Trading In The Zone - Famous Quotes To Incorporate In Your Trading Journey

Mark Douglas worked with traders for many years and is one of the greatest authors of trading psychology of our time. The book that put him on the map was 'Trading in the Zone' which was released in 2000. I read this book for the first time in the spring of 2017, not realizing it was the last piece of the puzzle that put in on the right path in pursuit of becoming part of the 5% Club (95% of all traders fail).

After I read this book my trading started turning the corner. Risk management was pretty simple to grasp, understand and follow, but it wasn’t until I read this book, that I started to consciously manage my trading psychology, consciously started to acknowledge, but manage my emotions, stopped being afraid to lose trades, stopped focusing on how much I could make on a trade and started focusing on the process. With that said, I wanted to share with you the quotes that helped turn around my trading, in hopes that it may help you in your trading journey:

• No man ever reached excellence in any one art or profession without having passed through the slow and painful process of study and preparation.

• Mental skills are things like; staying focused on the process, on your method, and not worrying about the consequences if this trade goes wrong. If you don’t have the proper mental skills to stay positively focused on the process of trading; on doing exactly what you need to do when you need to do it without reservation, hesitation or fear, you will not make money in the market.

• Choose your edge, trade your edge and over time the random distribution will fall in your favour. Your ‘edge’ makes you the Casino – eventually the House Always Wins.

• When it comes to trading, it turns out that the skills we learn to earn high marks in school, advance our careers and create relationships with other people, turn out to be inappropriate for trading. Traders must learn to think in terms of probabilities and surrender all of the skills acquired to achieve in virtually every other aspect of life.

• The best traders have evolved to the point where they believe, without a shred of doubt or internal conflict, that “anything can happen.” They don’t just suspect that anything can happen or give lip service to the idea. They have learned, usually quite painfully, that they don’t know in advance which edges are going to work and which ones aren’t. They have stopped trying to predict outcomes. They have found that by taking every edge, they correspondingly increase their sample size of trades, which in turn gives whatever edge they use ample opportunity to play itself out in their favor, just like the casinos.

• For the traders who have learned to think in probabilities, there is no dilemma. Predefining the risk doesn’t pose a problem for these traders because they don’t trade from a right or wrong perspective. They have learned that trading doesn’t have anything to do with being right or wrong on any individual trade. As a result, they don’t perceive the risks of trading in the same way the typical trader does. Remember, the best traders think in a number of unique ways. They have acquired a mental structure that allows them to trade without fear and, at the same time, keeps them from becoming reckless and committing fear-based errors.

• 95% of the trading errors you are likely to make will stem from your attitudes about being wrong, losing money, missing out, and leaving money on the table – the four trading fears.

• When you trade from a carefree state of mind, everything about your trading changes. Remember, that the primary skill that we are talking about here is simply trading without fear. This is a trading skill. It is the primary trading skill that you will have to acquire to create consistency – to trade without fear.

• We need to be rigid in our rules so that we gain a sense of self-trust that can, and will always, protect us in an environment that has few, if any, boundaries.

• The market can do anything at any moment because every person who trades is a market variable. That means you will never learn enough to anticipate every possible way that the market can make you wrong or cause you to lose money.

• In a state of overconfidence or euphoria, you can’t perceive any risk because euphoria makes you believe that absolutely nothing can go wrong. If nothing can go wrong, there’s no need for rules or boundaries to govern your behavior.

Conclusion

I would like to end this post with a concept that Mark talks about in the book that resonates with me because I deal with it every single day I trade. It serves as a reminder of where I am today and where I want to be tomorrow.

Traders often begin trading a method with very high hopes. They want to produce an income they can rely on and get consistent results from their trading. However, this is only possible if you are trading an effective method with discipline and consistency, which most people simply do not do and as a result, they experience the profit gap… the difference or “gap” between the potential profit you could achieve if you had just followed your trading method and what your actual bottom line results are.

If you trade and this book isn’t a part of your trading library, I highly recommend purchasing Trading In The Zone by Mark Douglas if you want to be a better trader. If you apply the lessons and concept in the book on a consistent basis, your trading will drastically improve.

This Posted Is Dedicated To Mark Douglas - 1948 to 2015