taggard wrote:Taggard, I really enjoy your psychology commentary. What is your favorite book on the subject?
thank you. i did have pysch as part of a duel major (south pac rim econ was the other part) and did some time with a guy in the field. but i actually think pysch esp any trading books on psych are not too useful. they tend to be superficial and self-helpy. the idea being you are just trying to put a bandaid on the real issues. so if some one has a condition such as addition to smoking--yes it's valid to fix it but there is a lot more going on than that one thing. nuro finance is slightly better but is still a lot of work for very little reward.
I had better luck with martial arts which is a more absolute test (so the art of war/john mimford is ok. the tao te ching better (it's the basis of the art of war). even these books are not optimal. some of the hard core Tibetan Tantric stuff is better (re the meditation stuff)--but mostly hard to read for anyone looking for a quick clue.
so you might just try this test get a table and chair and a clock with a second hand. put the clock on the table and watch the second hand. using 3 or 5 seconds breath in. then hold your breath for the same period. then exhale for the same period. then inhale for the same period. count 1 mentally. do this 20-100 times. 99% of the time beginners cannot do this without losing count. this is because the mind is wandering. and this is where stuff like focusing on prediction and the past starts. you lose the sense of the moment--and start to drift mentally.
there are 80 5 min price bars in a day--i found it seriously troubling (as in freaking out) that i could not focus for 1 whole price bar on counting my breath. now from there to each his own--but i think that place is past books and theories and gives someone proof about the issue.
from there (so having a mind that stays in one place at least for a while) the other issue is just to use your feelings (in a difficult situation) to feel the action. so bars feel something--they feel heavy or light. this feeling goes below the idea of single bar patterns and is only alluded to in Brooks stuff.
the solution to all of this seems to be to relax but in an attentive manner.
So my bitch with psych is that it "discusses things" but rarely "acts". the more you talk the larger the ego structure (so i have this problem and oh man it is so bad and . . before long the problem is larger than Everest). as traders we place more value on the functional aspect. theory and studies are like pringles (bet you cannot eat just one). and become ends in themselves.
so empty the mind--fix it to price action--breath deeply and relax 100% (take that statement at 1000x what your first feeling about that idea is) and let it tell you what to do. it is hugely important to enjoy this process. so above all cultivate the idea market interaction is fun/to your advantage and so on. avoid the whole idea that "it's impossible/it's out to get me/it's rigged (ha my favorite bitch--because if so all you have to do is trade the rigging). at the very very least--be neutral.
why is this an issue? because the market is nothing--it's a void--a dream--it's just a consensual hallucination (nuromacer). what you are experiencing is the problem--you are mistaking your projections (dreams feelings illusions etc) on the screen for something outside you. so at the very least project nothing--and eventually it usually feels like a sort of half crazy pet. it acts funny sometimes but you like it and enjoy your time with it.
if you do this you by default wind up doing what the self help books are telling you and nail the great works of the east as well.
good luck with your trading[/quote]
Good stuff there. Like all things of value they can rarely be boiled down to a single easy answer. Having a background in the martial arts has been helpful as you suggest (exceedingly helpful over the past few weeks). Also I love your suggestion about the bars feeling heavy or light (charts too). Not trying to involve my ego here but after staring at charts for as long as I have I have begun to have this internal sense of heaviness (weightiness and/or lightness/springiness). That said SPX feels very heavy, but also VERY manipulated. Borrowing Cobra's suggestion of momentum (things don't stop on a dime usually) they need time to decelerate, I've begun playing with some ideas for a new indicator, might call it the Gravitron... lol