2/4/2026 - Because of the accumulation of painful consequences over time, most people are pretty clear about what they need to change. They are typically less clear about how to change and often very unclear about what they need to change to. For example, we might fully understand that we need to eliminate overtrading, but we don't necessarily have a clear, step-by-step plan for addressing the causes of overtrading and implementing those steps. Even if they have the plan, they often don't have a clear idea about what will replace the overtrading. The problem pattern is there because it is meeting a need. If we don't identify that need and find a constructive way to meet it, it will eventually seep into our trading in unhelpful ways.
In the post below, we looked at the importance of following a plan--a playbook--for implementing what we're meant to be doing. That is necessary, but for many traders it won't be sufficient. The overtrading occurs because there is a need for stimulation--and not just any stimulation. The trader may be craving a need to be productive and creative and is channeling those needs through (over)trading. Giving the trader a more disciplined framework does not, in itself, meet the need for creative productivity. In a sense, we need two kinds of playbooks: one to combat our weaknesses; the other to implement our strengths.
Just as much as a need to combat poor trading is the need to channel what we're good at--and what matters to us--through our trading. The ideal trading process is one that thoroughly immerses us in the best of who we are. It is much easier to change from what we don't want to be when we have a clear vision of what we want to become.
=====================
2/3/2026 - The 90 in 90 framework for making changes truly stick in our lives is directly applicable to trading. As I've emphasized in the past, whatever we do repeatedly becomes part of us. In that sense, we're always doing 90 in 90 when we follow habit patterns. The key to changing our trading is making habit formation intentional.
For example, suppose we study our best trades and best trading opportunities and create a set of rules for identifying these patterns, knowing where to enter positions, knowing how to size those positions, and knowing where to stop out and where to take profits. In short, we're creating what Mike Bellafiore has called a "playbook". Is that playbook a guide for our trading? Of course. But it's something more: it's a guide for rehearsing our best trading again and again as part of deliberate practice.
Imagine using your playbook to anchor your 90 in 90 change process. You are going to conduct 90 reviews in 90 days, tracking the opportunities that fit within your playbook and walking yourself through each step of the play. This is a detailed review in which you literally move forward bar by bar and track what you are meant to do according to your rules. You talk aloud each step of the trade and train yourself to operate in a way that is planned, not reactive.
90 reviews in 90 days: that is three months of intensively training yourself to operate at your best. Now imagine doing those reviews within a team, where each replay of each trade reinforces what the team members are doing. One day at a time, as they say in AA. Because after many days, what started as our goals now are part of us.
====================
2/2/2026 - So far, the posts have talked about what creates change: emotional experiences in the context of relationships that reorganize how we view ourselves and what we're doing. This is how we initiate meaningful changes in life, but typically it takes more than this to sustain the changes that we make.
This is known as the problem of relapse. It is very easy to go back to old ways, well-worn by habit. To make change lasting, we need to create new habits--and that typically requires repetition. So let's say I have a powerful insight and recognize that I need to be more loving and caring in my personal relationships. That leads me to reach out to those I care about and rebuild connections.
That initiates change, but the change will only take root if my way of conducting relationships becomes a regular part of how I interact with others. So each visit with friends, each conversation, each family interaction becomes an opportunity to practice being the kind of person I wish to be. Quite literally, I am training myself to implement the change that had inspired me.
In Alcoholics Anonymous, when a person is quite serious about discontinuing drinking, they are encouraged to attend 90 meetings in 90 days. Quite simply, if we repeat something every day for three months, it becomes a new routine--a new part of us. "Bring the body and the mind will follow" is the slogan that recognizes that we internalize what we do regularly. Indeed, this principle occurs across areas of life. See, for instance, how 90 days of physical training can train us for a fit mindset.
Whatever change you want to become an ongoing part of you can benefit from a 90 in 90 process. After ninety days of living a new life, we experience ourselves as new people. In the next post, we'll look specifically at applying these ideas to our trading.
====================
2/1/2026 - In the two posts below, we took a look at how painful consequences open us to new modes of thought, feeling, and action--particularly when those consequences are processed in relationships that provide the new perspectives. There is, however, another mode in which emotion catalyzes lasting life change: powerful positive emotional experience, often captured in inspiration, can take us in entirely new directions. This experience enables us to see ourselves and our lives in a fresh way reorganizing our priorities.
When Margie and I took our first trip to Israel, literally walking the paths of religious history, the impact was so profound that I immediately returned to a more spiritual, religious life. I've worked with traders who have been so inspired by the mentors they've worked with that they radically reshaped their approaches to markets.
A narrow focus on P/L and catching moves in markets not only exposes us to negative emotion (as we know well from greed, fear/FOMO, overtrading, etc.), but more crucially it keeps us from any experience of inspiration. Eye-opening novelty and perspective is what can amaze us and lead us to reorganize our trading. If we lack amazement, we cannot tap into inspiration. The narrowness of our perspective prevents us from broadening our horizons.
This leads to questions rarely asked: What am I doing today and this week (month, year) that is wholly new, interesting, exciting, and potentially inspiring? Is it a mentor we tap into or a new perspective on our markets and trading? Is it an insight into a particularly successful trade? What in my trading is giving me energy and renewal?
We make great changes by greatly changing our experiences.
===================
1/31/2026 - Emotional arousal and awareness of the consequences of our actions often is the spark for personal change (see below). By itself, however, it is not enough. It is during that emotional awareness that we can become exposed to new thoughts, new ideas, new ways of doing things. Take the example of the alcoholic who goes to AA. Pain over the consequences of drinking brings the person to AA, but it is at AA that new experiences of community and new understandings of the need to replace alcohol with support--including the support of a "higher power"--take root. The group experiences provide a new way of handling life's challenges.
So it is with trading. We make the same mistakes over and over again until the pain (and the financial losses) become too great to bear. One of the most interesting aspects of the Market Wizards interviews was how common it was for very successful traders to go through harrowing losses early in their careers. (Paul Tudor Jones is a great example). The pain of that experience completely opened the Wizards up to a new set of priorities regarding risk management and the need to trade in planned and not reactive ways.
We change by completely reorganizing what we do and how we do it, because the pain of what we went through is something we never want to repeat. That happens in relationships; it happens with drugs and alcohol; it happens in markets. We don't change because we want to. We change because we have to.
======================
1/29/2026 - The integrative perspective in psychology is that the various approaches to change, such as cognitive therapy and psychoanalysis, are different ways of tapping into a common change process. Research tells us that, by directly tapping into this process, we can accelerate change and make our change efforts more effective. In these posts, I will highlight what we need to do to make meaningful changes, whether it's in our personal lives or in our trading.The first element in the change process is emotional arousal. We cannot sustain change if we stay in our usual states of mind and body. It is when we are experiencing our lives most deeply and powerfully that we're open to the deepest and most powerful changes. Very often, the emotional catalyst for change is emotional pain. We have repeated a problem pattern so often and to such an extent that we feel despair. We feel that we can't go on this way. In AA, this is known as "hitting bottom". Our pain becomes our greatest motivator to do things differently.
Sometimes there is a positive source of the emotional arousal. We have such a powerful experience that it completely changes our perspective and our priorities. Examples of this would be falling in love and committing to a life together; deep religious experiences; and unusual success in one of our pursuits. Change occurs through inspiration: by shaking up our priorities.
In both cases, emotion is a gateway to change. The enemy of change is routine--and routine states of mind. A simple example would be trading reviews at the end of a day, week, or month that are conducted quickly and in a rote fashion. We write down some goals and observations and move on to other life activities. There is nothing in the process that moves us. It's not the lack of work or effort that prevents traders from succeeding; it's the absence of emotional arousal. We either have to be so disgusted with our bad trading or so inspired by our successes that change becomes a must, not something to check on a list.
If we're not passionate about change, nothing ultimately changes.
.jpg)
Posts
