Facing harsh reality and doing something about it

Posted on March 22, 2008
Tags: Day Trading, Personal development, Trading Resources |

Very wise words from Dr. Brett. I’ve come across this often myself, people not wanting to hear tough truths or put in the hard work. When challenged about their methods and systems they typically get offended or just disappear thinking I don’t want to reveal a “secret” formula or indicator value that assures success. The truth is that most people don’t have the time, willingness, stamina and genuine interest in the markets to devote the time and effort it takes to overcome trading problems and become profitable.

TraderFeed: Denial as a Trading Motivation

But, for me, the eye-opener was that he had never thought to check out his rule. Even if he didn’t want to crack an Excel primer and learn how to find answers for himself, he could have simply kept records of his overnight trades vs. his intraday trades and seen what was working and what wasn’t.But he didn’t do that.

That’s when it hit me: He didn’t *want* to know.

My caller was not happy with my analysis and did not seek me out further. I didn’t deliver what he wanted. He wanted a self-help psychological technique to keep him disciplined, so that his rules would make him money. He didn’t want someone pointing out that his rules were invalid and that following invalid rules with discipline will simply lead to ruthless consistency in drawdowns.

Comments

3 Responses to “Facing harsh reality and doing something about it”

Andrew on March 23rd, 2008 7:39 am

Excellent remarks by Nathaniel I thought in the comments to that particular post.

It’s like looking into an abyss to think that you might never be able to succeed in an endeavour.

I remember losing a particular chess game from a winning position when I was 22yrs old and many years into my obsession, and after the defeat walking around like a zombie in the rain for hours as I had the realization hit me that I would never be a world champion or even a famous player, it’s simple math.. almost everybody will fail to be a star and most will also fail to be consistently profitable at any level higher than a decent job, same with trading.. It’s painful to have to face that truth.

I’m also becoming more comfortable with the idea that we need the base of the pyramid and trying to lose less sleep over the whole matter.
eyal on March 24th, 2008 5:41 am

Andrew - I agree with the part of Nathaniel’s comment that says that by definition you can’t eliminate the average, you can only shift it. That’s true in every field. I’m not sure I understand his criticism of Brett though. Is it about Brett’s choice of only wanting to deal with so-called serious traders or if he’s thinking that Brett is naive to think that everyone ‘can do it’ if they just put the effort it. I think I didn’t get his meaning on that.
Andrew on March 24th, 2008 7:39 am

Yep, that was unfair, was thinking just about the whole nature of the money in trading has to come via the base of a pyramid from definition. I don’t know to what level you need to legislate to provide wolf protection for sheep, but I believe you need to provide some.