, finely tuned to your own conditions and stage – you can do all the finest mental manip in the world – but if you don’t clear those bindings out in the first body, you will revert to suboptimal capacity… you will remain fcked by fear… - really work to see ‘it’ and self as accurately as possible – done in the absence of judging… and then learn to act more to influence ‘energy’ and less to influence ‘facts’ -feel for real – feel in space… different from and far beyond the false associations to fit via ”drawing on the right side of the brain”, etc….and different from the way the neurolog’s and psycholog’s are currently using the term feeling as "products of the conscious mind, labels (given) to unconscious emotions", etc. (Rande, are you listening?) -be purpose – quite different from knowing or even understanding ‘one’s’ purpose… purpose is come through you… (faulty language, not faulty grammer ) there’s really no starting point or correct order to these... it’s ‘spherical’ (in a word) so …could have ordered it -align to purpose -get out of the way of real feeling… (all of these in many ways are ultimately getting out of the way instead of doing something, btw…) -continuously fine tune self image to more closely match reality… btw on this list this is the only place of mentation, of intentional doing, of ‘action’… -clear bound flow… or could order it like… etc… ie basically start at your strength and commit to getting to / through them all… ... Usually take June off, historically for quality vacations with the whole family. This year pushing it out to 7 or 8 weeks – with only three days where the whole nuke family is together… they’re essentially grown and gone now… time passes on :missy: Often lift all positions but this year will be leaving some longer time frame positions on and orders resting (for outlier potential :hello that doesn't blow up: smiley and a :hope: and a :snicker: smiley) so will be checking in off and on but not much posting… planning some more time completely off the grid out in nature … and more golf. Speaking of golf, I usually try to get in some pretty serious work on my golf game during this time so I’ll play all the ‘social’ games scheduled but I swear this year if I tee it up high and it don’t fly ie if the development and practice ain’t real fun, I will cancel the tee times and coaching and lessons and donate that money to charity :crap:…and go climb a mtn or something… Have a great couple of months and a great BIG MOON weekend Wishing all of you the very best, zdo

I’m awful (but I’m not as bad as they say I am), but I won’t disrespect you and call you an anal-yst I see and know what you’re saying and I won’t really try to convince you. The whole business of wave phenomena has a better explanation, imo, in Summation of Cycles anyways. But for other readers who may be exploring serious EW – if you’re really going to get into EW, build a construct grounded in the principle that if it’s not impulsing it is correcting … and in that context, price always DOES get the memo … and that EVERY corrective wave does have a logical count … comprehensive coverage (without "silly X's and Y's and who knows what else" ) is accomplished by adding a few more ‘patterns' to your repertoire ( ie make sure you fully understand Neely ) Example: To “ If a five wave EW pattern has a wave 4 that overlaps wave 1 slightly is it not a 5 wave EW pattern. The unbending rule followers say no it is not. “ I would respond – as true impulse is so rare, if a 3rd wave hasn’t cleared 1 enough to make any overlapping a very tiny possibility, an alternative corrective count is always indicated / advised anyway. With the overlap it likely still IS a correction, not a bull or bear impulse. The ‘time’ spent in clear impulse is minimal. ‘Time’ spent in ‘obvious’ 3 wave corrections is also minimal. Combined those ‘logical” / pretty / easy 5’s and 3’s, make up far, far less than 50% of the action. To master EW, the real work is knowing where you are in each (usually complex) correction (and that "it" is actually present 100% of the time …) ... … Assume discontinuity... ie avoid settling and assuming continuity! “The way of the Tao is reversal“ L. Tzu... ...again, my posts herein are for those who might be considering seriously studying EW - not for those who have been curious and have formed some impressions ... and not for those who occasionally see a wave - not that there's anything wrong with occasionally 'seeing' a count...:rofl:

He's not a trader... That's obvious :rofl: re: "...the roughly 50% of the time it is actually present" How could 'it' ever not be present ?

re ""Do You Use The Elliott Wave To Trade?"" ... just for subversive snicks (not) Drew Hempel :missy:

True trend following is my greatest trading challenge - even though consciously I am in deep awareness that sticking with outliers in seasonal trading in the early days kept me in the game long enough to get good at ways more aligned to my own nature... ... and mentions of the trail of 'wizard' blowups is just a timely reminder - "Victory Destroys Knowledge" DanJohn (plus "Everything works until it doesn't" DanJohnson ) :grin: I went for many, many years trading without any explicit “overall generalised view” – and it was fine for the most part. It didn’t 'cause' or prevent my episodic ‘fears’ or add or detract from my trading. Then some sort of ‘maturation’ kicked in and I started looking at the bigger picture (as BlueHorseshoe put it , the “philosophy” ) and working to build a gestalt at that level For me personally, it has been a real struggle too … things macro, while fascinating, have always been outside my natural wheelhouse … or at least it’s not something I got an early start at in life or had ready models for or had any easy grip on… …and you know what? The uncertainty is still around. How the middle part coming up, the consequences to and suffering of the peeps, etc is still uncertain. But the uncertainty of what the ultimate outcome of this conflagration of ‘networks’ (NWO’s etc.) grows less and less ‘uncertain’ by the day… :cryptc: This Is the First Time In History that All Central Banks Have Printed Money at the Same Time … And They’re Failing Miserably - Washington's Blog The Neurobiology of Fear The Natural Resonance Revolution by Drew Hempel (Paperback) - Lulu charles hugh smith-We Are Not Powerless: Resisting Financial Feudalism ... The other evening my wife and I were talking about some friends and she joked that it was amazing to her that they thought I was “well adjusted”. I replied that maybe I sometimes appear to be well adjusted because the ADHD keeps me from getting too compulsing in any one part of the OCD and I’m usually able to confine expressions of the Paranoid Schizophrenia to internet posting. She laughed… (and boys - let me tell you, after 25 years of marriage - that’s a good sign…) I’ve not been able to leave many quality, comprehensible footprints about my “overall generalised view” … but here and there have left a few pecker tracks :rofl:. ...you know what ?? ..Bottom line – while offshore alternatives and PM’s and food and water and such are important – spiritual ‘prepping’ is far far more important … “resistance forms archetypes” ???? TimRac's support notwithstanding…after what we’ve done with this thread TN is probably rolling over in his negotiation… :grin:

sneaking an It's Not Just Another Release post in over here ... it would fit in The Whole World is Next thread too... charles hugh smith-Where's the Collateral?

Yep… me too. Great spread or not, it seems to always be an afterthought mkt for me… go days without any thoughts of it at all … still, with it engaged and active or not, have been building a small sized long position since early April. Also, trying to build a larger ~53.40 avg price short position in USDINR… USDINR spread sucks! But the interest – ka ching !

“too often people get caught up in the protection of what they have” The very reasons for my interjections into this thread. This “caught up” is based in the substrate of ‘emotion’ (one word to be succinct - not really a wholly complete or accurate description ). Their quality of thinking of “preparation” does not come from consciously choosing quality of thinking and “preparation” before a session. It comes from capacities determined / permitted / enabled in this background substrate which literally orients the balance of how your perceptions are attenuated to threats or opportunities. “Normal” is unbalanced, skewed to threat based processing. In Tom’s case, yes his “preparation” paid off… but what I’m saying is it was really his capacity (his underlying freedom) to “prepare” that paid off. re “here is a problem, lets find the solution. I always liked his style” Still using Tom as an example, he may be discussing or describing it in terms of a “problem” but he is an example of someone whose mind is not really working with it like it is a “problem” / with something that is going wrong / that needs to be fixed at all. His mind work is emerging from a substrate context/orientation of “what’s working?” not “what’s wrong?”. In another thread, gosu recently alluded to how rare a strengths based approach really is… what I’m layering in here is that this approach is not something you can choose from daily thought to thought on a consistent basis UNLESS that more neutral , free emotional substrate is in place. “the protection of what they have” when explored more deeply reveals itself often to be a pretense of rationality. The neurology (to keep it brief) is actually highly defensive - built and maintained to keep emotional / experiential oscillations within a small range. There’s really no access to true rationality at all. Genuine mental ‘doing’ is impossible. Such a trader can’t really “prepare” well – at least not consistently… even with lots of willpower... Haven’t seen this particular interview but it should be noted that Tom B is a true trend follower (ie where outliers truly ARE the edge) and many of the risk, etc. ‘lessons’ traders think may be possibly garnered from his thinking are not practically applicable / easily transferrable to more typical traders and systems. ... an astute profile / scale for traders. I wonder how many know to really understand where they are on this scale and where they need to be... big part of fitting your system to your nature and something all would be advised to fine tune as much as possible - myself included when trying to accomodate multiple styles... Thanks

SIUYA, I know Tom and I can tell you without any hesitation, from day one he was one of the lucky ones who didn’t initially bring significant ‘fear reactivity’ to the game. Back to post 2 of this thread - neurologically, he is 'habitually' more oriented towards opportunity than he is toward threat at an effectively constant ‘baseline’ level (… and btw, I’m not saying he neglects or doesn’t include or experience the threat side of dealing with the ‘emotional’ dimensions.) However, he never did significantly fear himself and the chaos within. He is a great example of someone who had very low levels of the impediments to "preparation" that I have been discussing in this thread. … Incidentally, I can also tell you without any hesitation, he "thinks/ thought" about it but he is not and never has been in ‘deep awareness’ that he is that way when compared to most folks who get into the trading game.

TN, this is what I liked about your original post… and I am not discounting the cognitive strengths at all and really do appreciate your insights! … but it took only a tiny bit of temptation and little exertion for me to immediately throw the switch and try to put the train on a different track of the loop btwn 'fear' and facility to “prepare” at all or at least to leverage “preparation” up to where it is truly effective. ie sadly, the “big step to not experiencing fear etc” is really not much of a big step at all… So yes, “preparation” prevents the fear and other emotions… but it is literally emotion that allows you to “prepare”, to really leverage “preparation”, and thus ‘avoid’ the issues on your list… loop d loop… Underlying point is - Forebrain cannot impact deep brain proficiency nearly as much as deep brain can impact forebrain proficiency. … it’s really not the environment that becomes less or more “chaotic”… The source of my syschological posting is that more traders need to really profoundly get that and spend as much time and energy working with and on the emotional base aspects as they do on what else while ultimately amounts to cognitive (self) trickery.

BlueHorseshoe, DBP has a deep legacy of quality posting in T2W and TL (and ____ ?) ...bringing a very consistent message and education about S/R, using volume appropriately, etc. to anyone who needs it / is attracted to that way. :haha: Why he needs to occasionally interlude in the ‘sychological’ threads and discount emotions remains as an ongoing mystery ... I have long suspected he is actually dbcooper :rofl: Regardless, his overall body of work puts him at the very top of the list of quality posters about trading!!! Seriously, we're lucky to have him up here on TL... I too am curious about why he stopped posting… but I’m just as curious as to why he posts at all … and also just as curious about those same questions about anyone and everyone else, including myself… Bottom line peeps, IF you are interested in using volume effectively (without learning thousands of pattern permutations avec vsa, etc.) dig through and find the essence of what he's teaching... getting his book is a good starting place... then hope he stays around this time long enough to answer your remaining questions with some real time examples...

Hope is (a flavor of) anxiety. ...and isn't trying to 'stuff it' is as dangerous as stuffing any of the rest of the emotions ??? contrary mf today ain't I? Have a great weekend all

it was just a very general link - that the levels and intricacies of extroversion and introversion are usually somewhere in the mix anytime “maybe I’d rather _______ than trade” content comes up... I suspect more introverts are attracted to trading than are extroverts... but have no clue what the real stats are...

These might initially seem to be very same but We have a choice. We can continue to work with mitigating, modulating, preventing, etc episodic mental and emotional reactions/responses – dealing with “both” ( as Obsidian made so cryptically clear – ) or We can work with whatever “chronic” background we may be coming from I hope the following is less cryptic than I typically am … you are either doing one or you are doing the other. You can’t do both at the same time! and it is also ultimately senseless to do one of them in the service of the other whups – that non cryptic moment was sure short lived …

how 'bout Both fear and hope? (not to mention several other possible 'co-emotions'...)

No, “pushing sh.t up hill from the beginning” is chronically coming from the background of fear-reactivity. The examples used - “lack of preparation”,“biased views” , “inconsistent monitoring of markets”, “indecision”, “ just can't help but take impulsive trades where you know you shouldn't”, “ don't have rigid enough risk mechanisms in place to exit the trade” etc are but symptoms of fear-reactivity (regardless of whether one is 'triggered' enough to experience the sensations of the fear emotion or not). The strong “just say no” tactic that TN is talking about is spot on for a certain group… (note again I'm not making wrong the 'keeping the lid on it' way of dealing with 'emotions...) but it is a wholly inadequate for many others in here… and for us to just say “that’s good - so it must be good for everyone” is a serious disservice to the TL as a whole… (and quite classically, many of those for whom it’s “good” advice will not even acknowledge the situation others are in - talkin’bout “assuming” - now that’s assuming!! ) For many, doing the opposite of the items on that list (and other trading issues) can not be plainly done by just doing the opposite. (the 2nd worst sentence of the week ) Nor can those things TN listed and the fear reactivity behind them be readily trained or conditioned away by typical practice trading, desensitization, relaxation, etc etc. … there’s no getting around “do the preparation”, etc . What I’m talking about is the state from which we do . To distill it down to, for example, ‘relaxed’ (or whatever) is adequate for some… but definitely not for others… and I’m going to “assume” TN cares about those for whom it is not adequate too…

and with good reason...

It’s amusing and, simultaneously, serious how you guys think I’m disagreeing with you… please note that I’m not discounting what you are saying and that you are discounting what I’m saying… "But didn't we do all of this several years ago?" No "It's not so much a matter of controlling fear as getting rid of it. Trading should not be a battle to control emotions. Trading should be relaxed. If one isn't relaxed, he ought not to be trading. At least not yet." Again, it’s amusing and, simultaneously, serious how you conclude I’m disagreeing with you… The thread state is currently at “relaxation through willpower”. While that may be sufficient in your world, it is far from sufficient for many... so if things were just dropped at this point we're just stroking ourselves and helping no one… Negoc8r, what did you mean by the title of this thread?