Hey Rookie Bloggers!
Last week we talked about position sizing and understanding, fully, the trades we enter. This is paramount to trading success and anyone who has put real money into the markets and has felt the sting of a position or market reversal can attest to just how important these two principles are. There is another issue in trading that tends to trip up the newer traders especially anyone who has only traders for the last few years. I touched briefly on this subject last week in the blog but I want to go a little deeper with this subject because I believe it is universal in nature. The concept I am referring to is complacency.
In life, most of us are striving to be comfortable in our lives. We look to get comfortable with our relationships or our jobs or with our routines in general. Now I know there are folks out there that live entirely outside of their comfort zones or at least it seems that way but I would surmise that those folks are comfortable being uncomfortable and thus doing the same thing that I mentioned above and that is getting into a comfort zone. Now there are some inherent problems with getting too comfortable. First of all getting too comfortable in a relationship can mean that it may get stale or boring and lose some of the lustre it had when it was new. Anyone can understand how this could become a problem, yes? If we get too comfortable in our jobs maybe our production falls off a bit or the speed at which the market for ones particular set of skills starts to pass them by and this can lead to downsizing or decreased compensation or worse the business itself can fold up shop and be done. Now, neither of these things are usually fatal unless your spouse gets bored easily and wants to try something crazy and ends up in a Thelma and Louise type situation. 🙂 Complency is not just a problem in your personal life but it can very detrimental in your trading life as well, allow me to explain. Let’s say all you have been doing is bullish trades since 2010, your success rate should be reasonably high as long as you were able to stay out of your own way, that means not getting out of trades too early because of fear or staying in too long because of greed, this is a lifelong problem for traders by the way.. Now, all of the sudden Bears come to town and no matter what bullish trade you try you are getting it handed to you. This is the market lulling you into a false sense of security. This happens quite easily because the up periods are usually significantly longer than the down periods. Also, you have the media and the financial industry as a whole telling you that the markets are going up forever. One can easily see that this type of complacency is easy to get caught up in. This has been the downfall of many a trader. We need to guard against this with fervor! As traders, we are not unlike that of a snake charmer. We need to get in tune with the market like a snake charmer gets the snake into a rhythm with his or her song but we always need to be vigilant against a change. For the snake charmer, a change can be fatal, for a trader a change that we do not adapt to can be fatal to our trading accounts.
Take a look at the video below for a reminder to always be vigilant in the markets. We must always fight against our own complacency.
I have been looking at the markets this week and I have not been impressed with the action of the overall markets and the quality of the trades out there and thus this week I have decided to observe the markets and wait for a better setup for our next trade. This brings up a very important point about trading, we never want to force a trade if you try to force a trade most of the time it is not going to work out the way you want it to. We need to be patient with the markets and let them come to us. In next weeks blog, we will dive back into the markets and look for another trade and keep moving forward through our trading journey.
So be patient and vigilant and watch the skies and by skies I mean the markets,
Trade well my friends,
Happy Trading!
