johnw

The fact that so few people have the capability to define themselves has more to do with social conditioning than stupidity IMO but there is only a very fine line of separation. This being the case then all that weakness needs to be knocked out of them before they can proceed, but of course it never happens and this in turn leads to the sometimes hilarious posts that TL provides. But all jokes aside, the first step in retail trading is to define and master freedom. The first taste of freedom for most people is the freedom to become lost and rather than identify this challenge and address it, they discover the welcoming bosom of TL and all it's anonymity. Their game is over before it has even started. God, who I am convinced, has a wicked sense of humour, gave Retail Traders PCs to assist them in their daunting task, and at the same time created Trading Forums to further tilt the playing field against them without being caught red-handed in doing so.. The rest is history I am very much afraid ... in no time at all the Forums were ring fenced by shanty communities of Vendors all pitching their wares in the blind hope that they could eke out a living without having to go near the markets they so fear. Mind you if you thing that trading is weird how about the situation facing the US. US Voters chose the Candidate who they felt would treat them most kindly and gently over the next four years. To hell with the reality facing the Country .. that sort of rational did not suit the majority and so they reshaped their rational to suit their emotional needs/desires. Should all prove interesting to watch. In defense of Trading Forums ... everything a person needs to become a successful Trader is right here

Most probably. If each of us can devise a means of moving the uncertainty of trading in our favour then we should call it what we want, since trading is as much about managing freedom as it is about managing uncertainty. I call my approach 'the family pet' since it seems to offend almost nobody and induces a sense of humour ...

I wondered who would be first to post FA Investopedia .... it was a 50/50 call as far as I was concerned

Definition of 'Technical Analysis' A method of evaluating securities by analyzing statistics generated by market activity, such as past prices and volume. Technical analysts do not attempt to measure a security's intrinsic value, but instead use charts and other tools to identify patterns that can suggest future activity. Read more: Technical Analysis Definition | Investopedia

I agree, this game is won by People who train themselves to make good decisions in times of uncertainty and then apply those decisions to the active market. The Brokers will tell you that the survival rate after one year of trading is 1:200 and when you add the number of People who do not open an account, but who commit time and energy (but do not commit themselves) I would hazard a guess and say that the rate drops to something more like 1:500. Or to put it another way ..... of every 100,000 People who venture into Trading, only 200 will survive the learning curve and move on to attempt to become a life long Trader. Please do not excite yourself over these numbers, they only serve to illustrate the Pyramid of Retail Trading. However, what does a Noobie do when confronted with this stark news. Do they they say to themselves, I am an average Guy and am not cut out to be one of 200 out of 100,000. Or do they assume themselves into an image of who they would like to be and push on to join the 99,800 on the scrap heap because they were unprepared to make the changes that the task demanded of them. Which brings me to the point of sound judgment What is sound judgment and what place (if any) does it play in Trading for a Living

So the battle between TA and FA is on again. I would sum it up as follows ..... Most People know FA about TA

[quote name=zdo ' date=' johnw - "shrink The Elephant and Increase The Rider " doesn't make me feel better already ) ...[/quote] that is a pity because The Elephant and The Rider do not exist other than in the Reader's perception ... it is a metaphor. And so, if you choose to change the relationship of emotions and rational to a point more closely resembling balance then you will need to address the issue of The Elephant and The Rider along with all the other issues that were in play before Buddha made his dramatic entrance into your life. Which brings us to the point of adding to a problem whilst we are trying to address it. This in turn brings us right back to trading where so many People think (assume) that adding more information will reduce the risk in trading, which in turn will lead to bigger profits ... they could not be more wrong if they tried.... they have missed the point completely, but still they push on. And that brings us back to clarity which leads to freedom and it's running mate balance To say that we humans struggle with balance would be the mother of all understatements. No wonder we have so much trouble with clarity

It is funny how we are all different ..I have followed the Eastern approach because it suits me and makes sense, and I found the western approach to be too biased towards the rational understanding of the emotional side. In the end, all Romes point to Rome.... to put it another way ...it doesn't matter how you skin the cat just so long as you wind up with a bald pussy.

The chapter is based on Buddha's metaphor The Elephant and The Rider

gm zdo, You are right on the money with this one zdo ... the ingredient for trading (and life for that matter) is 'clarity' and clarity is borne of freedom ... traps are the mortal enemy of freedom The beauty of trading is that it spanks the Trader every time the Trader feels that the trade is not going his way. Eventually he either gives up or learns that he must follow The Price through the process of surrendering his own ego .... this is the beginning of clarity ... this is the beginning of The Trader learning to observe and remember As for The Elephant and The Rider I wondered how long it would take for Buddha and Eastern thoughts to appear over the horizon on this thread. It is a good analogy only if you want it to be, but be very careful by accepting it at face value since the Rider appears to be facing daunting odds. Why not shrink The Elephant and Increase The Rider and have The Rider walking alongside The Elephant in complete harmony .... doesn't that make you feel better already. Have you studied the 13 chapters of Sun Tzu concerning the evils of war. He begins by saying that war should be avoided whenever possible and if prosecuted it should be short and quick, since everyone losses to some extent or another. Obviously, someone is not paying attention 2,500 years later in the 21st Century. All this information is freely available and can assist The Trader enormously, if applied in careful doses ... not too much and not too little.

Time Frames don't come into the picture at all. At any given moment you will see the same price as the Exchange (allowing for lag) providing your PC clock is accurate

Well here is my take on the bar close. Firstly my data feed is independent from my Broker so that I may keep a check on their synchronicity ... otherwise I am flying blind. My bars are zeroed in on the RTH open, which I confirm every morning. Now the bars... The bars are of the Traders creation, although I doubt many Retail traders fully appreciate this point .... they are what the Trader decides they should be in order that they may support his/her style of trading. Their size and type are largely irrelevant to anyone other than the Trader ... the High and Low are time stamped prices supplied from the Exchange and are therefore factual ... the Open, Close, MP, TYP etc are the creation of the Trader's fertile mind. Therefore the Close of a bar has as much meaning as the Trader assigns to it when he /she created the bar in the first place ... it is a snapshot of price at a regular interval...that is all it is. If a Trader can see recurring price behaviour based on a Bar Close, then he/she should be aware of the origins of the creation of the Close. When a Trader sees a recurring pattern based upon Exchange supplied information (ie price entering supply - demand zones) then that is a different matter entirely.

I would be interested to read your thoughts on the 'staggered time' concept.

gm Patuca, You appear to be confused ..very confused indeed. Why not give some thought to the information that the Exchange provides (the real World) and the notions that Patuca creates ( Putuca's World) The Exchange actually provides very little information, ...whereas there is no end to the bits and pieces that you can conjure up ... staring with bars, bar open, bar close. If you make this your starting point then many things will have a tendency to fall into place or drop by the roadside.

Good morning, Let us push on for a bit and talk of 'Confusion' and of 'Winners' because one is the opposite of the other. Losing is not the opposite of Winning which might suprise some of you, simply because losing is a function both of Winning and of Confusion. Winners must learn to accept losing as a part of their learning curve Confused people never learn from their loses and are therefore destined to remain confused. When Winners enter the world of trading, all they need to learn is The Art of Trading, because they are bringing their winning attitude and habits with them. When Confused people enter the world of trading, the fun begins and stays that way until they finally give-up or set about changing their attitude and habits. The sad reality that 99%+ of people fail to maintain an active account after twelve months shows how deeply engrained confusion is imbedded in our modern society. Never before has such an abundance of opportunity been showed upon us and we respond by being so poorly prepared. No wonder a small proportion of the people walk off with the bulk of the profits. In days gone by, this disproportionate distribution was the result of privilege, but sadly today it is the result of confusion. When I say that the mission of a Retail Trader is to ... buy into a rising market and sell into a falling market ... I mean exactly that. To spell it out, I mean that Buyers need to exit at higher prices than their entry and Sellers need to exit at lower prices than their entry. Is this confusing .... not to me it is not. If a Buyer fades his/her entry whilst prices are still falling in the hope of catching the bottom tick, then that is their business ... it does not change the mission at all. If anything it highlights their confusion over the workings of the market giving rise to further confusion over what is important and what is secondary. There exists confusion over the belief that the correct answer to confusion is discipline ... well now you have feed confusion with yet more confusion ... a little like putting out the fire with gasoline, or borrowing your way out of debt. Now, if you are thinking that consistency is a better path out of confusion and into the enlightened world of Winning, then I would agree with you.

hi there, Does anyone read Sun Tzu ...he is as relevant now as 2500 years ago, which I imagine means that whilst things change, People do not. Sun Tzu says that it is good to confuse your enemy ... well just let us take a moment to look around at all the countless threads and posts here at TL ... all we see is confusion confusion confusion. Complicity versus simplicity .... all I see is confusion. We buy into a rising market ... we sell into a falling market ... that is all I know and it is all I need to know.... and that is not discipline, it is common-fucking-sense. buen fin de semana

This thread makes people think ... some people are stretched by this thread and some consider the posts they read and prefer to remain the same. Either way, it is a good thread and this is reflected in the civility of the posts... perhaps we are all too 'disciplined' to act otherwise. To me, discipline remains a crutch at best, but the advantage of walking with the assistance of a crutch is that you are aware at all times that you must lose the crutch at some stage and recover your ability to walk and run. It all depends on how high you wish to set the bar. The good news is what ever we do is only with us for a lifetime ...so how important is that. Perhaps a new thread with the same level of thoughtfulness and civility might begin to unravel the mystery of why less than 1% of Retail Accounts survive the first year.

Is Persistence Enough to Succeed? Well, let us attach persistence to your belief to succeed at making good consistent money from the markets. The first river to cross is to ask your self "Am I prepared to do whatever is required" If your passionate response is YES then you will succeed. During the planing of your assault and success over the markets, one of the questions you will ask of yourself is "will I involve Steve46 or will I involve other people in my quest to win. If you begin with a belief and therefore remove all limitations over your thoughts and consequently your actions, you will not fail. My suggestion is to always start with a simple belief which will then lead you into questions which leads you into research and then into planing and finally you take action. Be prepared to change everything from yourself to the usual use of words. Accept nothing until it is proven to your satisfaction. Start no action until you are assured of the outcome. Be persistent in your pursuit of your beliefs and you will not fail.

gm Rande, Staying within the boundaries of trading ..... are you saying (in your professional capacity) that the mind under stress differs intentionally from periods when it is not under stress and that discipline is a conscious action to impose order at these times. I agree with your 'internal team' as you know, although my mind paints a different picture, most probably resulting from a somewhat different learning process to yours. But to me, the whole exercise is have the mind performing under trading stress as it does when the pressure is off ... I do not see adding a layer of management (discipline) as a solution. Nobody said it is easy to achieve unless of course you relax back into it. there is an old saying "It is just one more river to cross and having finally crossed it you look back and see that there never was a river" cheers

good morning, I would like to push on with a few more thoughts concerning discipline and it's smothering effects on emotions. It seems well documented now that discipline and it's close traveling companion 'willpower' are not the answer to losing weight or stopping smoking, or most probably they are not the answer to correcting any of our habits that we think are in need of correction .... they very simply do not address the underlying root cause(s) of the problem. I am stretching my memory at the moment, but some time ago, I was told what happened with the Navy Seals . The number of Soldiers completing the program was a small proportion of the intake, in fact only 1 in four completed the course. This was a perplexing problem since the selection program was good and the intakes consisted of men who were well above the norm in all respects.... intelligence, fitness, application, dexterity, they were all highly talented, highly disciplined men. And so the problem must be with the training program itself. It is not hard for us to understand that the program was underpinned by willpower/ discipline which demands that each man individually bears an enormous emotional load until either the program is completed or the man fails .... do or die. The problem with bearing these individual stresses is that when discipline/willpower gives way, it collapses completely leaving nothing other than an empty shell. The program was modified as a result of these findings, and I imagine that the changes were not made lightly, since the 'old school of thinking' worshiped the 'do or die' attitude. Emotions were acknowledged and men were taught to break down seemingly herculean tasks in manageable stages and work and talk/discuss as a team ..... they are no less the men than they were, in fact they are better ... the pass rate of the course went from 1 in four to 3 out of 4. Steve 46 .... your training program as briefly described, is built along the same lines ... you are using the combined power of the group to create success for the individuals. If you don't mind me saying so, it is not discipline that is important to you, but rather it is expectation. in other words, you expect your Students to hold expectations about themselves and the others in the group ... this comes from a deeper level than discipline IMO. I think that your Students are lucky to have you. Neg ... I agree that most people believe that finding a brilliant entry system is the most important factor in trading. I say this from experience, because it was not until I turned the damn charting software off and started to think about what I was trying to do and how I could go about doing it, that I was able to put together a program for myself ... in some ways it has turned out to be easier than I thought in the areas that I thought about. It has been the areas that were under my radar that caused the challenges. 4EverMaAT ... I agree with you about rolling back your limitations .... I think that is a huge part of life and a very satisfying one. ForexTraderX I try to encourage participation from from subconscious at all times ... it starts as a scary exercise in faith I know, but before long it becomes second nature .... the problem is that we are not taught the things we really need to know when we were young and so at some stage it becomes very desirable to relearn our approach to ourselves and therefore to life and roll back our limitations. As you may have gathered, I don't think much of the discipline/willpower approach to life ... it is suffocating when it gets out of hand ..and it will. Just as it is not recommended to play a contact sport on frightened tense muscles (you will suffer injuries) the same can be applied to life and the approach we take to it. When we relax back in a truly focused manner into a task like trading and when we allow our emotions to line up (rather than ignore them and have them pulling against each other) then there is no telling just what we can achieve. Retail Trading has a horrible success rate ... not even 1% remain active after one year so I am told.... and yet I would venture to suggest that the typical Newbie is well above average IQ.... so what is the problem .. why the incredible failure rate? Three things have never changed ... Trading, Taxes and Prostitution Leaving two of them aside for a rainy day, Trading has seen the formation of Exchanges, the creation of derivatives, the application of computers ... in fact it is fair to say that some of the finest minds in the World are devoted to trading. But really, nothing has changed in Trading.... 'buy into a rising market, sell into a falling market' ... how can we possibly screw this up? Well, we can and we do screw up to such an extent that less than 1% survive the learning curve. Just as the Admirals and senior ranks of the Seals knew they had a problem, then so should we acknowledge the same. The sad plain fact is that what we think we know is just plain wrong and we need to search out what is correct for us and then have the gonads to let go of the past and relax back into the new. Even if Retail Trading doubled it's success rate, that would leave a failure rate exceeding 98% after one year of trading. If the World actually needed Retail Traders for it's continuance, it would starve to death with this failure rate. Unlike Business which builds up a critical mass of goodwill based upon excellence of design, manufacturing, value, service etc. we do not. Each day is a brand new adventure for us and the success of today balances totally upon our shoulders in the same manner as Pro Sports, and Performing Arts. These two groups have embraced psychology in order to enhance performance because they have seen the difference it's contribution makes. I daren't even mention the Martial Arts and their believes in the completeness of the individual. Just a few thoughts for a Monday morning.

I have two questions to put to you. 1 ...do you think that Navy Seal Training is based on discipline. 2 .. do you think that the majority of people here on TL think that discipline is one of the main keys to successful trading .... maybe even the most important element of trading look forward to your thoughts.

Discipline I presume we are discussing 'self discipline' and so here is a definition I read on the net. "Self-discipline can be defined as the ability to motivate oneself in spite of a negative emotional state" If you require the application of self discipline in any endeavour you chose to undertake, then surely you are not fully committed to it from the beginning. In truth, you are most probably attracted to the endeavour through the images you dream up within your fertile mind and you hope that you will grow into it by forcing it upon yourself through the imposition of discipline. Little do you realise that through this imposition you are shutting down the very components of your emotional state that you need to succeed. And so, let us push on to trading. Our bright young person wants to escape the pressures of the rat race ... and who could blame them for that. They rule out Formula 1 for obvious reasons, Polo is out for obvious reasons, starting up a a mainstream business is too scary and anyway, no bright ideas come to mind ... winning lotto is numerically stacked against the Winner BUT, my goodness ...what about trading ... it is perfect Work my own hours, no qualifying hoops to jump through, holidays in the sun with first class travel and accommodation.... perfect ... just bloody perfect. Now, what I will do is buy some books, buy the most powerful computer for the least amount of money I can find (after all, I am taking on Wall Street) ... and through discipline I will be in the money before this Christmas. And what is more, I won't quit my day job until I am in the money. I would venture to suggest that almost all aspirants bring some sense of self discipline into trading ..why not, everybody admires self discipline. Now, listen very carefully please ..... Until you rid your head of all the crap you have been taught over a lifetime of manipulation and control in the outside world, you will never join the scarily thin ranks of Long Term Traders .... when I say never, I mean never ever, not next month, not next year, not next decade...I mean never never ever.... I hope that I am not being too subtle... please tell me and I will give you the uncensored version. By all means bring with you the virtues of honesty, respect, decency, good health ... the markets will teach you humility if it has eluded you thus far. If fact, the markets will teach you everything you need to know to trade them successfully. Yes, you need a creative mind and yes you need an open mind ... golly, there is the first riddle to solve. Yes you need an emotional state that is 100% committed and I mean every dark corner and recess .... you must be in a state of total emotional commitment. OMG, I need to tackle this challenge and I haven't even opened a Broker's account yet As you approach this state , you will gradually begin to understand what it is to be totally committed...once you have cross this tipping point, there is no looking back as it draws you forward like a magnet. As for discipline, just put it out of your mind and get on with the journey of becoming a Trader [/b]

I quite agree ...less is often more. I get the feeling here at TL that people think that if they do the prep and keep the journals and logs and generally add work, then a profit pops out the other end. This is a singular game for which the vast majority are ill equipped and will perish without knowing how it happened. Trading requires self reliant clear thinkers, who will do what ever it takes to succeed. Since most people here at TL would say they posses these attributes, the problem they face becomes abundantly apparent.... they have created a paradox for themselves ... with no solution because they think they are the person that they need to become.

gm wrbtrader I totally agree with your comments and many thanks for posting them. My post, if you didn't pick it up, was slightly leading, in that I am interested to know what you have garnered from tracking the Big Boys behaviour and methods. If you would prefer not to share this info for any reason, I quite understand.

gm Colonel B, Many thanks for your efforts and your time. I will look into ES/ZN relationship over the weekend. However, I would value your opinion on this question ..... Given that the vast majority of ES daily volume is traded by Large Players each of whom have their own system of trading (including no doubt intermarket correlations) ... these systems clash as you well know. However, no matter how the Large Boys trade, their trades are going to appear on my price screen as a buy/sell at the ask/bid. Since trade-able price waves are preceded by congestion or by supply/demand zones, I now have a trigger and a direction at these occurrences, and so all that remains is to insert a price into an OCO order. So my question is...... 'Why would I bother learning what the Big Boys already know' Actually, I would value all opinions from Posters who have pondered on this one.