Dear diary,

Ah..another losing day. Though the loss is too small to be mentioned, but I got no reason to feel good. In fact, I would categorize this E-mini Nasdaq trade as impulsive. An inside bar immediately after a big down candle is not an nice Long entry. Though the day was choppy, it was tough to trade, at first place, I should not have taken the trade. [Read more…] about Postmortem 27-September-2006

So often I hear about people unable to execute their stops, and keep the loser, hope to make a come back in a losing trade. Here is a paragraph written by Anthony Robbins in his book Awaken the giant within. I find it useful to explain why trader unable to act on stop loss.

What is this force that is controlling you even now and will continue to do so for the rest of your life? PAIN and PLEASURE! Everything you and I do, we do either out of our need to avoid pain or our desire to gain pleasure.

So often I hear people talk about changes they want to make in their lives. But they can’t get themselves to follow through. They feel frustrated, overwhelmed, even angry with themselves because they know they need to take action, but they can’t get themselves to do it. There is one elementary reason: they keep trying to change their behaviour, which is the effect, instead of dealing with the cause behind it.

Understanding and utilizing the forces of pain and pleasure will allow you once and for all to create the lasting changes and improvements you desire for yourself and those you care about. Failure to understand this force dooms you to a future of living in reaction, like an animal or a machine. Perhaps this sounds like a complete oversimplification, but think about it. Why don’t you do some of the things you know you should do?

After all, What is procrastination? It’s when you know you should do something, but you still don’t do it. Why not? The answer is simple: at some level you believe that taking action in this moment would be more painful than just putting it off. Yet, have you ever had the experience of putting something off for so long that suddenly you felt pressure to just do it, to get it done? What happended? You changed what you linked pain and pleasure to. Suddenly, not taking action became more painful than putting it off.

A man who suffers before it is neccessary, suffers more than is necessary.