By Janice Dorn, M.D., Ph.D 7/29/06
(2) FAILURE TO TAKE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR TRADES AND INVESTMENTS
We buy stocks, options, futures, currencies and commodities because we want them to go up and make profits. We short them because we want them to go down and make profits. There are three bottom lines here:
(1) We trade to make profits
(2) So does everyone else
(3) Someone has to win and someone has to loseReally, it is what it is and it will be that way until it isn't. So, why do so many of you lose money consistently? Why is it that you put on a position and it seems like it goes against you immediately?
For most people the answer is clear: It's THEM. THEY are doing this to the stock. THEY are taking it down. The newsletter writer is an idiot, the guy who told me to buy the stock has no clue what he is talking about. What is wrong with all of these people? Don't they know that this stock has a really low P/E , great earnings history, is innovating and is a fantastic company? After all, I heard it mentioned on some TV show, and the analysts almost all have a buy on it. Why is it not going my way?
This has nothing to do with me. It's all of THEM that are out of touch. I am just a victim sitting here watching it go against me and I have no control whatsoever. I'm a helpless pawn in this game, victimized by all of those people constantly doing things to me and out to get me. How dare they? Don't they know that I am right and THEY are wrong?
In life outside the markets, we have a society that is massively into litigation. Everyone one of you is either suing someone, being sued or knows someone that is suing someone or being sued by someone. In the markets, there are lawsuits almost daily, and some come to your mailbox in the form of class actions ( where the attorneys always win the most anyway). Others are much more high profile, involving billions and billions of dollars against firms, funds or individuals. This is part of the great game of being in the market. Suits happen.
However, where you are concerned, it is a lot more insidious. There is absolutely no scarcity of people, places, or things to blame. Think about it for a minute, and ponder many times you personally have blamed some unknown or unseen person, place or thing for the fact that your positions are not doing what you want them to do. Who have you blamed? The hedge funds, market makers, floor traders, Bernanke's Fed, arbitrageurs, quants, Plunge Protection Team, The Working Committee On The Financial Markets, economic reports, climate changes and perturbations of weather, war, threats of war, presidents and rulers of countries, newsletter writers, radio and TV market commentators, momentum traders, value investors, CEO's. CFO's and CIO's of various companies, people in your own trading room, people in other trading rooms, Precious Metal Cabal, short sellers, Program Trading Architects, grain farmers, Chinese, Japanese and every other country if necessary, your trading platform, your scans, your dog, wife and bird...( the list is incomplete, so please feel free to add your own contribution, as space does not permit the ad infinitum naming of every person, place or thing that could be responsible for your losing position). Is that enough potential sources for you to worry about, blame, and try to predict, let alone control?
The reality is that, to one degree or another, every one of these forces may be in play ever minute of every trading day, so go ahead and blame away. Hurl invectives, bang on your computer, kick your dog, yell at someone or have another drink. There is nothing you can do about it...RIGHT? WRONG!!
There is one thing you can do about it and that is to take personal responsibility. None of these people, places or things forced you to put your hand on the mouse and click it. None of these people, places and things made you pick up the phone and call your trading house. YOU DID IT. YOU ARE RESPONSIBILE. If you do not comprehend the simple fact that somewhere, somehow, someone is manipulating some part of the markets every day, then you have absolutely no business playing the great game of trading and investing.
If you find yourself making excuses constantly, you are not taking personal responsibility. You are lying to everyone around you. Worse than that, you are lying to yourself. If you do not get out of your ego and off your pity potty, and realize that you are absolutely, totally and completely responsible for every thought, word and action ( both in and out of the markets), then you are covering yourself with a shroud of secrets, excuses and lies. The outcome is that you are putting yourself in the position of a victim and taking away both your self esteem and your personal power. In your secrets and excuses lies your sickness. Excuses and lies come always in moments of weakness and are, at some insidious level, symptoms of low self-esteem, and the inability to both look at and handle the truth of exactly what you have done.
The wonderful side-effect of taking absolute and complete personal responsibility for your thoughts and actions is that you attain true freedom and wondrous power. You cannot control all of these visible or invisible hands, so don't even try. However, you can control yourself-- how you respond and how you act. The majority of all of our challenges in life and in the markets stems from the fact that we blame others which sets into motion a series of negatives that tend to feed on themselves.
Once you give up blaming others and look to yourself as the source of whatever it is that is not right with your trading or your life, you find a new freedom and a new happiness which is born of radical honesty with self and evolution of spirit to a higher locus of control. You become more calm, positive and confident. Nagging doubts and worries about what others are thinking or doing or saying will fade away. Everything in your life, including your trading, will improve enormously.
How can you begin this journey to become personally responsible and a more evolved human being , trader or investor?
First, take a very hard and close look at yourself. Go inward with radical honesty and do not be afraid of what you see or feel. These traits are part of you and make you both unique and extraordinary. Use your strengths to deal with what you perceive to be your weaknesses. Grow your strengths and let the weaknesses fade further and further into the background.
Second, take total responsibility for everything you do, say and think. Thoughts are the precursor to actions. Accept what you cannot change. Instead, ask yourself what you can change, what steps you can take to effect that change, and then just do it.
Lastly, see yourself as powerful and in control of yourself. Relinquish any tendencies to control others, rather accept others without condition, as you would like them to accept you. Take action to evolve yourself to a place of radical personal responsibility by knowing that all changes on the outside start from commitment within.
Until next time, I hope you have learned something from Blunder Number 2 which will put you on the path to becoming a better, more consistent, more serene and successful human being, trader and investor.
Janice Dorn, MD, PhD
Neuropsychological Trading Coach trending123.comDr. Janice Dorn is a graduate of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where she received her Ph.D. in Neuroanatomy. She did her postdoctoral work in Neurophysiology at the New York Medical College. She received her M.D. from La Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez, did one year of clinical clerkships in Phoenix, Arizona. and then completed a Neurology Internship at The University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
She trained in Anesthesiology at UCLA, where she also did a Fellowship in Cancer Pain Management. She completed a Psychiatric Residency at the Maricopa Medical Center in Phoenix. She has been a faculty member to the rank of Associate Professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, The University of Missouri Medical Center at Columbia and the Chicago Medical School, where she won numerous awards for outstanding teaching. She also held the position of Director, International Clinical Research for a major pharmaceutical company, in which capacity she traveled internationally for nine years, and has visited almost every country in the world, including living in Scotland, Germany and South Africa. Dr. Dorn began a private boutique practice of Biological Psychiatry, Addiction Psychiatry and Psychoneuroendocrinolgy in Phoenix in 1987.
Dr. Dorn holds the following Board Certifications:
Diplomate, General Psychiatry, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology
Diplomate, Addiction Psychiatry, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology
Diplomate, American Society of Addiction Medicine
For the past twelve years, Dr. Dorn has focused her attention on trading, mentoring and commentary in the financial markets, with emphasis on Behavioral NeuroFinance, Mass Psychology and Trading Neuropsychology. A graduate of Coach University, she is an active trader, trading coach, and the author of 300 publications, relating to trading and investing neuropsychology, market mass psychology, psychoneuroeconomics, behavioral neurofinance and holistic wellness. Dr. Dorn is a sought-after media personality, lecturer and trading mentor who has provided real-time, web-based personal coaching for more than 600 traders and investors.
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