CHAPTER 12
Why Some Traders Make More Mistakes
You can hold an M.B.A. in business, and you can go through the intensive and pricey routine of day trading seminar trainings. Do any of those drills make you a day trader?
No.
As I’ve stated before, your learning internalizes only when your trading becomes very personal, meaning trading with your own money. Your valuable lessons only evolve from your disastrous, though enlightening, mistakes and the disaster-free assistance of a mentor.
It’s not just by chance that in the first section, I emphasize emotional pitfalls. I highlight them first because they make you or break you. Mistakes made in day trading almost always involve some self-destructive psychology. Self-discipline is the powerful antidote.
While trading, we all face emotional issues. We all have to calm the interior storms that cause most of our costly missteps, and then we must resolve to continue—even after devastating losses. Our comfort lies in knowing almost every loss is preventable, if only we’d stick to our safeguards. The successful professional trader is resilient. His confidence evolves from his ability to recover fast from his blunders, and his resolve to never repeat them. That force of will hones his victories.
Such professionals, however, do sometimes make mistakes. Some make more mistakes than others, and here we can witness a dramatic example of natural selection. There are two sides to every trade. For every profiteer, there’s a loser, and as a matter ...
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