My claim is that it is impossible to make consistent money trading if your attitude is not a winning one. I don't mean always smiling, always cheerful, and that every day is great. We all have bad days where things just aren't going smoothly. We all have losing days in the market where we want to throw something. What I mean is that your approach to trading and life must generally be positive. If you get to your trading desk before the market opens feeling cynical about something in your personal life, having thoughts about how you've been shafted by the market so many times, thinking about what that politician you hate said that pissed you off, or what some anons on social media said, you're going to have a hard time being successful consistently.

In order to show the flip side of a winning, positive attitude, I'll share some things which I have found to be characteristics of those who have a losing attitude.

1. Their identity and mental state are tied to their trading performance, win or lose. When they win they are elated and overconfident, and when they lose they are grumpy, negative, and make life miserable for anyone who comes into contact with them.
2. They are masters of stating the obvious with perfect hindsight. They "should have held" a trade longer, "should have bought that dip", "shouldn't have gotten out there," and any variety of coulda woulda shoulda.
3. They are generally cynical about the market, especially when it keeps going higher. They use words/phrases like "bullshit", "what a f'in joke", "unreal", "manipulated", "ponzi", and "piece of shit" when describing the market. "Here we go again." "We only go up."
4. They are very current on every little political happening and express strong opinions, engaging in endless arguments about why their side is the only possible choice for a reasonable person, and why those on the other side are practically subhuman.
5. They talk about "algos" a lot. What "the algos" are doing. Usually, they're expressing disdain for said algos, and how much they wish they'd go away, and then everything would presumably be great.
6. They use self-deprecating phrases or humor. "I just stopped out. Watch it go higher now." "I'll make this market go down by buying it." "Of course they would sell it off. I just got in."

No doubt you can think of others, but that's a decent list. I know these characteristics well because I see them firsthand in chat rooms and the like, and because I've done all of these countless times myself, and still engage in loser thinking when my focus drifts and my mind becomes too engaged and weak. What do these attitudes stem from? Well, I think each of us will have different reasons. We all have a unique past which has contributed to our current mental habits. So, instead of trying to dig into the past and work this out, why not just forget the past for a moment, and focus on what really matters: the present.

To be as succinct as possible, the following attitudes and habits fuel a winning mindset, for me:

1. Be an observer; be a listener. Have no preference for what you want the market to do. Plan scenarios, and how you will execute in those scenarios. Every successful trader has some kind of process like this (yes, they really do). However, when scenarios turn into desires, into what we want the market to do, then we have effectively closed our eyes as an observer, and stopped up our ears as a listener. Do the same when you talk to others. Don't think about what you will say when you're listening, because that's not really listening. Shut up, and listen. Seek to understand. Most traders do the polar opposite. They have an opinion, and they project that opinion onto their view of the market. The cliche is "trade what you see, not what you think" but it is absolutely true. Just as in personal relationships, I believe that when you stop trying to be right, things just work better. Nobody cares about your opinion, least of all a market which doesn't know you exist. So, listen, understand, and then act.

2. Recognize that you are not your trading performance. There are little voices in your head that say, "what if I'm not good enough to do this?" and these constant thoughts of inadequacy. The limbic system of the brain equates failure in trading with death (shout out to Rande Howell). Failure to succeed in trading could mean disappointing from family and friends, lack of money, and all of that, which in primitive times would have equated to a literal death. But you are not your results. Win or lose in trading, you are you. You have intrinsic value that goes beyond what you do in life. You are a conscious being. This goes well with the next point here, which is...

3. Stop thinking so much. A new trader has to think, process information, and figure a lot of things out. After a while though, you will have developed a model, strategy, methodology, or whatever you want to call it. It can vary in how systematic or discretionary it is. But, it is your way of trading. Whether you have hard and fast rules or not, at some point you have to turn the constant chatter in your head down to a minimum. That little voice says "what if it goes against me when I enter here?" and "should I get flat here?" and a ton of other "what ifs". Acknowledge that voice, but then let it pass. Thinking is the root of almost all unhappiness and worry (shout out to Eckhart Tolle). As Shakespeare said, 'there is neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so.' Truly being conscious means recognizing the space where nothing is happening, and where there are no words. I'm not advocating trading randomly or with no strategy. Trades should have sufficient reasons in order to define the risk, at a minimum, and quite possibly targets, management rules, and all of that. But the useless thinking which is the running commentary in the background serves no purpose.

4. Eliminate/reduce social media activity that is centered around toxic, pointless, ego-centric arguments about things which are promoted as critical but which ultimately have no tangible benefit to your life.

5. Accept the randomness of markets. A loss is ok. "Best loser wins" as Tom Hougaard says. Don't identify with the loss. It has nothing to do with you. It doesn't make you a loser. It is not personal. The market has no idea who you are. Markets move for only one reason: order flow. Not news, not anything. You cannot control who sends what orders in at what time. You can control one thing: how much you lose. You define it before you take a trade, and that's it. Do not feel sorry for yourself when you take a loss, and do not engage in behavior to try to rectify the loss, because there's nothing to rectify. It's in the past already. Move on and just observe, as you have been doing.

Mindset and attitude are so huge that it can't be overstated. A positive, winning mindset doesn't guarantee success in trading. You still need a reasonable strategy to approach the market. But even a good strategy in the hands of someone who has a loser attitude will not yield consistently good results. If you drop the losing attitude and adopt winning attitudes and habits, you stack the odds in your favor greatly!

@josh when you write your first book to help others, please send me an autographed copy!

Wisdom. Thanks Josh

It's amazing how much of that has made me go back and think over the years how I've gone through one or more "attitude phases" of it.

I would like to say I'm completely out of all that, but I can't really. There have been significant improvements over the years. I think I don't even follow politics in general now, and I hardly have any strong feelings for it.

Furthermore, I guess just like a humans' life phases, one needs to grow into slightly more practical and less emotionally involved in the process. And I'm not pitching for going full auto, just having a certain boundary between your trading activities and your emotional state.

josh 

1. Be an observer; be a listener. ... 3. Stop thinking so much.

Dr. Brett Steenbarger's article seems appropriate to quote here:

https://traderfeed.blogspot.com/2021/09/how-we-can-improve-our-access-to.html

Quoting 

If intuition is the whisper of the soul, self-talk is the shout of the ego.

I might use "consciousness" here instead of "soul" for me personally, or even choose to bypass that altogether and think of the market directly whispering to me, which I can pick up on, as long as I have emptied my mind and just listened to it. Anyway, many ways to think about it, each of us will have a different way of thinking that works best for us. Great article though, only 2-3 minutes to read but he writes in such a simple yet powerful way.