In Control and Profitable
Last summer, Jack decided to fix his leaky roof. But one thing led to another and he never got around to finishing it. Now it's almost the middle of October and rainstorms threaten his home. Jack decides to buckle down and beat the elements. He pushes himself to nail down the shingles to protect his property. There's a primitive human instinct to protect your assets. When rain threatens to ruin your valuable
property, you get motivated and get moving. You do everything physically possible to beat the odds.
When it comes to physical labor, getting yourself energized helps. You can gain full control of your domain. You can build a strong shelter to beat nature (that is, it's always physically possible though somewhat impractical at times). Such an approach may not work for trading, however. When it comes to trading the markets, you can never gain complete control. In the final analysis, the markets are in control, and no matter how much physical energy you expend, there are times when you cannot overpower what the markets want to do. An overly zealous gung ho mentality, fight them and beat them, may not be appropriate. You must flow with the markets, and go where the markets take you.
Dr. Richard McCall in the "Way of the Warrior Trader," outlines how you must watch the markets like a skilled warrior, see what move they make, and make a counter-move. It requires astute perceptions and a winning strategy to beat a skilled opponent like the markets. Brute force alone is not enough. You have to accurately identify what you can control and what you can't, and allocate your energies appropriately.
What can't you control? You can't control how the masses will react. You can't control world events that may impact stock prices. You can't control how the media may report on the market action and influence prices. You can't control how much profits a company will make or their earnings reports. You can't control the Fed's decision to raise or lower interest rates. The factors that you cannot control, and must live with, are numerous, and trying to control them is a waste of your time.
Just because you cannot gain complete control of every aspect of trading is no reason to despair, though. You merely need to get in sync with the markets and figure out a way to go where they go. The kind of action you must take is pensive, analytical and quantitative. You have to concentrate and focus on the markets. This requires studying charts and reports, and mentally planning what to do rather than taking physical action. Instead of merely getting up your physical energy, you have to build up your mental energy as well. And then you have to put all your mental effort into finding new trading setups and waiting for the right moment to enter and exit. The action you need to take is in preparing for trading and focusing on executing trading plans flawlessly. Winning traders know when to accept circumstances beyond their control and when to take decisive action whenever they are able. When you take appropriate control of the situation, you will achieve lasting financial suc cess.
