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Ourself and a high stranger whom we feel
We are but act as if we are not
Sometimes we identify with a failure
Seeming to perish with its mortal frame
It is on the rare occasions when there is a breakthrough in the being within that the trader becomes aware of something in him that is at his center. Most times however the trader identifies himself with the most antagonistic person in their lives instead of being their true selves.
A silence overhead, an inner voice
A vision seated in the heart
An unwalled wildness and a fashioned point
He sees the secrets no words can speak.
While price movement seems to have been initiated by some freak chance in the cosmos or some reason the trader is blind to. But the trader is so tuned to the market that he can dance to its every flip, fling and toss - like an intimate pair. The Zone is within reach and the barrier is the trader himself who has fashioned himself negatively with corresponding the inner beliefs. The real person inside has to come out.
Reference: The Mental Game of Poker by Jared Tendler
These heed not the deceiving outward play
They turn not to the moment's busy tramp
But listen with the still patience for the Unborn
For the slow footsteps of the Trade
Approaching through huge distances of Time
The surface happenings are apt to mislead as to their causes and results. A vision confined to the crowded hour of the phenomenon cannot grasp the full significance of the whole movement. Those that use their impartial eyes as guides, are not blinded by these local or temporary factors and are aware that there is a truth and they tune themselves to it, undeflected in their attention by the rush of forces that battle with each other to effectuate themselves, untired by the long time taken by the determinant to emerge from the depths for the proper moment of manifesting.
A conjecture leaning upon doubtful proofs,
A message misunderstood, a thought confused
Missing its aim is all that it can speak
When what the mind expresses is as unsatisfactory, inadequate and even wrong as what it conceives - LISTEN TO IT.
It knows when it conjectures upon undependable data or builds upon imagination based on illegitimate extension of experience; it does receive messages from higher faculties like inspiration, intuition etc. But it sometimes misunderstand or for a trader only partially on the horizon, it mentalises it in haste and in the process often fails to grasp the true trade. And naturally when it proceeds to put into expression what it so faultily conceives, the result is none too satisfactory.
As the height draws the low ever to climb,
As the breadths draw the small to adventure vast,
Their aloofness drives man to surpass himself.
Though the great trends of the market thus
stand far above the top as advice for newbies - the worlds's most Ignorant too profit from them, their very being exercises a compelling inuflence on those below who are still not in. Thus trends and their existence in the fullness of their might and their knowledge exerts an incessant pressure on the lower bounds to grow and to rise to the freer summits above. What
is unattained always attracts labour to attain ; the heights ever beckon those below to climb up to them, the large always moves the little to enlarge itself and break out of its smallness. Similarly there needs to be surrender to the transcendence of this Power for the possibility of attaining a status above the existing boundaries of normal trading and a supertrend inspires him to leap beyond the confines of his mundane tries - The cliched 'stay with the trend'.
Stay sane, stay safe - and just follow the plan no matter now big it gets. The crowd WILL go mad, make sure you are not a part of it so that you can capitalize on it.
Adventure may seem the system to get rich
But fortuitous gains are actually safe results
Of a person's test of his theories, error-willing
And errors discourage not his confident view
Failure does not slow the fiery clutch
One chance makes true and warrants all the rest!
The novice loves adventure and considers even chance gains adequate and worthwhile results for his labours. This is because of ignorance of the simple workings - success is expected all along, but not in each stride!
The real riches are a result of very safe bets, made consistently, cooly and as a main point - made with a open view that the trade and many other trades may lose money, but without getting distracted by the losses from the experiments, and without changing mindset midway there will come a time when all this is warranted because ultimately he WILL walk home with the money.
Instinct lies beyond the dam of discipline
Attempt, not victory is its charm,
Yet its works are not small and vain nor null
It is nursed by a portion of your inner strength
And can create the high things it wills
Its passion catches what calm intelligence misses
It oft sires an uncertain winner of uncertain stakes!
Impulsivity is not without value. Some of the more concrete trades come out as a by product of impulsivity. What the intelligence in the calmer attitudes of the mind misses is seized by the passionate rushes of this impulse-mind.
Instinct is at the root of existence and desire its impulsion to movement.
If this sounds a bit too esoteric to digest, let's begin at the beginning. What we traders aim for is being consistent in our actions, i.e. overall we have pegged our confidence in repeatable actions and thus we come to trust ourselves for this behavior.
So what are the roadblocks that are hit that cause one to not be consistent in ones emotional state? The plan is to stay true to ones plan and avoid impulsive beahvior. But what if I told you that, (let me confess) that some of my best trades have actually come from a momentary impulse, a flash, and they were the difference between a profitable year vs ending red.
So impulsivity must be broken down into components - and there you need to place ticks against approprate places based on your inner personal journey - your state space so to speak.
Meditation and yoga sure help with controlling impulsivity. Not only that, meditation even helps discern between the impulse that 'feels right' vs one that is 'bogus' or 'ego driven'. We make emotional decisions all the time and many of these decisions result in positive outcomes. In fact trading is nothing but a game of emotion management at its best.
Biofeedback actually helped me a lot (I use an emWave2 - I only half-heartedly recommend it for other activities, but its very useful while trading).
The gist boils down to YOU - what makes impulsive trades harmful vs useful?
"You Cannot Prevent the Birds of Sorrow from Flying over Your Head, but You Can Prevent Them from Building a Nest in Your Hair" – Chinese Proverb
Thus, the correct path is that impulses will come and go but we will dedicate our delicate energy to the balancing act of action and action only. The impulses which are 'correct' - this comes by impassive observation, and remembering that no method, no chart is black and white! - have the power to put you into a coherent state where you are one with the market and makes you lot of money on a volatile day where quick reactions cannot come from the calmer mind but truly manifest automatically when you have done the homework of knowing yourself.
What is knowing yourself?
It is becoming a person who is majority of an OBSERVER, and who knows that HE is not the thoughts that run through his mind, and once there is an experience of this SEPARATION then the automatic stream of thoughts CEASES, and you become more powerful because you actually realize YOU ARE IN CONTROL!
I actually posted this as something additional in Watching Paint Dry:
Once there is sufficient practice on these lines, the matter has actually been decided even before you take the first trade. Not the trade location, not the what-if analysis, because these are static and subject to change AND there is a very real danger of we imposing our expectations on the market and 'concluding' or 'feeling' that we know what the market MAY do next but really, the best approach is within ourselves, knowing that we are still knowing ourselves while engaging with the market in the now.
Tip
This is my humble attempt at demonstrating what trading is on some subtler levels. I sincerely hope that it will help someone as much as it has helped me especially when I used to be a newbie on these forums. Please vote below if you find this useful.
One important things especially in the Western thought process (we are guilty of the same, we ape the West diligently!) is that we ask logical reasoning to do far too much. Logic has a legitimate place; however I will try to present a warning into the 'I am logical, I am calm' fallacy I have painfully experienced more than once - some slightly esoteric but practical ground work follows.
"Nirvikalpa samādhi", which means 'absorption without self-consciousness', is a merger of the mental activity (cittavṛtti) in the Self, to such a degree, or in such a way, that the distinction (vikalpa) of knower, act of knowing, and object known becomes dissolved — as waves vanish in water, and as foam vanishes.
Thus now a trader replaces the standard action of 'considers the potential trade carefully' with a more coherent action 'makes free from uncertainty or false discrimination' - this is not automatic bot trading, and this state I have experienced it maybe two times out of ten, but this 'really attuned with market' experience occurs when there is complete cessation of all thought-constructs.
Of course there is such a thing as too much of a good thing - there were times when I 'assumed this mode as permanent' - and casually walk up to my platform and simply, without preparation, without any conditioning, most ridiculously would place a trade - this has ended in a mindless and complete account blow-out. The whole fiasco has occurred at times when there was no base to do this - e.g. I would not have meditated or journalled for some time and all my demons were actually alive and clicking (pun intended) and licking their chops and pretending to be my 'calm self'.
To put this on a more technical note - all the Samskaras (conditioning / state / habits / rites) and Vasanas (desires / passions / impulses) which bring on this calamity are having a free run. All Vrittis or mental modifications that arise from the mindare still not under restraint. The five afflictions, viz., Avidya (ignorance), Asmita (egoism), Raga-dvesha (love and hatred) and Abhinivesha (clinging to life) are the destroyers when they are uninhibited without logical faculties - many an account has perished by my own hands.
Basically what I have found is that almost always without fail great efforts are required for intuitive trading or any form of trading and this method or mindfulness or price action or anything else that pretends to be an utopia or solution is not a panacea.
The feeling that no longer does a trader have to work hard is the real killer of successful traders. Nothing can be more preposterous! Real trading is always hard work, even during fast money phases, and even so during chop, and even so during clueless beginnings, and even when the market has 'revealed its hand' - the unexpected is always just around the corner, but it can be tamed when we know ourselves and gradually learn more about it by putting in our screentime based on this attitude towards the market.
I am not at all happy with the session - I am back from the peaceful ashram stay and this was the first session in the midst of daily life and it seems some of the older problems have resurfaced.
Let me highlight some of the issues I faced in the session:
1. I allowed momentary lapses multiple times while trading live - I did not give preference to trading and tried to manage chores, pretty much like this
At one point I suddenly forgot about my screen and went happily off to fix my bicycle - this probably is is due to the disoriented feeling a sort of post-ashram daze. After a lot of while I had a chilling feeling and realized what I had done - raced back home on the fixed bike and returned to the call of duty - some bad things had already happened however, and it added to my internal rage where I started chasing price but recovered well before I would have inflicted lot of damage (hindsight reveals the damage would've been very bad) !
2. I went mad in chop areas trying to 'keep the winners small!!!', I need to remind myself that I have done this properly by simply following my plan and can continue to do it unlike today where thought the market was subservient and I was the boss, leading to losses bigger than my profile
Thus the bad stuff that happened was due to:
a. Internal rage at missing out some good opportunities
b. Going for the big win (not again!) and allowing nice profitable trades to turn into losers - this continued for a lot of time. Greed needs to be checked - thinking about this I never needed a handle on greed too often, only after feeling down do I feel a need to get big wins from the market - maybe the ashram life to real life transition is weighing heavily on my mood.
3. And this is what my plan is all about - basically the balanced R:R keeps me going, and not being correct
The usual R:R is happily at 1:1 but these days I am shooting for 1:3 and 1:2 ratios too and these are working equally well as the 1:1 perceived ones!
4. Simple is difficult but worth striving for. I added complexity by taking trades lasting 6 hours or more though they started out as a scalp - inside I know I goofed up, so this is a confession for a trader who tries to keep trades short and small to free up time for other things in life (the kids were missing their daddy after his week long ashram hiatus!)
I need to be a trader, I need to be a trader, .... come back to NOW - I am a trader:
One good thing:
I am consistently spotting the right spots to get in and out, a bit ahead of my fellow traders. As you know a trader needs his fellow traders to run the race and in the same direction as he alone cannot drive price where it needs to go to make a profit :-):
This video session covers an entire 24 hour session starting from European session of 16th May till the European session of 17th May.
