It may seem a bit counter-intuitive at first, but to truly be in control of your trading and your trading mindset, you must first learn to lose the need to control the market. Traders often try to control the market and they aren’t even aware they are doing it. If you don’t already know, you cannot control the market, at all. So, if you are trying to, not only are you probably hemorrhaging money, you’re probably extremely frustrated and desperate in regards to your trading. You need to first figure out if you are indeed attempting to control the market and then figure out what to do about it if you are (you probably are).
Once you understand that in life and in the markets there are certain things you can’t control and that will always be unpredictable to a certain degree, you will learn to focus your energy on what you CAN control. Much like a master of martial arts, you can learn every punch, kick and block, but ultimately there are aspects about your opponent you can never control. As traders, we ‘fight’ on a financial battlefield with many different opponents, and the best chance we have at success is preparing a good attack-plan, preparing a good defense, and having contingencies in place. We do our best to prepare and navigate the market’s battleground, but we can not control everything, we can only control ourselves, what we do and don’t do, and how we handle each circumstance and situation.
Self-control is often the determining factor in trading success, relationship success and life in general. Every good relationship book will tell you the only thing you can control is yourself. What other people do, how they act or think, is not in our control, no matter how it may seem. By working on ourselves, we can learn, adapt and succeed in relationships of all kinds, but first we need to let go, and be at peace with what we can’t control. This applies to trading exactly the same way.
For most traders, it takes them years or even decades to realize this same truth; that we can only control ourselves and not the market. This mistake costs a trader thousands of dollars along the way, along with countless late, frustrating, sleepless nights.
Where Do You Actually Fit in in the Overall Market Picture?
There are literally hundreds of thousands, probably millions of variables affecting a market at any given moment. From economic news releases to all the different traders and their opinions and feelings on the market, there is just no way any human could possibly “control” or even collect and comprehend that amount of data. The only way we have to truly make sense of it, is to learn to analyze the footprint of the market; price action.
