The Journey from the Basement

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DaveJB said:
Ah BUT that's the whole point, isn't it? A small percentage might naturally have the TP habits ingrained, either as a result of prior conditioning - perhaps a childhood where a mentor taught them how to see through the distortion, or experience in another field where what I'll describe as dispassionate and accurate observation is the norm (bomb disposal expert anyone?) The majority of the population have a comfort zone they operate in, there are people who spend hours of every day discussing what soap opera characters are doing as if they're real people who have free will...and many a new investor sees trading as a difficult sum that they can be taught how to solve, preferably in exchange for £30 and an evening reading through the notes.

Suggest that the path is difficult, and that discomfort will be felt enroute and howling is bound to follow. As far as I can see people are objecting to the guru style approach as it so often turns out to be a scam perpetrated by somebody with no significant ability - as far as I can tell Socrates has demonstrated he is able to do as claimed, which makes detractors look a bit silly... fulminating against Snake oil salesmen only makes sense if there's a decent chance the guy really is a con artist.

I have no idea at all if I'll be able to follow this all, a doubt I suspect many have here, but if I can't then so be it - I've had a guitar for almost 20 years and I still can't play that worth a hoot.
Dave
Yes , but I do not see any of this as difficult. But they argue and try to reduce it to their level,
and I am devoted to the pursuit of excellence, not mediocrity, and in addition the fact that they are limited by themselves is not my fault nor yours, but theirs. The cutoff point is not far away.
 
SOCRATES said:
No, my mind is made up as a consequence of my experience in having to struggle with dunces, the disrespectful, the corrosive and the destructive.

Some knowledge is too powerful and valuable to let just anyone have it.

In the beginning my posture was one of unconditional generosity. Elements within the membership of T2W have proved to me to have a posture of unconditional generosity is a grave error.

Therefore in contradistinction to most people who dither and muck about and who think I am the same as them ~ I am not, I am very different indeed.

I have given ample warnings which have gone unheeded, now the perpetrators will inherit their just deserts. I am able to punish, punish severely, by remaining silent. We are not very far from cutoff.

Hmmm. I have a slight problem here. Anger is a very destructive emotion, and "anger kept under a lid" possibly the most destructive emotion of all. Now, frustration is still not good, but is not as destructive, it will stymie, but not negate.

You seem angre, and really you shouldn't be. Frustrated perhaps, but there is no reason for anger. Anger generally stems from an inability to control in some sense- this is your thread, you have moderators who support you "in extremis", you have control, and it seems are willing to exert it.

So why so angry? Not being nosey, just interested
 
The HP is consistent, but there are clearly worries that the excesses of said HP might contaminate the TP............

or is it some OP.............?

see http://www.trade2win.com/boards/showpost.php?p=115129&postcount=67 for clarification

but, "trading is the last bastion of personal independence, anonymity and financial freedom available within a structure of capitalism and democracy" is inspirational.......

Jekyll and Hyde eat your hearts out.........
 
Let us now talk about the Human Persona. The human persona or HP has a mission. The mission is to preserve life, to survive. When the HP does not preserve life (i.e., contemplates suicide) it is because some thing has gone terribly wrong, as suicidal tendencies in a HP are not normal. We can say that the normal state of the HP is to preserve life, to survive, and to strive to survive, at all cost. This is expressed through absolutely everything the HP does or thinks. Absolutely everything, including eating, procreation, sleep, excercise, rest, thought, speech, absolutely everything you can think of is linked to survival.

When the HP is in child form, it is innocent. This means the HP does not have comprehensive knowledge or experience. Let us examine these. Knowledge is the dissipation of ignorance. We are all born ignorant.
As we grow up, we begin to learn new things, everyday more and more. Included in this learning process we take note of what might be dangerous, threatening, risky, menacing, not prudent. In childhood not much importance is given to what to an adult is patently potentially dangerous. This is because the knowledge has not had the opportunity to to take root, to mature, either by example or verification.

The maturing of this knowledge involves the acquisition of experience. Experience is a process of making mistakes, but hopefully, not repeating them. The central core of the mission whilst all this is going on is to preserve life above everything else. The mind collects and stores a vast catalogue of what it considers to be dangerous and what it considers not to be. Because the life experiences of individuals are different owing to background, education, and upbringing, therefore the template that each individual develops in this respect has to be different. This is not under dispute. It is a natural extension of acquiring knowledge, followed by experience..

But what happens in parallel, subconsciously is that the mind develops measures to include these experiences and their ramifications as subliminal rule sets, that are called upon to advise, for want of a better word everytime a new situation is encountered to assess whether it is a threat to the preservation of life or not. It does not matter whether the the threat is a real one or not, the mechanism dedicated to preserving life goes on "sentry duty" so to speak. It therefore means that this mechanism steps in and is the first line of defence whenever something occurs which is perceived, whether justifiably or not, to threaten life.

This mechanism is so well embedded in the human psyche that it processes everything. It attempts at all cost to prevent the HP from damaging itself, because it views damage as a threat to life as well. For example people who mutilate themselves have got to be abnormal. Even the thought of self mutilation is abnormal. Now take the case of people of both sexes who cover themselves with tattoos for example.
The root cause of this is a level of low self esteem. It is self mutilation in principle without self mutilation in practice, because the damage is not physical but visual. It is an example of a type of aberration of the HP, that persists in seeing it as fashionable or glamourous or the result of peer pressure or fashion but it is not normal. But the tattooees see it as the right thing to do, and will stongly argue in its favour.
Thus the mechanism goes to extremes to fulfil its mission, in all sorts of ways that we cannot even consciously imagine until we put our attention on this faculty of the human mind.

This mechanism does not reason in the deductive sense of the word, it presents its conclusion in the form of a signal. But what happens is that this mechanism gets in the way of other tasks that may be necessary and actually hinders them or blocks them as they are viewed (erroneously) as potentially life threatening. One of the most insidious of problems this mechanism poses, is that in order from its view of its mission to preserve life , it attempts to protect the HP even when the HP is wrong, as it prioritises life preservation before right or wrong.

This is a huge problem, and is never properly understood. This is why society will view with horror a serial murderer or a serial rapist or a serial arsonist, as these people have acquired a warped view according to their life experiences that have triggered responses to stimuli particular to them. Because these stimuli are effective in triggering responses from them according to their view of the world and themselves therefore what they do (which is wrong) makes sense but to them but not necessarily to anyone else, as from their point of view, which is a totally wrong one, what they are doing is the preservation of life.

Therefore (according to them)., they are doing their best to preserve their own life, never mind anybody elses ! Thus we are beginning to see that the HP has a lot of imperfections. To make it even more difficult the HP has as a consequence of having lost innocense and acquired knowledge and hence experience,
has now developed sophisticated camouflaged mechanisms to defend itself when it perceives threats. It actually booby traps routes that lead to tackling these problems caused by the preservation of life mechanism, or the survival response mechanism.

The problem is that the HP is equipped for the preservation of life, and persists even when the individual being protected is fundamentally wrong. It has in place mechanisms to deal with this, it has booby traps in place to prevent access, many of these defensive mechanisms are camouflaged and only come to the fore when stimulated to do so by a perceived threat. This is why the excercise of watching yourself doing something and reasoning about it is uncomfortable, but necessary to establish that the HP is not there to help you in your trading.

This is because the HP is not constructed to deal with the information shocks that market action is able to deliver, with its cruel yes / no outcomes. The HP is not equipped to deal with this, and additionally runs the risk of being subject to an emotion. I forgot to mention this earlier, because this is another or the booby traps put in place to preserve life. Emotion has the ability to disable reason. The disability of reason
disables the ability to act in accordance with it. Yet the HP perceives this and cannot disengage. This is in part the reason why many traders freeze and are unable to get out of a bad position.

So now we see that the HP carries with it several viruses which disable and disempower it, in a trading environment. The HP is therefore not suitable for the purpose of trading. A new persona is required, this new persona is not affected by emotion, does not freeze, is impartial, calm, disconnected, cannot be stimulated, does not struggle to preserve life because the preservation of life is not in its agenda, and is able to reason clearly and is able to act always in accordance with its reason. This new persona is the TP.
 
spot on!!!

SOCRATES said:
Yes Brake, and I adore the English Language as it is the only language to my knowledge, in which it is possible, when appropriate, to be exceedingly rude politely.

Regards,

brilliant observation. same thing in castellano, ruskie, italiano or portugues (sorry don't speak other languages may be wrong there) wud be a guaranteed manslaughter :LOL: in english - possible!
 
china white said:
brilliant observation. same thing in castellano, ruskie, italiano or portugues (sorry don't speak other languages may be wrong there) wud be a guaranteed manslaughter :LOL: in english - possible!
Also possible in Mandarin ;)
 
SOCRATES

Your post 865

Very interesting irrsespective of trading, an insight into the human psyche which few consider or want to consider.

I am probably jumping ahead too far but if the protection that the HP affords is not to be used when trading, it occurs to me that the TP has got to know exactly what it is doing otherwise it will end in tears.

If the TP has to come first when does one know that it is ok to use it ? If the trading knowledge and skills are not good enough but the TP is in use it could be very costly.

A case of chicken and egg ?

Regards

bracke
 
Hello Bracke, you are quite correct, absolutely spot on. What happens is that the HP has as a consequence of fulfilling the role of preserving life, in addition, puts in place further obstacles so that its authority in the role of life protector is not threatened. For this reason, people will half heartedly explore the idea of how the HP responds when stimulated in a way that causes it to respond "as if" even this half hearted exploration is viewed as a threat to life. The HP then responds and shuts down the mission !

We are back to square one. All this happens on the fringes of the conscious mind so it is very difficult to pin down, because in addition there is another booby trap that prevents this pinning down.

This is why it is possible to enter a chosen persona, whether a sporting persona, or a woodworking persona, or a gardening persona or any other and not be able to sustain it indefinitely, as the HP cuts in when given the slightest chance and takes over. In addition when it takes over it puts in place a mechanism that shuts the gate on it. This means the previous persona is not allowed to linger.

Re-entry now has to be executed again through conscious choice, and, immediately this is done, it puts the HP on sentry duty again to be vigilant, in case it is a threat to life again, and so on.

These are a series of behavioural closed loops specifically designed to guard us from straying into any behaviour the HP considers whether justifiably or not to be a threat to life, a threat to survival. The whole mechanism is spring loaded booby trapped, and the slightest thought in that direction triggers a response.

These responses have to be so subliminally disguised so as not to be consciously noticeable, otherwise the whole business of living would be tedious in the extreme. So in addition all of it is camouflaged. Now we begin to see the difficulties involved in getting past the sentries. That is why I asked you all to sit in front of a TV screen, which is the closest we can get in terms of similarity to a trading screen to monitor what effect is percieved in the HP.


Yes , that is also perfectly correct, the TP has to be "summoned" to go on duty, on command, at will. The TP is constructed to deal with trading, and trading only, and not fro sport , woodworking or gardening. The TP is very specific in its construction, because it has to deal with scenarios not found anywhere else.

The TP has to be put in place early because the HP cannot cope with the natural viruses that are carried by trading, such as impatience, greed, fear, and hope. But a methodology to trade has to be in place also as the TP is not able to trade effectively only on the basis of guesswork. Also a very comprehensive understanding of how markets work has to be in place as well to which a methodology is applied within the framework of the TP. It is taken for granted that these two foundations are already in place.

It is not exactly a case of chicken and egg, but rather Chicken or Egg. The difficulty is that the average person is influenced by the HP to such an extent that to cultivate a separate persona only for the purpose of trading by actually consciously building it in a way that the HP is unaware of it, is not seen as necessary.

The majority of traders will argue that the HP is good enough; It is not ! This is the main reason why in the end analysis the great majority cannot and do not succeed.
 
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To those of you carefully following this thread, you must put your attention fiercely on the above, and make absolutely sure that you understandall of it. ~~~~~~A tip ; you must ensure you understand "every word". If you miss one word and one word only you will set adrift. This is not a time to be adrift. It is a time to be absolutely focused, as failure to focus leads to failure itself.
 
Bracke,

I think the issue is that you need to use the TP rather than the HP in order to successfully apply the trading skills you have acquired.

Alex
 
AlexAndrews said:
Bracke,

I think the issue is that you need to use the TP rather than the HP in order to successfully apply the trading skills you have acquired.

Alex
That is precisely it !
 
SOCRATES said:
So now we see that the HP carries with it several viruses which disable and disempower it, in a trading environment. The HP is therefore not suitable for the purpose of trading. A new persona is required, this new persona is not affected by emotion, does not freeze, is impartial, calm, disconnected, cannot be stimulated, does not struggle to preserve life because the preservation of life is not in its agenda, and is able to reason clearly and is able to act always in accordance with its reason. This new persona is the TP.
So this persona, looking on from a detached perspective AT the person in front of the trading screen has no emotion, is fluid and immediate in their internal decision making and physical response (which is pre-instantaneous), cares not a jot about anything, is relaxed, calm and possesses complete clarity of thought, is totally uncaring of result or cause-effect, immune to distraction and comfortable and secure in the knowledge that comfort and secuirity are not its concern.

There is a term in cognitive psychology which covers this - dissociation (or disassociation if you're form over the pond).

This is a technique (or perhaps better phrased as a perspective) which is used to help people overcome phobias and trauma associated with significant emotional events in their lives.

It comes as no surprise that this approach would serve equally well in establishing a trading persona.

So, just to make sure we've got the checklist for the TP right:-

You observe yourself as an objective 3rd party looking at the physical you in front of the trading screen.

You 'operate' the physical you.

You have no emotion - no expectation of any specific outcome.

You are fluid and immediate in your internal decision making and physical response (which is pre-instantaneous)

You care not a jot about anything

You are relaxed, calm and possess complete clarity of thought

You are totally insouciant of result or any contrived cause-effect

You are immune to distraction and comfortable and secure in the knowledge that comfort and security are not your concern


With a tick against all these aspects in place, and an ability to hold these facets in place at will and for as long as is required (holding the attitude?) - what next?
 
The technique is very different to what you describe above because the process is not disassociation but bifurcation. The TP develops as a separate entity. The TP now takes charge of everything with regard to trading. The HP is isolated and rendered impotent, unable to interfere, much as it might try, it cannot and will not succeed. The TP now carries on and does what it has to do, in a supercooled mental and physiological state, slow breathing, very low heartbeat, super calm, heightened awareness. The TP can now proceed on autopilot mode.
The problem is very few people can truly bufurcate as it requires special faculties why lie dormant until they cease to be dormant as a consequence of developing awareness. Thus the raw material has to be present in the individual in the first place. The great difficulty is that the HP does EVERYTHING you can imagine and not imagine to prevent this bifurcation process as it views it as life threatening, as to the HP this threat appears to be very real.
 
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A worked example?

bracke, here's an example to illustrate what I was trying to describe.

Consider the 6-month chart for BP (LSE:BP.): this shows a well-defined consolidation in the 480-500p range. Classical T.A. suggests (to the best of my knowledge, anyway) that, on breaking out of this range, the share price will move - either up or down - by the size of the consolidation range, in this case 20p. Anyway, regardless of whether or not you subscribe to this analysis, assume for the moment that you do, and, on breaking through the 500p level on 03/08/2004 you went long on BP. Now, let's look at how the HP and the TP might react when the price reaches 520p, the target price already identified:

  • HP On reaching 520p, you say to yourself "OK, it has reached the target price, but it's still cheap, especially when you consider that the price of crude is setting all-time highs - the company is going to make huge profits! Others are going to realize this, so I think the price is going to go much higher. I'll hang on to my long position for the moment - I'm well in profit, anyway." The price does rise a little further, but then the momentum fades and it retraces all of its gain (and more). Having formed the opinion that the share price is going much higher, you hang on and watch as it drops right back down to the level at which you bought the shares.
  • TP On reaching 520p, you say to yourself "OK, it has reached the target price, I'm selling." You close your long position and watch what happens from the side-lines as the price continues to rise a little higher, but then retraces. (Better traders than me might have set a mental stop at 520p and continued riding the price rise, moving the stop up behind it.)

I think the above reflects fairly accurately how I would have reacted if I had gone long on BP from the break of 500p, and this is what I understand Socrates to mean by needing to be able to differente between employing the HP and the TP when applying trading skills.

Alex
 
AlexAndrews said:
Classical T.A. suggests (to the best of my knowledge, anyway) that, on breaking out of this range, the share price will move - either up or down - by the size of the consolidation range, in this case 20p. Anyway, regardless of whether or not you subscribe to this analysis, assume for the moment that you do, and, on breaking through the 500p level on 03/08/2004 you went long on BP. ...

On reaching 520p, you say to yourself "OK, it has reached the target price, but it's still cheap, especially when you consider that the price of crude is setting all-time highs - the company is going to make huge profits! Others are going to realize this, so I think the price is going to go much higher.
This is an interesting example which makes, I believe, more than one type of distinction. The most striking thing about the behaviour is that the trader enters a transaction on the basis of a technical argument, but then decides to postpone exit on fundamental grounds (price of crude is going up and shares do not yet reflect this realisation). This is just inconsistency; all too human, but not essentially to do with failure to adopt a separate trading persona. The latter comes in, presumably, when the trading plan has been executed consistently, leaving money on the table (ex hypothesi) and you manage not to regret the profits which your consistency has "cost" you.
 
Hi Sox,

If what I have described isn't what you're intimating wrt the HP/TP issue, could you describe it in relation to this scenario? Perhaps it would be the failure to go long when the price breaks the 500p level out of fear that it's a head-fake?

Thanks,

Alex
 
Well, Socrates hasn't jumped in, yet...

But what I'm wondering is what this has to do with a Trading Persona?

What AA uses as a differentiation to me is simply a comparison of a trader who sticks to his game plan with one who doesn't. A valid and vital point, but not the one I suspect to which Socrates is leading.

There is a vast difference between action/inaction when predetermined target is hit and, being able to know ahead of time the highest probability price action. I suspect the difference is several orders of magnitude greater than accomplishing the former discipline. And quite alien.
 
AlexAndrews said:
bracke, here's an example to illustrate what I was trying to describe.

Consider the 6-month chart for BP (LSE:BP.): this shows a well-defined consolidation in the 480-500p range. Classical T.A. suggests (to the best of my knowledge, anyway) that, on breaking out of this range, the share price will move - either up or down - by the size of the consolidation range, in this case 20p. Anyway, regardless of whether or not you subscribe to this analysis, assume for the moment that you do, and, on breaking through the 500p level on 03/08/2004 you went long on BP. Now, let's look at how the HP and the TP might react when the price reaches 520p, the target price already identified:

  • HP On reaching 520p, you say to yourself "OK, it has reached the target price, but it's still cheap, especially when you consider that the price of crude is setting all-time highs - the company is going to make huge profits! Others are going to realize this, so I think the price is going to go much higher. I'll hang on to my long position for the moment - I'm well in profit, anyway." The price does rise a little further, but then the momentum fades and it retraces all of its gain (and more). Having formed the opinion that the share price is going much higher, you hang on and watch as it drops right back down to the level at which you bought the shares.
  • TP On reaching 520p, you say to yourself "OK, it has reached the target price, I'm selling." You close your long position and watch what happens from the side-lines as the price continues to rise a little higher, but then retraces. (Better traders than me might have set a mental stop at 520p and continued riding the price rise, moving the stop up behind it.)

I think the above reflects fairly accurately how I would have reacted if I had gone long on BP from the break of 500p, and this is what I understand Socrates to mean by needing to be able to differente between employing the HP and the TP when applying trading skills.

Alex

Alex,

Like your example of the HP baggage that might see all profit evapourate.

So far as the TP is concerned isn't the proposition that, if fully developed, the TP will know instinctively (via the subconscious application of trading experience/knowledge unfettered by any HP baggage?) whether the price is going to advance or retreat when it has arrived at 520 and what is the right point for exit. ie: not a purely mechanical exercise.

jon
 
TheBramble said:
Well, Socrates hasn't jumped in, yet...

But what I'm wondering is what this has to do with a Trading Persona?

What AA uses as a differentiation to me is simply a comparison of a trader who sticks to his game plan with one who doesn't. A valid and vital point, but not the one I suspect to which Socrates is leading.

There is a vast difference between action/inaction when predetermined target is hit and, being able to know ahead of time the highest probability price action. I suspect the difference is several orders of magnitude greater than accomplishing the former discipline. And quite alien.
In the first part what is described is (sorry for the interruption) purely a mechanical response.
This is perfectly alright, and comes in large measure from the ability to read a chart and so on.
Sorry, I have to come back later as the brave old duke of York is very active at the mo.
 
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TheBramble said:
Well, Socrates hasn't jumped in, yet...

But what I'm wondering is what this has to do with a Trading Persona?

What AA uses as a differentiation to me is simply a comparison of a trader who sticks to his game plan with one who doesn't. A valid and vital point, but not the one I suspect to which Socrates is leading.

There is a vast difference between action/inaction when predetermined target is hit and, being able to know ahead of time the highest probability price action. I suspect the difference is several orders of magnitude greater than accomplishing the former discipline. And quite alien.

Tony,

You put it better and more succinctly than me :!: Should have checked if there had been an earlier post before I pressed the button :)

Good to see you back - I see you've already been busy on the boards

regards

jon
 
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