by Rasool Cunningham
Trading Editor
Philadelphia, PA (DYDD)
Carlos Castaneda wrote 12 books about his experience while training in Shamanism. He said his teacher was a man named Don Juan Matus. Who either of these men were is not important. What is important is what they say. If you take quotes out of Castaneda’s books and swap “Warrior” for “Trader” you get useful trading axioms. For example:
“One of the greatest forces in the lives of warriors (traders) is fear, because it spurs them to learn.”
This is profoundly true when it comes to trading. The best traders know that emotions are human and as long as they’re alive they will have them. So they harness them (or try to anyway) and use them to help their trading instead of hurting it. When harnessed, nothing helps as much as fear. Fear is what makes you stick to your trading rules. Fear is what makes you learn trading rules in the first place! For a trader who has learned to harness it, fear is a valuable friend.
“A Warrior (trader) is a hunter. He calculates everything. That’s control. Once his calculations are over, he acts. He let’s go. That’s abandon. A warrior (trader) is not a leaf @ the mercy of the wind. No one can push him; no one can make him do things against his better judgement. A warrior (trader) is tuned to survive, and he survives in the best possible fashion.”
Not to portray trading as some super natural thing because it’s not. It is different from any other profession though, as you’re dealing with money. So, it has a life or death quality to it. Money brings out emotions because it’s so central to our survival. This gives trading a hunting quality. Not only that, but the way you can go long stretches just sitting still, and then a bunch of action comes and goes just like that! This is also like hunting.
The part about not being a leaf @ the mercy of the wind is spot on with trading. You can’t let headlines or rumors sway you after you’ve made all your calculations. You must stand firm on your assumptions until you’re proven wrong. Also after you’ve made your calculations you must act! How many times have you analyzed charts or fundamentals and not acted or acted too late only to watch exactly what you thought would happen happen right in front of your eyes?! This is some frustrating shit!!
A trader has to learn when to let go and act or he or she won’t succeed @ trading, or won’t be as good of a trader as they could have been. Last but not least, the best traders survive in the best possible fashion, by conserving capital! You hear it time in and time again, yet lots of traders forget it when we need to remember it the most, when the shit hits the fan! Forget your loses, think about what you still have!!!!! I can’t put enough exclamation marks after this sentence. It’s not easy, but it’s absolutely detrimental!
“The basic difference between a regular man and a warrior (trader) is that a warrior (trader) takes everything as a challenge, while ordinary men take everything as a blessing or a curse.”
How can a good trading day be a challenge? For one, you have to control the euphoric emotion as not to get complacent or cocky and miss something important. Why is a bad trading day not a reason to get too down? Because you learn more valuable lessons from losing trades than winners. This speaks to a trader needing to stay calm. Not to high on good days and not too down on bad days… Everything in trading and in life is a challenge!
“A warrior (trader) takes responsibility for his acts, for the most trivial of his acts.”
This traders, is super important. We have to take responsibility for EVERYTHING WE DO! It’s not Ben Bernanke’s fault. It’s not president Obama’s fault. It’s our fault! If we are unsuccessful in our trading we can never get to the bottom of the reasons why until we take responsibility for all our actions. No matter how small. I stay up too late and try to trade the market open groggy and make a mistake guess what? It ain’t the stupid market maker’s fault if I get taken to the cleaners on my first trade of the day. Even if they did fleece me, I should have known not to be the first order anyway. I should have gotten more sleep. The best part about taking responsibility is most times the problem is 100 times easier to fix once I say “hey, it’s my fault, now, what did I do wrong?” And that way I can fix the problem 100 times faster also.
I apply this to the market as well as the world. You can’t trade forever traders. Make every trade count. Your money is very important. It is your life as far as the market is concerned, so use it wisely, and only after thinking through everything. I highly recommend reading Carlos Castaneda’s work. If not to help with your trading than to help with your thinking because it’s guaranteed to make you think, if nothing else. In trading we need any and every edge we can get. The margin of error in this game is super thin, so it’s only prudent to look under every rock and through every book. Of course we don’t have time to look through every book. But we must make time to look through the most useful. These books in my opinion are among the most useful books around. And since there is so much more to life than trading, these books are that much more useful because they pertain to everything. i gave you the tip of the iceberg, it’s your job to seek the rest of it.
Good luck and happy hunting traders! I mean warriors!