T - Model Trader Blog Post 13 - Build Your Trading House

Hello Traders.

 T-Model Trader is back with his 13th blog post today.  

The most prominent part of this post is when T-Model shares his period of thinking - 'I will never be successful at trading'. This happens to us ALL. I can't stress enough that the self-doubt is normal. It happens in every area of life. Simply decide that for you, it is going to be different. Pull yourself a little closer to your goal each day. Treat the setbacks as something to be studied and learned from and you will get there.

I hope you all have a great bank holiday weekend!

 James Orr

 

I think I get the tortoise bit finally!

I first started trading in the second half of 2015 and during that time I was constantly on the lookout for training courses to help get this moving in the right direction. As I am sure many of you are aware, it isn’t the lack of that is the problem, but one of discernment out of the multitude on offer. It felt more like attempting to find the flowers in an overgrown garden of weeds.

As I had joined a couple of online trading forums, I would receive notifications about training programs that were forth coming and saw that there were face to face workshops on offer here in Melbourne.

These training programs would start off with a free one day get together, which was primarily geared towards getting people to sign up for the main seminars. So I toddled along to several of these free training days with nothing more in mind than being exposed to what was on offer.

Well….so I thought at the time.

The first thing that I noticed is that the presenters deflected questions away from revealing the cost of the training until the very last moment. After I had been to a few of these, I started to see this pattern repeating over and over. Part of the reason I would assume, was due to the amount of money being charged. In some cases it was staggeringly high. 

The second observation was that they had constructed the information release in a very cunning way. After I saw this in other subsequent “free” seminar days, it was plainly obvious that they were playing on the “desire” mechanism within each of the participants.

Over this last week, the memory of these training days has occupied my mind. Given that I haven’t really thought about them at all since I first attended, it has been intriguing as to why they have reappeared.

The first of these “free” days that I attended was the worst. I don’t mean that in the sense that it was worse than the others from a content perspective. I say “worst” in respect to myself. The thing that I have recalled the most intensely this last week, is that I left that seminar that day an emotional basket case.

There were a few intense moments around five days ago, where I just sat here reliving those emotions from that day. I recall walking out from the seminar on what was a cold winter’s day in an area of the city flanked by high rise residential buildings. Everything seemed hard edged, colorless and remote.

As the wind whistled down these city corridors I felt utterly drained and empty. A sense of blankness just seemed to descend, engulfing me in this hopelessness that “they” knew the secret and I most certainly didn’t.

I can now reflect back to that moment and realize that there was indeed an extremely loud and vocal noise within saying… “I will never be successful at trading”. It was in retrospect a very simple equation to understand as I had just spent hours listening to this “judgment” being rammed down into my brain cells over and over. Given that they knew and I was one of the dummies, for whom “this secret” had bypassed, it was obvious that success lay outside of me and I was fundamentally doomed unless I sort this external salvation.

Also in reflection, I can now see that I had been “got” so perfectly. Not 100% got, because in the end I didn’t sign up. Let’s just say a damn good 95% got. Sufficiently enough to feel so utterly demoralized.

In thinking about how the other attendee’s had responded by the end of that day, I also realized that I wasn’t the only bunny on that conveyor belt either. The presenter, on many occasions actually stated “You- will- fail- without- my- coaching”. Creepy stuff!

I had sufficient intelligence at the time to realize what was taking place within that “free” training day. Yet at the same time, my desire to want to be successful at trading was also at large, ensuring this mother of all emotional bombs going off within me. One part of me wanted to get up and slap the guy presenting for being so slippery. The other part wanted to fall at his feet and plead that he tells me now what hell this friggin “secret” is, so as to end my suffering.

The tragic aspect to this is that I fell for this perceived power imbalance. He had it and I wanted it and at that moment in time, my desire out shone everything else. With this taking place, perspective was thrown out the window.

I sense that this has returned to my conscious mind simply for the reason that all these many months on, I can see it now in a completely new light. I do feel a cringing inside at acknowledging these things here. I wanted something so strongly, that I became so blinded to the natural processes of learning and engagement.

If you have read Part 1 of the interview with James, I am sure you will notice how often the “time” aspect comes into play. In what I have been writing here, the “time” aspect was most definitely doing a job on me. I was on all counts displaying the emotional maturity of a 3 year old, but resorting to the adult version of it and falling into despair, frustration, hopelessness and impatience.

Really, all that I can say in regards to those emotional states is…. “Oh dear T-model….hook, line and sinker”.

In that Part 1 of the interview, James highlights what is an important point which helps to shed insight on this story. It is “laziness”. My desire at that moment was so strong that the larger perspective got swamped in the need for instant gratification, completely falling for the belief that this guy had the answer. If it was true then all I had to do was get the formula and hey presto, “I have made it”. Easy.

In all the blogs thus far, I have attempted to offer my trading experiences from a raft of differing angles. If it is that you are reading this and have just started on the trading journey, I would like to suggest giving a great deal of thought regarding the “time” factor. It is something for which has plagued me and turned me inside out. It appears that I am not alone on this issue either.

Build this “trading house” slowly and with care. You will save yourself from a lot of truly unnecessary stress. This is all so very logical, however there really does seem to be some strange chemical reaction that takes place in the brain when stepping into the world of a trading chart, that has a “time” reality of its own.

Till next time

T-model.