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June 28, 2009

T Sized Pip: Losing Trader, Exhibit "F"




Losing Traders and Losing Attitudes,

Hello Traders!

I hope everyone had a great weekend getting rested, refreshed, and relaxed. Or as Ben Lichtenstein over at Trader's Audio would say, "Get Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr'd"....But, I digress...

I do not have too many FX updates as of right now, but I am sure I will as the night progresses. I want to take the time to focus on a small anecdote and trading lesson during this post, so please bear with me as this is not usually the topic of discussion. But, before I do, I briefly want to give my impressions of the FX market in general. Clearly, we are most definitely caught in a heavy storm of consolidation, attempted breakouts, attempted breakdowns, and general whipsaw trading. Central banks and governments are seemingly just as confused, trying to figure out what to do going forward as it is becoming more and more evident that U.S. stimulus and U.S/Worlwide 'recovery' is fleeting. Overall, I will focus on a completely different topic in today's post, simply because these are not the type of conditions we want to put risk capital to work in. Yet many traders do, and they complain when things go wrong. To explore today's lesson on Losing Traders and Losing attitudes, we will focus on the exhibit of one lonely trader/hater who feels the need to try and spoil good things for the majority in the hopes of spoils for the limited. If you are a trader like that, then you most likely are already in the market and do not understand why.

More specifically, if you are known as 'T Sized Pip', AKA, a lonely trader ostracized to the financial/trading wastelands by their lack of wit, lack of intelligence, and most definitely lack of any trading skill, you may want to just go ahead and throw all your chips on the table right now. This type of trader is located somewhere between the 6th and 8th stage of the graph above, just FYI. That's what 'traders' of that caliber do, they shoot in the dark similarly to how they live their lives. We all know that trading results are simply an off shoot of our general life experience. Who knows....After all, you CAN actually hit the dart board if you are BLIND, just as T Sized Pip does 1/10 trades, but you simply can't do this with any mathematically predictive and or probabilistic expectation going forward. These types of traders are what we call "Boom and Busters", swinging big, missing big. Yet, when they DO hit it big the result is even more damaging, making them feel/act emboldened, falsely confident, and dangerously (to their own account) compulsive in any and all trading activity that follows this rare, but majorly successful trade. Now, all of you must be wondering, WTF??? LOL. Where did this come from, and what does it have to do with trading? There is this wonderful little thing called "zero-sum", reflecting the true nature of many trading markets in which for every winner their is a loser. For every credit to an account, there exits a debit to another account. We are in a constant mental battle to out think, out perceive, and out trade our opponents, yet the reality is that 90-80% of all participants loose in the end, leaving only a small proportion of participants with a great deal of the money. This is where our lonely, sad, and confused little soul-of-a-trader "T Sized Pips" comes into the discussion. He/She felt the needed to express comments regarding proper editing, which is never a bad idea, but I guess he/she cannot figure out how to communicate with other living human beings. SO, my apologies to any of the readers who have taken offense to a lack of proper editing at times, this is my fault due to my occupation as a 24/7 Forex/Futures trader causing a massive lack of sleep, and I will definitely do my best to remedy this problem going forward! : ) As for "T Sized Pips", R.I.P in cemetery of losing traders....You will all realized after being involved with trading long enough that those who go needless (usually jealously/ego driven) attacks are also those same traders with no money in their account, no idea of what it takes to win, and definitely a great deal of frustration. All "T Sized Pips" needs to do is look through the archives of this blog to understand that success takes time and is a daily occupation, it is not an event or a status. He/she greatly misses the overall point of trading, which is not to win, but to make money. Winning and loosing has nothing to do with trading, but until he/she figures that out, they will continue to waste away. Lastly, this is also another reason that my blog is not heavily advertised, and I do not offer subscription services or trading alerts. That type of activity simply brings more stress, and why would you need to do that if you are in fact making money doing what you do? That is my question, and as you can see my answer is clear in that I do not offer any of those things. I pay myself, and so should all of you! : )

In conclusion, while this post has not been focused on actual trading, I think it still serves to create a great lesson about the "Boom and Bust" trading cycle, and how important it is a professional trader to keep your eye on YOUR PRIZE, not on other's.....Winning Traders have Winning Attitudes, sounds 'pie in the sky-ish', but its true. We have wasted enough time on people like this, but the lessons we can learn from this type of 'hater' are numerous. When you trade zero-sum, you are potentially trading against somebody like "T Sized Pips" because sadly over 80% of the participants out there are just like this person, losers. Find the loser, and you become the winner.

Hey, but its all in a day's work trying to do what I do. Go ahead and hate, its just part of being successful and it's nothing new to deal with. (and sorry to bore any of you who couldn't care less!) : )

I will be back tonight with updates/setups as they materialize!

Happy Trading....

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