Trading Psychology Mastery Course

Congratulations, you are enrolled in the Trading Psychology Mastery Course. For the next two weeks or so, you'll embark on a journey that will hopefully arm you with some deep insights about the nature of your own mind, but also the markets and reality as a whole. And this will provoke some deep changes within yourself, changes that you'll witness first hand as you begin trading. You'll see the change in your behavior and therefore your results. Now, the only thing that is required of you is that you commit yourself fully during those two weeks. Because this is a home study course, I know there is a propensity to distract yourself from what it is that you have to do. You're more inclined to slack off, to do things halfway through without any real personal commitment. But, the technique I will be showing you isn't something that you can do halfway through, unfortunately. You have to go all the way in order to really reap the rewards. When you fully commit yourself, in essence, you are giving yourself completely to yourself. And I know this statement doesn't really make sense to you at the moment, but it will later on, trust me. If you commit yourself fully, body and mind, to this course, something of significant importance will happen to you. You will be showing to your subconscious mind that you want that market success strong enough that you're willing to erase conflicting beliefs or resistances in your mind. That you're willing to do whatever it takes. And the subconscious mind always listens. It always pays attention. So in essence, what I'm stating is that the work has to come from you. Only you. Okay? Basically, this course is just a bunch of words, spoken and written. Intrinsically, they don't really mean anything, unless you give meaning to them. That being said, I would expect of you that you consensuously observe the following precepts before starting. Number one, acceptance of the technique. You must declare yourself willing to follow my guidance and instructions at all times. That is, to practice the technique exactly as instructed, without ignoring any parts of the instructions, nor adding anything to them. This acceptance should be one of trust and understanding. Okay? Only with an attitude of trust can you work diligently and thoroughly. And such confidence in me and what I'm teaching to you, and the technique, is essential for the success of this approach. Number two, I want you to cease any market-related activity for at least two weeks. In short, you are doing this to give a fair trial to the technique I'm about to teach you. You are also giving yourself an opportunity to extrapolate yourself from a given problem, and in this case, your inability to manufacture consistency in trading. And this will provide you with much-needed perspective. We'll get to that later on. But know this, failure to do so, failure to cease any market-related activity for at least two weeks, may impede or even reverse your progress. So this is very important. Make sure you exit any existing short-term positions. Make sure you do not check market-related news for two weeks, or that you do not check your P&L, place trades, etc., etc. Three, I want your full focus for the entirety of this course. Make sure that you're in a quiet environment when you listen to the course, or when you practice the exercises. Make sure that no one disturbs you. Make sure that you do not take calls, check your internet browser, etc. This is to emphasize the strictly practical nature of the technique I'm about to teach you. Number four, you will have to do the homework as instructed with each new section of the course. Again, I want your full commitment, and with this in mind, I want you to fill and sign the commitment form provided, and keep it at arm's length. Every line of this form has been written with you and your practice in mind. So here you go, four precepts that I want you to observe as they are, unconditionally. I'm confident that this course is one of the best investments you've made so far in regards to aiding you in the attainment of any kind of durable success in trading, but again, you have to be willing to do the work as prescribed. At any moment during or after the course, if you have any questions or need clarifications about the technique, I'm available through email at tradingcomposure at gmail.com. There's also a designated area on the side where you can ask your questions if it hasn't already been asked by others and answered, so check this out. So let's discuss the technique. I've been trading for close to 10 years now, and for a very long time I have struggled with the psychological aspect of trading. In exploring different strategies of working with my mind in order to boost my performance in the markets, I have expanded my understanding of what really works and what doesn't. I have tried almost everything, from techniques of self-affirmation to mental projection, and many of those different techniques were a complete waste of my time. Some were beneficial and mitigated to some extent my problem behaviors in the markets, but ultimately none of them got me the kind of results I got from a consistent practice of the technique I'm about to present to you. And the reason is simple, the technique attacks the very issue that prevents us from trading with a carefree state of mind. As said earlier, this issue is clinging and averting, which our mind naturally gravitates around. So the technique in question is something I have been working with for several years now. I have tested it in the laboratory of my own life with great results, and there are also a dozen students of mine, that's when I used to do one-on-one coaching back in the days, who have implemented it in their daily lives with equally great results, and who continue to do so by the way. The technique is self-observation through complete stillness. Now, if you're familiar with any of my work, you probably knew it was going to involve this. But why complete stillness you may ask? It's very simple, through complete stillness of the body, the mind can finally open itself to deeper levels of awareness. When your awareness is heightened, the reality about your physical and mental structure opens up to you. So self-observation through complete stillness is a process of dropping one's sense of self-concern by observing the flow of sensations in a completely non-judgmental way. One begins by observing the natural breath to concentrate the mind, and with a sharpened awareness one proceeds to observe the ever-changing nature of body and mind and experiences. In doing so, one also realizes the universal truth of impermanence and the constant, impersonal, changing phenomena that govern our existence. This is very important and we'll delve deeper into this throughout the course. One also sees through direct experience that the mind, if left untamed, engineers its own suffering just like a self-fulfilling prophecy. An untamed mind, also called the monkey mind, is one that perpetually gravitates around clinging or averting, and it is the direct cause of most, if not all, of our trading problems, and it is the reason why we trade compulsively, why we can't let our trades work naturally without tweaking them, it is the reason why we can't reliably let our winners run, cut our losses, etc. And there is a cure for this in the form of this practice of self-observation, where we are essentially learning to tame our mind. We enjoy real freedom when we are able to do so, and the entire technique is a remedy for not only trading-related problems, but for universal problems. This clinging and averting mechanism, it controls our lives, there is a tremendous amount of attachment towards our own person, other people, money, material possessions, ideas, opinions, expectations, etc. And when we are not clinging, we are averting, so for this reason, the technique will have a universal application. If you practice it every day, you will see that the results go far beyond market success. Your whole life will change for the better, and will be characterized by more balance, and happiness, and contentment, and peace, especially in the midst of uncertainty, vicissitudes, but also complacency. You will get those results, whether you are a trader, an entrepreneur, or none of those, whether you are white, black, brown, yellow, whether you are Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, whether you are gay, straight, or both, all that matters is that you are a human being. It works on the simple basis that all humans share the same problem, which is clinging and aversion, and a technique that can eradicate this problem, will have a universal application. I have been practicing self-observation through complete stillness for several years now. I went on numerous solo wilderness expedition programs, anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks, and I have attended countless meditation retreats from different traditions within the Buddhist sphere, in different countries, with different renowned teachers and gurus, and I have practiced different styles of meditation, all in a quest to better understand myself, my mind, and to some extent, the true nature of reality. With experience, and a lot of experimentation, I came to see which part of those different techniques that I learned really worked, and what was superfluous, and so I began extracting the essence of each technique, merging them together into a single coherent technique that gave me glaring results. As I implemented the technique day in and day out, trading at that point became characterized by presence, patience, objectivity, flexibility, resilience, and above all, no resistance whatsoever. I began trading with more and more consistency in my behavior, more and more clarity, which naturally shaped my trading performance, because I was finally able to trade my strategy through good and bad, unconditionally, as it is, and as it wants me to trade. But the change did not only pertain to trading, my whole life began benefiting from the reliable execution of the technique. Now here's what this practice isn't, it isn't a rite or ritual based on blind faith. In fact, nothing I teach here will have to be accepted on the basis of faith. Not only is this technique pragmatic and backed by an ever-growing number of scientific studies, but you will also experience the insights and the changes, first hand, you don't have to believe anything I say, you will see through your own experience, only then can you really know that something is true. Again, self-observation through complete stillness is a technique that will eradicate compulsive trading and so trading errors of all sorts. You will actually witness and experience those changes in the way you trade, but above all in your life. It is a method of attaining equanimity at all times, which allows one to face tensions, vicissitudes, problems in a calm and balanced way. It will eliminate the three causes of all your troubles as traders, but also as individuals. These three causes are craving, aversion and ignorance. Most of the time when you make trading errors, whether they are mindless or not, every time you sink into despair when you lose, all those are just a by-product of these two, craving and aversion. But primarily, it's the ignorance of how those two are generating undesired results for you. Whether one generates craving or aversion, one loses his balance of the mind, and so one generates unproductive behaviors and therefore inconsistent trading results, and one becomes miserable. With continued practice, self-observation will aid in the release of your old and piling habits of blindly reacting to sensory inputs, whether those are pleasant or unpleasant. In my opinion, and I say this through direct experience, personal and empirical, this is the best technique you can use to change your trading results, assuming you already have a proven system and of course enough capital at your disposal to give you a fair chance of success in the markets. Self-observation is the final step on your way to any kind of durable success in trading, since it deals with the last and I argue the most important aspect of trading, which is to say the mental aspect. You have to be able to do consistently what you, in fact, need to do to get consistent results. Yet, I can tell you from experience that most people will never be able to reach such a stage, because they're always neglecting the mental aspect of trading or taking it for granted. Listen, I hope I've been clear on this so far. If you've been trying to create or engineer consistent trading results without much success, the only way to experience a different reality is to look within, to observe oneself. And this is something that took me too long to recognize. All our lives, we are accustomed to look outward. As a culture, we have always been interested in what is happening outside. And it's the reason why we traders are so obsessed with no-fail holy grail trading systems. Even when none exist, we are rarely, if ever, trying to examine ourselves, our own mental and physical structure, our own actions. So we remain unknown to ourselves. And this ignorance has harmful consequences, because without knowing from experience what drives our behavior, we remain slaves of forces within ourselves. And this creates our results in the markets. The inability to let a winner run or to cut a loss, for instance, is a compulsive trading habit resulting from or relating to an irresistible urge to do something, especially one that is against one's conscious wishes. And why? Well, most of the time, it's due to an inability to subdue discomforts, as we'll start to explore in the third section of the course. I mean, you know you have to cut your losses and let your winners run. But you can't do it, right? And why can't you do it? It's because doing those things are uncomfortable. So there's both craving and aversion happening. You are craving certainty, maybe money or being right, social recognition or whatever it is. And you are averting losses, possibly pain, failure. But at the same time, you know you should stick to your plan. And all of this creates conflicts in your mind. And so discomforts naturally arise. At the same time as one wants to do what one knows what one should do, there is also a feeling that one shouldn't do it. Okay? And in that case, one can feel self-judgments, shame. But these can fuel more craving and aversion. It's because this craving and aversion is wrapped up into our very identity that we act out and then we feel bad about ourselves. As we experience negative feelings and thoughts, we medicate those by going back to acting on either craving and aversion. This is a vicious cycle, my friends. And in some ways, we can never really build a durable and successful trading career without working on relaxing this mechanism. So we have to target the natural craving and aversion mechanism or else the problem continues. I could go on and on about this, about how this clinging and averting mechanism makes sense scientifically in terms of neurology, but also in terms of how it's just a basic survival mechanism, right? Most life forms move towards certain external stimuli while averting others. But we humans have the capacity to choose because we have the gift of rational thinking. The thing is that rational thinking is not always a given, especially in a field like trading. And the only way to cultivate it and maintain it is through the strengthening of our awareness of ourselves. And we have to become aware experientially of certain hard truths pertaining to reality. So I don't want to plunge too deep into the esoterica at the moment. My aim is to keep this course very simple because what we're concerned with is experiential understanding of those truths. And we'll work on that. For now and before proceeding with the following section, I strongly urge you to really consider your motivations to trade for a living. Use your journal as a catharsis for your mind throughout those two weeks and really reflect on this, on why you haven't been able to be consistent so far. What's the real reason for wanting to trade for a living? When you write in your journal, don't force things. Think of those questions but let the answers come to you naturally in their own time. If you force things, you'll tend to give superficial answers like, I want to be happy, I want my family to be happy, I want to quit my job, escape the rat race, etc, etc. Yes, these are superficial answers because they don't hit the core. What I'm asking you is to really look within. Hopefully, if you're completely honest with yourselves, what you'll see is that you are trying to fill a void, whatever that is, and the degree to which it is. Furthermore, by the end of the course, in your practice, when you've learned to go deep beneath all the collection of thoughts and concepts and perceptions and emotions that really color your existence, what you'll see is that there is inherently no reason why you would want to trade for a living. No reason whatsoever. Because you're already whole as you are. There's no void to fill. And in there being no reason to trade for a living, no void to fill, there is every reason to trade for a living from a completely detached perspective. No resistance.