A dull couple of days …and on avoding the attention of your evil twin.

Just to let you know that I’m still here it’s just that I haven’t taken any trades this week.

Monday I decided to stay away from the market.  Big gaps followed by big overnight ranges.  A time to sit on my hands and wait for the easy money.

Tuesday wasn’t much better but I had two set-ups, so orders placed.  However neither triggered so another day of sitting on my hands.

Wednesday – well I had my folks staying and I learnt long ago when you’re distracted by visitors then your best to just leave well alone.  So I did and enjoyed a rare lie-in and then took my mum for a tour of Oxford.  Having looked at the markets it appears like that was a good plan!  I have no doubt that there will be folks who’ve made a killing these last three days, but not me.  And you know what?  That’s ok, my time will come.

I suppose the point of all this is that most of us are conditioned into an industrial age 9-5, 40 hour working week mindset.  We feel that we need to be doing something.  We feel that we need to be productive and accomplishing ‘stuff’.

Trading the financial markets couldn’t be different in many respects.  It’s not about the hours, it’s about the results.  Sometimes those results take all week to attain, other times those results could be gained in less than 15 minutes.  The thing is we don’t know.  It’s at times of such uncertainty that the screen becomes a mirror and starts to reflect back your evil twin!  You know the evil twin I’m talking about don’t you? The undisciplined, attention seeking, action-chasing, restless, greed filled monster that looks back at you and screams ‘WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? JUST DO SOMETHING!  TAKE A TRADE! GO ON MY SON, HAVE A PUNT!” 

It takes a lot of will power to ignore the call of that beast.  It takes a certain moral fibre to be able to say, nope, nothing happening, I ain’t trading. Sometimes the best thing to do is just walk away and go sit under a tree and read a book.  The markets will still be there tomorrow.  I like this quote from Jesse Livermore, it reminds me of how patient I need to be when I feel an overwhelming urge to take a trade so I can justify doing something.

“After spending many years in Wall Street and after making and losing millions of dollars I
want to tell you this: It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was
my sitting.”

Sometimes you just need to be happy sitting on your hands.  Remember: being flat is a position.

Trade well

FXTrader Paul