The Market As A Love Relationship
There's no such thing as one role model of a successful trader. Each trader, has to build their own. Many times, traders don't know themselves enough to build a solid genuine model.
We have relationships with every major area of our lives: our job, our bodies, our family and friends, our hobbies, and even with our physical environment.
The quality of our lives is influenced by the quality of those relationships.
In this newsletter, you’ll learn how your relationship with the market shapes your performance and how can you uplift this relationship for major results.
When it comes to the market, traders don’t consider it as a relationship but most of the time the problems they hold come from there.
Your past life events have a tremendous influence on the way you see the market.
Some, see it as a figure of authority; Others, as the villain; Others, come to the market as if it’s a battlefield and try to fight it; Others, see it as a transactional relationship, where there’s an exchange of value.
The way you see the market tells a lot about the way you trade.
Let’s take the example of a trader who sees the market as an enemy.
For this trader, there’s only one way to win: to steal from the market.
As a consequence, he develops a bad relationship with loss.
His problem doesn’t come from loss itself but ultimately from his relationship with the market.
When this trader wins, he feels empowered.
But when he loses, he feels frustrated and quickly feels the urge to get his money back from the market, which stole his money.
By putting the market as his rival this trader doesn’t find the peace needed to trade in the zone.
Don’t get me wrong, there are approaches that work better for some traders and are a no go for others.
Seeing the market as your rival can be a motivator to become better every day.
Some people feel highly motivated in competitive environments; they see it as a challenge.
But when the way you see the market negatively impacts your trading then you must have the desire to change that perception.
Now, imagine treating your relationship with the market as a loved one - where you can meet your personal strengths and accept the characteristics of the market (uncertainty).
This sounds peculiar at the first sight but takes a deeper look:
Think of one thing you do that doesn’t feel like work to you.
When you do this activity time goes fast and you don’t even need to be paid to do it.
You do it effortlessly.
For me, this activity is playing the piano.
I first started with the thought of becoming an expert at it.
But I found a passion for the activity itself that makes it playing the piano an end-goal for itself.
What brings me to seat at the piano every single day (or almost) is my love for the process.
I love the skill it takes and how beautiful the sound is.
I also love that it takes repetitive practice and persistence much like in trading.
After all, it’s also a performance skill.
And I love to train a song for a month and at the end of the month watch myself play it like it’s nothing!
But ultimately, it’s the peace that the piano gives me that makes me want to play it.
It’s like meditation for me.
I have a love relationship with playing the piano because it’s something I truly enjoy.
Now, here comes the point I wanna arrive at:
Does trading give you this feeling?
What is it about trading that you love?
For what are you in it? Just money?
In order for you to persist in this game you need to develop a love relationship with your own trading.
I see many traders have this love relationship with money, but what about the processes?
You need to find something beyond the money that keeps you going. This is what makes you process-focused.
I’m not putting aside the discipline it takes. You won’t feel motivated to show up every single day.
But in order to persist you need to see something else in the process of trading that energizes you and fulfills you.
Even if you make a lot of money with trading, you won’t feel fulfilled if it doesn’t access your deepest strengths; if it doesn’t resonate with you.
Personally, what I love about the markets is the ability to organize data, analyze it and improve based on that.
This is highly correlated with my personal strengths of planning, organization, and preparation.
Because of that, I developed a strong method to journal and analyze my trades.
This feeds my love for trading because I’m meeting some of my natural strengths.
It’s like a positive cycle: I meet my natural strengths through the processes I use in trading and I get good feedback from it which makes me want to do more of what is working.
However, for some traders, my methods wouldn’t make sense.
The key is to find out what your personal strengths are and discover ways to manifest them in trading.
When you hear that you gotta know yourself in trading, this is what it means!
Strengths greatly shape how we approach trading:
The trader with analytical strengths is highly research based. This type of trader can be a swing, position trader, or even an investor.
A very social person might enjoy being in a chatroom while trading. This breaks the idea that trading is great for introverts btw, trading is great for anyone who can meet their strengths in it.
The trader with leadership skills approaches trading in a team context. He can be great at trading in a hedge fund because it resonates with his particular strengths.
A fast decision maker might want to scalp on the two-minute chart - position trading wouldn’t be for this person. Maybe she is not the best at ideas research but she’s great at executing them. So she develops a strategy based on small timeframe patterns.
Strengths are essential to performance because they tap into our deepest purpose and motivation.
So…
Is trading meeting your strengths?
We don’t have to have all of our needs met through trading, but we cannot allow out trading to frustrate our most fundamental strengths.
— Brett Steenbarger (Trading Psychology 2.0)
Merry Xmas! 🎄
Sara
Merry Xmas Sara! Great post. Didn’t know you play piano that’s cool. I do visualize the market as an adversary. And the system as an ally
Hello Sara. I just suscribed and I will be reading all of your articules. This was the first one. Interesting topic which left me thinking a bit. Being a structured disciplined person in many areas of my life (training, working, routines) I believe the markets are a great source of intel to prove in a daily basis that my model works. It’s fuel for my statistics. Talk soon!