Thoughts on "The A to Z of trading career - musings of a professional trader !!"

[VJAY]

Well, Many members of this forum are not using this for any "feel good" factors ,including me..many want to learn from there mistakes ,if you don't post any thing who will correct you, ??? just go through Time pass dairy (one of the moderator ) manoj borle dairy, lonewolf,vijkris,or my journey of TA thread ...they are the true reflections ,check them ,non tried to show off or proof any thing!!!

Yes !!! i do agree that there are people who want to project them selfs as "super humans"... this is part and parcel of any forum or society ...

Ego is ‘I am’. Whatever you believe to be ‘I am’. You are egoistic. ‘I am Great’ is Ego, and ‘I am nobody’ is also Ego.
Whenever you use ‘I am’, that becomes a statement of Ego. But we think that when someone talks big about himself or someone holds big notions about himself only then he is displaying Ego. No!

If someone thinks that I have been a victim all my life, this is great Ego. If someone thinks that I am so humble, this again is Ego. If someone thinks that I am a coward, this again is Ego, because in all these sentences there is something common. What is that? ‘I am.’ And all these ‘I am‘ notions constitute Ego because the object attached to them is external. Were you born with cowardice? No! You got it from somewhere, along the way. As if you are on a journey and you keep picking things from somewhere. No, that stuff is not you. You have picked it up. So anything you attach to ‘I am’ will necessarily be the statement of Ego. We never say a pure ‘I am’, we say ‘I am this’ and ‘I am that.’

Whenever I hold a notion about myself, the notion itself is Ego. Whenever I hold an idea about myself, that idea is Ego. it will be turning out to be a philosophical !!!

Bottomline :when intention is clear ,posting of trades will not effect mind,or method !!!

Dear xray bro,
Yes you are correct as may be your personality supports it.but imo many are (including me)not got mindset as you and others .its not mean our intentions are not good.
Any way looking forward to your posts to overcome from this and other negatives.

 

[XRAY27]

Dear xray bro,
Yes you are correct as may be your personality supports it.but imo many are (including me)not got mindset as you and others .its not mean our intentions are not good.
Any way looking forward to your posts to overcome from this and other negatives.

Vijay !!! i never understood the point that posting trades .. will effects the mind or method ,unless we are posting as per method, which always include both positive and negative trades , but if any person is only using this forum for show off then nothing will help him. this is what i want to say ,not intended to hurt any body or directed towards any specific person..it is just a reply to madan post, which says we will try to man oeuvre the trades for reputation !!! hope you got my point

 

[Smart_trade]

Posting trades could affect a traders performance as he may feel the need for being right as opposed to trading right.I remember an early Zerodha winner ( we will not discuss the names ) who made large gains on his account ,but then he started giving trading calls and his performance deteriorated and he had to stop giving trade calls for sometime..he was a top class trader with very attractive returns posted on his capital..I don't think his skills went down or the market changed suddenly but need for being right and looking right must have taken the toll on his performance.At least it must have weighed very heavily on his mind in my view......

Smart_trade

 

[LoneWolf]

I do strongly believe that posting trades in online forums screw up the thought process of the trader. Will try to substantiate with reasons. Let me address two things that we see - 1. Posting their trades based on the trading plan (whether they trade it or just posting it without trading it real time, is immaterial) and 2. Predicting where the market is gonna go or predicting some price points.

Well, Many members of this forum are not using this for any "feel good" factors ,including me..many want to learn from there mistakes ,if you don't post any thing who will correct you, ??? just go through Time pass dairy (one of the moderator ) manoj borle dairy, lonewolf,vijkris,or my journey of TA thread ...they are the true reflections ,check them ,non tried to show off or proof any thing!!!

Ego is ‘I am’. Whatever you believe to be ‘I am’. You are egoistic. ‘I am Great’ is Ego, and ‘I am nobody’ is also Ego.
Whenever you use ‘I am’, that becomes a statement of Ego. But we think that when someone talks big about himself or someone holds big notions about himself only then he is displaying Ego. No!

Bottomline :when intention is clear ,posting of trades will not effect mind,or method !!!

Well, I would like to take this opportunity for one confession, which I remember while reading the ongoing discussion on posting trades online and how it affects us.. Why I am doing it now ?? As Madan has mentioned it in his post that one can not get rid of his alcohol addiction unless he admits that he is alcoholic. So here it goes..

When I started my thread around 1 and half year back, I remember a day, when I had missed a great trade. I entered the trade as per plan, but exited at the 1st sign of weakness, with around 2.5R return. Then that trade went on to become a 7.5R when it closed, and though I wanted to re-enter but i feared of loosing back my original gain and i simply watched the price going up with anguish. And that evening I posted my chart showing that I made 7.5R on my return. Why ? To feel good about myself ? No, I am already in dismissal of the situation and just by faking a trade in an online forum is not going to make me feel any good. Cause when i close trader ji and on my own again, I feel pain thinking about why I exited or why I did not enter again..

My reason was clear, as Xray pointed out, EGO. What would others think when they see that I exited prematurely or what will they think that I feared and was a victim of psychological block and I could not re-enter where as in past I have posted some good trades and how I tackled my psychological aspects like an expert trader. And this very thought of "rejection in other's eye" made me to fake my trade. and the story did not end here.

I got many likes, felt good for sometime, and then promised myself to be more sincere in my trading and not to repeat the mistakes done today. And next day I was extra alert, for not to miss an opportunity. But there was also this pressure that today I should not fake any trade and for that I need to take the trades in real as well. And this made me to jump ahead of the setup resulting in a loss. It took quite a few days for me to come out of this incident and start trading normally again.

So now after going through the posts here i can realize that the fault is not in posting trades online, but the intention behind that. And if one's intention is clear he would never try to fake or show off his trades. @Xray, now you can strike off my name from your list,

And adding more to this, yesterday I missed another juicy trade in BANKNIFTY. I started my live trading after a long time, and on very first day I faced this. But I reported in my thread the incident as it has happened. Then did I lack my self esteem after I admitted that I missed it ?? No.. But my confidence improved. Cause I got learn three new things for being honest. P-1 entry technique, ST gap and Virtual high/low . Thanks to Smart_Trader and Xray. So it does help in improving and learning from mistakes by posting in live trades, amonge many others good traders with well intentions.

 

[LoneWolf]

I am trying to accept the fact that I can fake before traderji members, before my family, before whole world, but cant fake it before myself, I know the truth, and It will cause me pain all the time. So just trying to get out of this loop of comparing self with other;s and how other's will see me cause at the end of the day my performance is going to improve on my true self, not how others perceive me.

 

[ncube]

I am not sure posting of trade logs ( and profit M to M ) is for a noble intention of learning from their mistakes ...except in few cases where profits and lossess both are truthfully reported in the form of trade diary.

Smart_trade

Keeping a personal trading dairy is very important, however its possible traders initially struggle update it regularly and hence can use the online forum as a medium to build the discipline. Nothing wrong with that. However if the intension is to maintain a trading dairy then its crucial that the dairy also include the following key details which will help them grow:

1. The reason for taking the trade.
2. The feeling/emotion before, during and after taking the trade.

However I dont think many will be comfortable sharing these details in an open forum. Hence most end up just posting numbers which will not help and end up causing more damage to their emotions and ego due to pressure of being right in front of others.

 

[madank]

I am not sure posting of trade logs ( and profit M to M ) is for a noble intention of learning from their mistakes ...except in few cases where profits and lossess both are truthfully reported in the form of trade diary.

Yes ST - am not just talking about online forums like TJ. This is the case with most of the postings in twitter and FB. Ofcourse, there are exceptions to every argument like what @XRAY27 says.

But still, i want to reiterate that this 'need to be right' happens at the subconscious level(according to research) and hence, it is very difficult to realize at the conscious level. Forunately, we have a way to test this theory. One should stop posting any kind of trades in any forum/online websites for 6 months and see if there is any improvement in the trading psychology/results. If yes, research is right..if no, research does not apply to that individual as the bias is not affecting him/her. As simple as that !!

Dear xray bro,
Yes you are correct as may be your personality supports it.but imo many are (including me)not got mindset as you and others .its not mean our intentions are not good.
Any way looking forward to your posts to overcome from this and other negatives.

Exactly. I have been a victim of this mentality too. When i was trading US markets, i used to post my trades in a forum and everything i mentioned in the other post happened

Posting trades could affect a traders performance as he may feel the need for being right as opposed to trading right.I remember an early Zerodha winner ( we will not discuss the names ) who made large gains on his account ,but then he started giving trading calls and his performance deteriorated and he had to stop giving trade calls for sometime..he was a top class trader with very attractive returns posted on his capital..I don't think his skills went down or the market changed suddenly but need for being right and looking right must have taken the toll on his performance.At least it must have weighed very heavily on his mind in my view......

I know what you are saying here. This bias is very real and most of us have been stung by it.

 

[madank]

Well, I would like to take this opportunity for one confession, which I remember while reading the ongoing discussion on posting trades online and how it affects us.. Why I am doing it now ?? As Madan has mentioned it in his post that one can not get rid of his alcohol addiction unless he admits that he is alcoholic. So here it goes..

When I started my thread around 1 and half year back, I remember a day, when I had missed a great trade. I entered the trade as per plan, but exited at the 1st sign of weakness, with around 2.5R return. Then that trade went on to become a 7.5R when it closed, and though I wanted to re-enter but i feared of loosing back my original gain and i simply watched the price going up with anguish. And that evening I posted my chart showing that I made 7.5R on my return. Why ? To feel good about myself ? No, I am already in dismissal of the situation and just by faking a trade in an online forum is not going to make me feel any good. Cause when i close trader ji and on my own again, I feel pain thinking about why I exited or why I did not enter again..

My reason was clear, as Xray pointed out, EGO. What would others think when they see that I exited prematurely or what will they think that I feared and was a victim of psychological block and I could not re-enter where as in past I have posted some good trades and how I tackled my psychological aspects like an expert trader. And this very thought of "rejection in other's eye" made me to fake my trade. and the story did not end here.

I got many likes, felt good for sometime, and then promised myself to be more sincere in my trading and not to repeat the mistakes done today. And next day I was extra alert, for not to miss an opportunity. But there was also this pressure that today I should not fake any trade and for that I need to take the trades in real as well. And this made me to jump ahead of the setup resulting in a loss. It took quite a few days for me to come out of this incident and start trading normally again.

So now after going through the posts here i can realize that the fault is not in posting trades online, but the intention behind that. And if one's intention is clear he would never try to fake or show off his trades. @Xray, now you can strike off my name from your list,

Very candid post @LoneWolf. Very few can accept this candidly , let alone in a public forum. Take a bow !!

Like i said, its not about the intention (even though we have right intention at heart). We want to feel better than others in any group as that is how our brain is hard-wired ever since we became the dominant sapiens group (talking about millions of years of genetics). As suggested in the previous post, please try to not post your trades(even in a form of diary) for 6 months and let us know the results. You will be pleasantly surprised But, the treat is on you

Another classic example of hardwired stuff in the brain - why do men get attracted towards curvy women and why women gets attracted towards men with big shoulders/v-shaped upper body? Most people can tell if they're attracted to someone in the first 90 seconds after they meet. Our brain is hardwired to look for the most fertile partner for propagation.

Heterosexual women tend to be physically or sexually attracted to men with traditionally masculine features such as a muscular frame, a square jaw, big nose and small eyes. These physical traits often signify higher levels of testosterone, and are more common in "alpha males." Heterosexual men gets instantly attracted to women with wide hips and skinny waists. Statistically, those women also tend to be the ones who are most fertile.

There are lot of things that are hardwired like this 'attraction'. Extensive research has been carried out in behavioral science and 'prejudice' or preconceived notion about certain things are very real and hardwired. Behavioral science is my favorite topic !!

 

[vijkris]

Yes ST - am not just talking about online forums like TJ. This is the case with most of the postings in twitter and FB. Ofcourse, there are exceptions to every argument like what @XRAY27 says.

But still, i want to reiterate that this 'need to be right' happens at the subconscious level(according to research) and hence, it is very difficult to realize at the conscious level. Forunately, we have a way to test this theory. One should stop posting any kind of trades in any forum/online websites for 6 months and see if there is any improvement in the trading psychology/results. If yes, research is right..if no, research does not apply to that individual as the bias is not affecting him/her. As simple as that !!

Thanks for the bold part.
I stopped posting in my trading diary, since May/June, for the reason that ppl started saying that I am egoistic and feeding my ego by posting in TJ etc. My performance will improve if I stop posting charts etc.
I am against posting PnL anyway.. so thats not an issue.
Issue was posting charts after I get an entry, used to post it with five min delay, still it can be considered realtime..

So this 6 months is almost over now:
Conclusion is - that bias not affecting me .

If I was truly feeding my ego, then would have found some other place to post and show off.. It didn happen.
Did my performance improve ? NO. There is no improvement either.
Instead now I regret, if I would have continued posting, someone would have definitely corrected me and I would have learnt even more.

 

[HEM]

My Thoughts on posting the realtime or eod trades on any online forum :-
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When any person is trading very seriously for his livelihood with sizable amout and sizable qty then full Concentration and Discipline is must or needed very much......so now in that situation when trader post his real time or eod trades on any online forum then naturally some good and bad reactions or comments will come from any online forum and this is one of the main cause of distraction(lack of concentration),chaos and lack of discipline in trading and this is destructive and disasters for Trader and Trading both.

So in my opinion , if any person is trading very seriously for his livelihood then that person should refrain from posting the realtime or eod trades on any online forum .


But if any trader want to improve his trading through online trading forums then
that trader should post only eod trades( not live trades) with chart for only some time to take advice of senior,experienced and proficient traders......But in the end, the trader will have to search his own path.



HEM