Ed Seykota and Onions

In which Rogue Traderette is kind of like an Onion…(but won’t generally make you cry)…

I have to apologise for the deafening silence that’s been emanating from my blog recently.  It’s not that I haven’t been trading – I have.  It’s just that trading, when you’re just getting down to business and actually doing it, is quite boring. 

It’s laughable really, because so many people are drawn to trading by the perceived excitement of it.   But the fact is that if you’re looking for kicks in the market, that’s exactly what you’ll get – and not much else.

Unfortunately, any profits that do inadvertently find their way into your pocket while you’re trading  for kicks will soon evaporate, for the simple reason that if they didn’t trading would soon cease to be exciting.

Gosh, what a conundrum!

Market Wizard Ed Seykota famously said that everyone gets what they want out of the market, which seems quite confusing when you first hear it.

In fact when I heard it, my first thought was, “That’s bollocks!”

This was because I wanted to pull money from the market, and I wasn’t, so it obviously had to be rubbish.

…And Peels Back the Layers…

Ah, the beauty of self-reflection.

As I’ve grown as a trader I’ve come to realise that unless you take the time to look past all the noisy chatter in your head and actually, with full honesty and humility, hack away all the self-made delusions you have, the odds of winning the trading game are close to none.

After doing my fair share of mental hacking, do you know what I found had been holding me back?

My stories.  The little fictitious ideas I nurtured that I somehow, subconsciously, thought the market would either solve or fulfil.

My main story was this – I figured that if I could talk intelligently about the markets (something my family don’t know a great deal about), my Dad would respect me the same way he respects my highly intelligent brother and sister.

And more than that – because I had learned so much and could now have conversations about the market with Dad, the market had fulfilled this need.  I got exactly what I wanted out of the market.

As you can see, the problem was that what I subconsciously wanted from the market didn’t actually involve profits.  Whoops!

…And Cuts Out the Rot.

The cool thing here is that once you figure out what you are actually using the markets for, you can recognise it, change it and eliminate it if necessary.

In my case, I’ve recognised that my Dad doesn’t give a toss whether I can talk intelligently about the markets or not.  He loves his girl regardless.

And because I know that to be true, I don’t need the markets to provide that anymore.  Now, I can get back to letting the markets fulfil other ‘needs’ that are much more productive and profitable.