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Regardless of what you have attempted to do in the past, trading is likely to be the hardest thing you will ever do.It, also, has the potential to be the most joyous and rewarding thing you will ever do.

The fact is that trading is hard because it forces you to face your every weakness.  Your slightest negative emotion can be magnified until you are overcome with disappointment and self-doubt.

Trading can, also, be a daily test that you welcome because you know you are up to the challenge. Read the rest of this entry »

My youngest daughter started taking piano lessons when she was five years old.  She started learning with a Suzuki piano teacher in Kansas City.

When we moved to Chicago, we found one of the leading teachers and our daughter became one of her star pupils.

I used to love to see her perform at recitals, usually held on in an elaborate recital hall at the Fine Arts Building in downtown Chicago.

The only problem, and it was a real problem, was that although our daughter liked the attention she got at her recitals, she hated practicing.  Read the rest of this entry »

What I Learned This Week

1) Again, I recognized that not every trade has a lesson to teach. Sometimes when I lose on a trade, it’s just because the market turned in a certain fashion, not that I committed some kind of trading error. As I have mentioned in the past, avoiding the periods of self-recrimination that can often follow a losing trade helps me to focus instead on finding the next winning trade. Read the rest of this entry »

Fighting back – aggressively fighting back from adversity must be in our shared DNA as traders because so many traders pride themselves in their ability to fight back from a loss. Some traders say they only trade really well when they are fighting back from a loss. They say they wish they would be so focused and effective without having to first be down for the day.

My take on all this fighting back is that it is wasted energy.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Generally, I am against being negative on the market. After all, the best days come at the oddest times. However, this week may be an exception.

First, the VIX (the CBOE’s volatility index) has spent most of the year in the high twenties and was over thirty in early March. Today, the VIX dropped below 20. This is less volatility than we have had since last summer. Read the rest of this entry »

To view the contents of this post, you must be authenticated and have the required access level.

To view the contents of this post, you must be authenticated and have the required access level.

To view the contents of this post, you must be authenticated and have the required access level.