Let's continue our discussion of how losers think in our technical analysis course series.
His mind has a predilection to going only long in the market.
He figures that if prices come down, then that's a good time to buy.
The budding trader is a price level trader rather than a price movement trader.
He thinks in terms of value, not in terms of value movements.
He buys on days of declines.
Everyday logic does not work in the market.
The loser thinks that his natural reaction to news is invariably correct.
The opposite is true.
Our natural reaction to news is invariably wrong.
The loser is mentally attracted to the negative news output of our society.
He knee-jerks in times of ebullient excitement.
He will slip into the market with the news rather than against it.
He cannot stop himself from becoming more and more fascinated with publicized bullish and bearish events.
His mind just does not "cotton" to dull markets.
He always seems to be buying on up days, buying on emotion.
The herd instinct makes him buy on the first reaction in a topping formation, simply because it's "cheaper",- simply because his mind says the price is cheap.
His mind is so caught up with enjoying misery and struggling to exist, that it becomes chained and entrapped in its own inertia.
It does not release its host to self-perception, to self-awareness, to research its own attitudes and emotions, allowing it to probe its inner feelings in order to determine the market's influence on him.
This person has never learned how to think using a technical analysis course.
The losers mind does not think.
It's supposed to.
But it doesn't.
It's entrapped by emotion.
It's processes are over­whelmed by fear, greed, insecurity, unawareness.
Sociologists claim that 85% of all the people on planet earth do not think.
Of the remaining 15%, 13% think they think and the remaining 2% think.
Got that? 2% of the total world population actually think! And, it's got nothing to do with being stupid, or bright.
Even stupid people can think.
- it's just that they don't! An interesting corollary here is that the 2% thinkers actually approximate the percentage of commodity traders who are consistently successful year after year.
The 2% who think, know the market their trading, know the price movements, know the fundamental factors underpinning the trend, and the market's reaction to it, and are well-disciplined, almost bored, without fear/ and know the game in the spirit of fair, good and bad bets.
The 13% who think they think, involve themselves with all the technical wiggle-waggles of chart formations.
They become "pros" - especially as a result of a short-lived, recent success and feel that they have found the holy grail and are capable of finally reaping revenge, and garnishing continuous success.
At the back of his mind is fear, - insecurity, - all the non-productive behavioral patterns engrained since youth.
They're still there, lurking, and he knows it.
And, the market leaps back up to him, and grabs him, and shakes him, once again to his very roots.
Involuntarily, Mr.
13% reverts back to the remaining 85% who do not think-at all.
He believes that there is a conspiracy against him, by the market itself, by the floor traders, - those all around him.
He feels this experience, rather than thinking about it.
Fear, fear of the future, uncertainties, worries, insecurities, obviate all rationality and he exposes himself without thinking, - to risk, to plunging back into the market, biting the bullet, since he feels that an aggressive stance, (Mr.
Macho) that the struggle will result in a return to some profit, with which he can start all over again.
( This is the man who just hates going home to his wife with bad news.
Emotions grip him, during this event, just as it did when he was in the market place.
) It is sad, very sad.
However, the ratio of thinkers to non-thinkers inevitably will never change.
In future discussions in our technical analysis course series we will talk about how the winner thinks.