7/14/2026 - The solution-focused approach to change is a straightforward framework for coaching ourselves to trading success. You start by writing down all your trading problems: everything you've identified that you're doing wrong in your trading processes. What have been the problems with your research and idea generation? With how you express your ideas? With your trade execution? With your risk management? With your trading reviews and planning for the next day? In other words, you're breaking trading process down into components and identifying all the things that you've done wrong and that have hindered your success.
Now, in your weekly reviews, examine when each of those problems *did not occur*. You're looking day by day when you didn't make mistakes in each element of your trading process. Then you examine what you *did* do on those occasions. The key to the solution focused approach is the understanding that, when you're problems are not occurring, you may (without even realizing it!) be enacting solutions. When you're not messing up, you're doing something right! Once you've identified those potential solutions, they become explicit goals to work on, so that you're doing more and more of what works for you.
Each day, you find one thing you did right and then you turn that into a goal for the next day and a habit for your trading going forward. Over time you build your own set of best practices--and they're the ones that work for you, not ones you've picked up from a would-be guru.
What if, hidden in your trading, is the best coaching of all? That's a complete game changer.
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7/13/2026 - The greatest psychological challenges faced by traders are not emotional disruptions. We experience emotional dis-ease when we seek the wrong things in markets. When we jump from market to market, time frame to time frame, looking frantically for "setups", we are controlled by P/L. We are no longer in the mode of *understanding* what is going on and digging deeper to achieve better understanding. Rather, we're desperately searching for profits. So when we have profits, we feel good. When we lose money, we feel like losers. With P/L as our god, our feelings about ourselves ride with our results. When we step back and strive for ever better understanding and mastery of skills, P/L becomes a scorecard, but not our god.
"Trading in the zone" requires focus and intention (see below). If markets control us, can we ever truly find the zone? Wealth is the result of greatness; it cannot substitute for greatness.
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7/12/2026 - What is a heroic life? It is a life of noble purpose, a life dedicated to a positive ideal. Heroism begins with intentionality, the capacity to pursue desired ends. Intentionality is the exercise of free will. Life is a gymnasium in which we can expand our abilities to live purposefully. When we live from moment to moment, day to day without effortfully pursuing chosen ends, we gradually lose our capacity to sustain effort. There can be no heroism in a life lived randomly.
In the earlier series of posts on Market Wizards, we learned that a common characteristic of elite traders is the amount of effort they expend in pursuit of opportunity. They spend long hours each day throughout the week reviewing markets, reviewing their performance, and uncovering new patterns to exploit in their trading. This deep processing of market information enables them to see what others miss. In absorbing more markets and more patterns, they find more and different opportunity.
The great traders pursue markets heroically. They trade with intentionality, making each day a learning experience. Interestingly, the best traders I have worked with approach life in the same way: purposefully. If you look at how they organize and manage their time, you'll see a continual focus on getting important things done. The calendar thus becomes a tool in the development of their intentionality. In effortfully pursuing purpose each day, they train the free will that ultimately creates their heroic trading.
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7/10/2026 - Confusion is information. When we are confused about what is going on in markets, that is likely because beneath our thoughts is some contradiction. One line of thought and feeling lead us in a particular direction; another leads us somewhere else. Such confusion is uncomfortable for many people. We want to know. We want "conviction" and the trades that come from deep inner certainty. So what do we do with confusion?
The worst thing we can do is try to prematurely resolve the contradiction and push ourselves in one direction or the other. That ignores one side of the confusion and often means that we're ignoring important information. Great trades come to us. When we try to make great trades happen, it's often because nothing is clear to us. That is a caution light.
Ayn Rand, in her classic novel Atlas Shrugged, pointed out that "Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you're facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong". When we're confused in markets, we want to embrace that confusion and use it as a catalyst to check our assumptions. Somewhere there is a premise we're operating on that needs to be challenged.
Far from being a negative emotion, confusion is valuable information. In checking our premises, we clarify our thinking--and that leads to good decisions in all areas of life.
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7/9/2026 - In the book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Ayn Rand points out that "There is only one power that determines the course of history, just as it determines the course of every individual life: the power of man's rational faculty--the power of ideas". The entrepreneur is one who pursues ideas in the marketplace, guided by a vision of unique opportunity. From this perspective, we can define greatness as a life led entrepreneurially. In other words, the great individual approaches life as a startup venture: a pursuit of goals and ideals, not just as a succession of needs to be met.
So here is a good question for traders: Apart from your life in markets, how are you living entrepreneurially? What vision are you pursuing and realizing in your personal life? Your relationships? Your physical development? Your personal interests? What energizes and challenges you from hour to hour, day to day, week to week?
Can we expect to sustain entrepreneurial purpose in our trading if we're living our lives reactively? If we're not exercising our capacities for pursuing visions, will we be able to sustain our quest for trading success? Entrepreneurship is a lifestyle--an approach to what we do in life. Everything we pursue purposefully in life builds our capacity to pursue opportunity in markets. We don't just try to lead a good life; we find the good life in becoming the leaders of each of our life's activities.
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7/8/2026 - A well-known quote from Ayn Rand is "To say 'I love you' one must first know how to say the I". In other words, love is an expression and affirmation of who we are. It is not meant to fill the void of an undeveloped self. One important implication of this view is that need can never be the foundation for a successful relationship. Love is a sharing of the positives of each person--their values, personalities, passions--not a desperate path for filling the voids when those things are missing.
We hear people talking about loving trading. What kind of love are they referring to? Is it the love of finding in markets the kinds of challenges and complexities that engage our greatest cognitive and personality strengths, or is it the love of trying to fill what is missing in life when one hasn't been successful in other arenas? For love based upon fullness, losses are challenges to dig deeper, learn, and adapt. For love based on emptiness and needs, losses are threatening. Without P/L to fill the void, the needy person cannot tolerate the pain of digging deeper into markets.
When you enter a good romantic relationship, there is something about the other person that makes you want to dig deeper and get to know them better. That's also what drives the person who truly loves trading--or any field of endeavor. Those who fall in love are driven by positives; they're not running from negatives. Markets can affirm who we are, but they can never fill what is missing.
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Wealth--in all its forms--is not a vision; it is the consequence of realizing a great vision. When we pursue trading for wealth and without a vision, is it any wonder that we stumble blindly through markets? The important question for any trader/entrepreneur is, "What is your Fallingwater?". What is the vision you're pursuing that will guide your innovation and your success? If you're not doing something uniquely, you'll never achieve unique and distinctive returns. You'll copy what the gurus tell you, you'll pursue one funded trading possibility after another, and your fire will "go out, spark by irreplaceable spark...in lonely frustration for the life you deserved".
True passion comes from purpose and true purpose expresses a vision of what is and what is possible. What you see uniquely and distinctively is your vision and in its pursuit lies your heroism and your key to a meaningful life. No guru will tell you that. They want you to follow them, not your own vision. When you discover something new and promising in markets and you feel the excitement of possibility, you know you're on your heroic path.
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