The winner understands and accepts risk. This gives him the most important quality he can have: a trader’s mindset. His trader’s mindset insures he does not hesitate to take trades. ]]> jay@tradersjournal.com (Jay Morris ) Trading Psychology Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:12:26 +0000 http://www.tradersjournal.com/component/content/article/28-trading-psychology/237-fear-a-the-traders-mindset http://www.tradersjournal.com/component/content/article/28-trading-psychology/237-fear-a-the-traders-mindset Trading is much simpler than we all initially make it out to be.

One of our instructors, Teresa Bell, summed it up best when she said “trading is simple, following the plan is what’s difficult”.

And what makes “following the plan difficult” has nothing to do with the market, and everything to do with your preconceived notions and previous experiences regarding money. ]]> jay@tradersjournal.com (Jay Morris ) Trading Psychology Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:11:15 +0000 http://www.tradersjournal.com/component/content/article/28-trading-psychology/236-repetition-to-intuition http://www.tradersjournal.com/component/content/article/28-trading-psychology/236-repetition-to-intuition The ultimate goal for traders is to get to the point where our intuition is contributing to the trading process.  And to get to that point takes work. ]]> jay@tradersjournal.com (Jay Morris ) Trading Psychology Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:10:15 +0000 http://www.tradersjournal.com/component/content/article/28-trading-psychology/215-being-honest-with-yourself http://www.tradersjournal.com/component/content/article/28-trading-psychology/215-being-honest-with-yourself Many times people come into trading because they lost a job, are looking to supplement income or think that trading is an easy way to make money. Trading is much like any other business in the sense that you get back what you put into it. I feel that those who come into trading treating it as a part-time job will struggle. In a business that has an approximate 90% failure rate in the first 6 months, you must work very hard to survive. If you decide to take this on as a part-time career, just be prepared to work as hard or harder than you would a full-time job. This is no place for slacking or taking for granted attitudes. ]]> don@tradersjournal.com (Don Dawson ) Trading Psychology Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:27:36 +0000 http://www.tradersjournal.com/component/content/article/28-trading-psychology/194-losing-to-win-its-all-in-your-perception http://www.tradersjournal.com/component/content/article/28-trading-psychology/194-losing-to-win-its-all-in-your-perception I am a Winner

My whole life, I have been involved in sports. Ice hockey, soccer, golf and tennis are the sports I loved to compete in. Playing hockey at a high level, I learned to win consistently. There were always teams in the league that would win consistently while others lost. When we played a team with a bad record, they would sometimes be ahead for a while but I never worried. It was almost like we could be down in a game, but we knew that we were going to win. This is because of attitude. Most of the time, no matter the score during much of the game, we would come back and win. The winning attitude almost always beats the losing attitude. Winning teams play with one thought, that is “to win.” Losing teams also play with one thought, “not to lose.” This equates to a lack of confidence and fear and is a recipe for consistent failure. ]]> sam@tradersjournal.com (Sam Seiden ) Trading Psychology Fri, 09 Oct 2009 01:44:44 +0000 http://www.tradersjournal.com/component/content/article/28-trading-psychology/193-trading-success-comes-from-loving-to-lose-small-and-win-big http://www.tradersjournal.com/component/content/article/28-trading-psychology/193-trading-success-comes-from-loving-to-lose-small-and-win-big How many people do you think would attend a trading seminar that advertised teaching to lose small? Or, how popular would a workshop be that was dedicated to extolling the virtues of preventing big losses in the financial markets? My guess is that unless there were a lot of incentives (perhaps a free trip to Las Vegas or a flat screen TV), not many people would show up for these events. The reason – no one likes to hear about losing. ]]> gabe@tradersjournal.com (Gabe Velazquez ) Trading Psychology Fri, 09 Oct 2009 01:41:59 +0000 http://www.tradersjournal.com/component/content/article/28-trading-psychology/177-handling-trading-pressure http://www.tradersjournal.com/component/content/article/28-trading-psychology/177-handling-trading-pressure As traders, we tend to put ourselves in pressure situations more often than we would like to admit.  For most of us, this has been going on for so long that we feel there is no way to eliminate the pressure situations.  But, there are many ways to successfully react to the pressure.  In this article, I would like to help you recognize these potential pressure situations and prepare you in advance before they actually occur.