Trading With Gratitude and Appreciation

I had an interesting incident over the weekend.  I was getting some writing done at a restaurant and was sitting at a window seat overlooking the parking lot.  There, in front of my vision, was my car.  I was suddenly filled with a feeling of appreciation.  I've had that car for over 10 years.  If I could drive it forever, I would do so gladly.  So many people want to trade in a car every few years and drive something new.  That desire never enters my mind.

It made me think of appreciation in general.  Sometimes I look at family photos and I have the same feelings.  It really feels like family.  When I see my cats playing--knowing the hardships from which they had been rescued--I am filled with a deep, inner satisfaction.

Life is good.

And yet on any given day or week, there are things in life that aren't so good.  Frustration is a state in which we become so focused on what is missing in life that we cannot appreciate what we have.  It is difficult to be frustrated and bitter if we feel gratitude for even the small things in life, like a red car or an affectionate cat.

A while back I wrote about watching a trader trade at my Chicago firm.  He stopped out of a losing trade and immediately flipped the other way based on a shift in order flow.  He briefly turned to me, smiled, and said, "I just paid for information."  His losing trade told him that the balance of longs and shorts in the market had changed.  Instead of feeling frustration over the loser, he viewed it as a valuable piece of data and went on to make much more money in the flipped trade.

How would our trading psychology benefit if we could derive information from all our losses and experience gratitude for our learning curves?

Further Reading:  Gratitude and Our Attitude
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