Today is Wednesday December 9th and the markets get back half of what they lost from yesterday.
It was a pretty interesting day in that the market showed weakness early on, followed by strength, followed by weakness and finally strength into the close. Do you know what pattern was formed in todays trading? Take a look and think about it.
I call it a “W” pattern and if you look closely you will see it pretty clearly. The market is struggling to give up ground, trying to hold above 1085, past support. I can see the bounce I mentioned from yesterdays post coming in at this level instead of the 1080 level I previously mentioned (trend-line support), but we will still need to see if todays late rally has any follow through to it and by how much. There is room for a continued move up, if the short-term momentum stays intact with this bounce, but how the market reacts when its done is going to say a lot.
It has been three weeks of sideways action and long-term position players can get chopped up inside these big swings. You have to have deep pockets to remain inside this range. The pressure cooking continues to cook and the positions are built on both sides. Tomorrow I will post the sentiment numbers and we will see if there is any movement.
Today I will give you another thought-provoking day to help those traders identify any blockage they may be facing in their trading results. This is really important stuff and not something many traders think of, so that is why I am going to write about it here today.
Thinking your way to success, I imagine, is what you could call todays thoughts. Our mind is the organ of our thoughts. With it we think, know, remember, imagine and understand everything we see, it all begins with a thought.
Our thoughts determine whether we succeed or fail in life and in our trading. Put another way, the way we think determines the decisions we make. You could say that our mind is the steering wheel of our life and we are going to be governed by how we think. Our thought impulses are very powerful and are the sum total of how we are going to live and trade. The two go together, living and trading. You can try and separate them, but when it’s all said and done, you will see how you live and think about yourself will have a 100% reflection on your trading results. I know it is a little heavy, but do we want to be the best that we possibly can or are we looking for the easy way out. Unfortunately there is no easy way, trading successfully is not easy and is not natural for most people. You really need to work in all area’s to master it in as short of a period as possible, hopefully quick enough while your account is still alive.
Our decisions are a compilation of past experiences which come from thoughts. Who decides how you see or think about yourself ? You do! We are responsible for the way we think about ourselves, we have the choice, good or bad. We can think ourselves well or sick. I totally remember doing this when I was in grade school and wanting to stay home. I was fine, but acting, thinking, talking like a sick kid, to convince my mom so I could stay home from school, actually got me totally sick. I never forgot that and it was 40 years ago.
Don’t allow other people to think on your behalf, if you do, they will try and control you and often bring you down. All of this does get played out in our trading, I know, because I lived it and experienced it first hand. Often we allow other people’s negative thoughts and idea’s to decide for us subconsciously and it is possible for us to parrot there idea’s and adopt them as our own. Negative influences and idea’s are powerful and can bring us down, the end result is your trading will suffer.
If you see yourself a certain way you are going to act it out. Our attitudes and our actions are a product of our thoughts. If you see yourself as a struggling trader, who never seems to be able to get it right, that is exactly what you will see as your results. Self sabotage often come from this type of thinking.
The best news is we have the privilege of choosing how we see ourselves. When you have and think of a very definite goal, mixed with a burning desire to achieve that and you mix that with persistance and you are willing to work at it and (lastly for me and others who think like-minded) ask for God’s help, you will be able to accomplish your goal no doubt. This is not a formula, but it is what works. It is based on principles that have existed from the beginning of time.
This is not new age thinking or mind over matter, it is what it is. I did not come up with this myself and as I said, it has been around forever, literally. The apostle Paul, was quoted as saying “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he”. How you see yourself is going to be reflected in everything you do and that means trading as well, especially trading. This business is very emotional and so many traders success or failure, can be determined by how we see ourselves.
Again, I can only really talk about this because I have lived it all, to the last detail and my results were and are a reflection of the way I saw and currently see things.
Once you have a solid approach to trading and you know how to do what needs to get done in order to capture your gains, every trader needs to work on these hidden things like I talk about in today’s post. It can make all the difference in the world. This is in my opinion one of the biggest reasons traders who know how to trade, just can not book there gains and hold on to it. It can be buried in a negative self-image and that will get transferred to the markets and the market has a way to purge all excess. Don’t let that be you. See yourself as a winner.
Tomorrow part two, one simple exercise you can do to improve in this area, so you can achieve all your long-term goals. I hope you all enjoyed it.
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