The Trader's Mind I - The Trading Contradiction

One of the real contradiction traders face is that the forces that attract people to trading are exactly what make them lose in trading.

For most traders, trading is attractive because they can:

• Make a lot of money
• Get rich quickly
• Have the best commute
• Make a good living trading only 2 hrs every day.
• Live anywhere
• No bosses or employees needed
• Be unaffected by economy, political shifts, natural disasters, etc.
• No hard assets, office space, etc needed.

Do you want to have an income in the top 10% working for yourself two hours from your home while you can browse the computer? Well, who wouldn't?

Lets step back a moment and see how someone outside the trading world may evaluate these criteria:

• Make a lot of money - greedy
• Get rich quickly - impatient
• You have the best commute - lazy
• Make a good living trading only 2 hrs every day. - super lazy
• Live anywhere - mercurial
• No bosses or employees needed - poor social skills
• Be unaffected by economy, political shifts, natural disasters, etc. - fearful
• No hard assets, office space, etc needed. - unattached.

As you can see, the worst developed personalities are naturally attracted to trading and its no wonder that 80% of traders lose everything they ever put into trading. To be successful, you need to fight the very qualities that brought you to trading in the first place. This is the contradiction that traders face on the very first day that they begin to trade.

This is how each of the above qualities impacts your trading:

• Greedy - Makes you stay in a winning trade too long until it becomes a loser.
• Impatient - Forces trades, enter too early on poor signals
• Lazy - does not work on improving one's understanding of the market and trading system.
• Mercurial - Emotional trading, revenge trading, chasing price with every turn.
• Poor social skills - Inability to learn from the experiences of other traders
• Fearful - Cant take trades, exit trades too early, unable to hold through a pullback
• Unattached - Jump from trading system to trading system whenever current system gives a bad day

I know of no single trader who started without at least half of these afflictions.

Once you acknowledge that just choosing to be a trader automatically sets you up for failure, you have the opportunity to amend the very qualities that brought you to trading and modify yourself to be the very opposite and thus be successful.