Acceptance as a Trading Virtue

I recently wrote on the topic of how the ways in which we analyze markets can generate the frustration we experience as traders.  When we try to fit markets into the ways we prefer to trade, we not only distort our processing of information; we also create inevitable drawdowns.  One trader, needing to trade trends, views a non-trending market as "choppy" and untradable.  But the trader who views markets in terms of cycles knows that there are trending periods in markets and there are mean-reverting periods.  There are higher frequency cycles and there are lower frequency ones.  The markets will tell us how they're trading.  We can listen and adapt or we can impose our own agendas and accumulate frustration.

Similarly, life has its cycles as well.  Sometimes we profit in our life experience and sometimes we face career or relationship setbacks.  Rarely does life progress in a straight line.  If we view our setbacks as opportunities to learn and adjust, we can continuously grown.  If we view our setbacks as failures, we will always internalize the sense of falling short and never sustain the confidence needed to truly move forward.

The trading psychology literature speaks a great deal of discipline and confidence and emotional control.  Rarely do we focus on acceptance as a cardinal virtue.  If we can accept the present and learn from it, we can forge a profitable future--in markets and in life.

Further Reading:  The Single Most Important Trait of Successful Traders
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