So why have I been talking about all this emotional stuff? It’s because it’s integral to you developing an edge. And you know, when you think about trading edge, it’s not necessarily, it’s not all tactical, that’s part of it, but ultimately how you play it, how you pull it off, comes down to you. So this is more akin to know being a poker player, playing Texas Hold ’em. You might know how to rank a hand and know what hand beat what, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to play the game. That’s the huge problem in the marketplace. These days is people find themselves on YouTube and Linda.com, and udemy.com and they’re buying classes that they think are going to help them trade, but are really just classes on how to rank a hand at the poker table – not necessarily how to trade based on your makeup.
There’s none of it that’s going to actually help you trade better if you do it the way I did it, you have to go trade and that’s the best educator. So developing your edge – there’s two components to a trade. There’s the emotional and the financial payoff. I think there’s two aspects to a trader’s edge and the edge is the tactical aspect. And then there’s what you bring to it. So again, if you don’t know who you are or what you’re doing it for, because you don’t have clear goals and, or you don’t know all those little emotional payoffs that you have along the way. When you looked at the episode of a couple of Wednesdays ago you’re kind of like stabbing in the dark. I’m sorry for the industry being so misleading to you and trying to sell in market stuff to you.
That’s I guess the American way, I only know the one way to do it, which is to know yourself, know what makes you tick, know what you’re doing it for. Because as even Stephen Covey, who’s not a trader to my knowledge would say “you have to begin with the end in mind.” So having said all that, that’s a huge reason why we were talking about the emotional stuff on all the moving parts or as tedious as it may have seemed there’s real calculus behind it in that it could be very, very revealing.
The good news is that if you go through the work, you can see where you have strong points and where you don’t. So there’s a couple of ways to look at that. One is you can play to your strengths. Two, you can always go try to fix the weakest part of your game. Because in my estimation, I was always the weakest part of my trading. And I think that’s a healthy way to look at it, because this way you don’t get into blaming the market and the Fed and all that other bull crap.
So it doesn’t matter. So when you do the work they always talk about the weakest link in the chain. I hate clichés because I’m more original than that. But the point is is that if you look at the trading aspect and all the feelings that you have, you’re going to do everything that you can to go towards the feelings that you want to have. But you’re also going to be equally strong, if not stronger in trying to avoid in trying to avoid the feelings that you don’t want to feel.
So knowing all of that, as you get into it, you’d be a huge edge for you in developing your trading edge. We’ll talk more about that this week. Otherwise I appreciate you. Please consider subscribing. We have some episodes on YouTube, probably going to add more. We’re on Spotify and obviously Apple and Google podcasts. And if you’re new to the show, I’ve been giving away the audio book version of my book, The Inner Voice of Trading, which you can get for free at MartinKronicle.
This is a computer generated transcript.
Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.