



As long as you are susceptible to the lands of errors that are the
result of rationalizing, justifying, hesitating, hoping, and jumping the
gun, you will not be able to trust yourself. If you can't trust yourself to
be objective and to always act in your own best interests, achieving
consistent results will be next to impossible. Trying to do something
that looks so simple may well be the most exasperating thing you will
ever attempt to do. The irony is that, when you have the appropriate
attitude, when you have acquired a "trader s mind-set" and can remain
confident in the face of constant uncertainty, trading will be as easy
and simple as you probably thought it was when you first started out.
Confidence and fear are contradictory states of mind that both
stem from our beliefs and attitudes. To be confident, functioning in
an environment where you can easily lose more than you intend to
risk, requires absolute trust in yourself. However, you won't be able
to achieve that trust until you have trained your mind to override
your natural inclination to think in ways that are counterproductive
to being a consistently successful trader. Learning how to analyze the
When you operate from the assumption that more or better
analysis will create consistency, you will be driven to gather as many
market variables as possible into your arsenal of trading tools. But
what happens then? You are still disappointed and betrayed by the
markets, time and again, because of something you didn't see or give
enough consideration to. It will feel like you can't trust the markets;
but the reality is, you can't trust yourself.
We need technique to
achieve consistency. But what technique? This is truly one of the
most perplexing aspects of learning how to trade effectively. If we
aren't aware of, or don't understand, how our beliefs and attitudes
affect our perception of market information, it will seem as if it is the
market's behavior that is causing the lack of consistency. As a result,
it would stand to reason that the best way to avoid losses and become