IF YOU BELIEVE, WILL YOU ACHIEVE?

I pose this question because although the answer may seem obvious, it has occurred to me that there may not be just one correct answer. You may say, “of course there is only
one answer, it is either yes or no”. I can see your point of view however permit me to explore the possibilities and difficulties the answer can have on your trading.

My name is Daniel. Chris Lori has been my mentor for nearly two years. First of all I want to thank Chris for all the technical and mental training that he has given me, for it has enabled me to overcome many obstacles that kept me back for so long. I would also say that my trading partners, Greg and his father Claude (Crisp) have had an extremely positive impact on my trading during this time. For those who have followed Chris and tried to implement his strategies and methodologies but are still finding it difficult to maintain consistency, let me ask this question. “Why are you not getting the success you so desperately desire? Perhaps you haven’t worked hard enough, or you haven’t settled on one approach to the market. Maybe you aren’t focused. Then again, it could be that your technical analysis needs improvement and you just haven’t learned enough about price action to create a high enough win/loss ratio to grow an account. All of these or a combination of them could be a reason for the lack of success in your trading, but even when you learn the behavior of price, can pinpoint good set up after good set up, know the market environment and understand what the sentiment is and still lack the ability to consistently grow your account, what is the problem? Going back to the question of this article, you may believe with all of your mind, heart and soul that you can do this. You may have read book after book on success, positive mindset and motivation. You feel good about your knowledge and yet you just can’t reach the top of this mountainous journey you have been on to create success in trading. You can answer without one ounce of doubt “yes, I believe and I know I will achieve”, however, you could continue this for 10 years and still be where you are now. Your account could still be break even, or even worse, you could continue to lose money year after year. Is it because you don’t believe enough? Is it because there is presence of doubt in your ability? Is it because you think the market is the culprit? Let me ease your mind. Although your belief in yourself may be strong, I want you to consider an underlying enemy that you may or may not have thought about. Your beliefs pertaining to outside forces that you have not considered may be conflicting with your belief about your own ability and when decision making becomes necessary, you sabotage yourself and not even realize it. You then may point the blame at the market. You may dive into more technical analysis searching for why you lost certain trades. You may even pay for more training, yet none of this will help because you are not focusing on the true corrective measures. I know, because I have experienced just that.

If I have confused you here, let me tell you about my own experience and then maybe you can understand what I am trying to convey. I started trading in the fall of 2005 thinking, like most, that I would be able to learn the market, open a real account and trade my way to financial freedom. All of this seemed relatively simple to me even though I knew it would take hours and possibly years of study. I am not afraid of hard work and that didn’t bother me. Anyone making lots of money has to learn their trade so I tried to get as much information on the market that I could obtain. I searched the internet over and took course after course. I caught “systemitis” and jumped from system to system seeking the one true trading method that would give me the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. My approach to trading wasn’t as much about the money but what the money could give me. I wanted freedom from a job and freedom to live life only depending on my skill as a “professional trader”. One year later, I found out about Chris Lori. I bought his course and went to a live workshop a few months later. I trained hard, put many hours into studying and following the methods and strategies he taught me about the market. Yet after a full year my account had still dwindled away and I was back at what it seemed to be square one. The most common solution I had was that Chris Lori’s methods weren’t for me. I needed another mentor, another teacher or another system that could get me over the edge and I could magically turn into “supertrader” and at last reach the pinnacle of success. I believed in myself. I knew I could achieve. I read book after book on mindset and motivation and said affirmation after affirmation so why wasn’t I achieving? To my astonishment, after I viewed my statement on the entire year of trading and after nearly 500 trades, my winning percentage was just shy of 80%. What?!? I am winning 8 out of 10 trades and yet my account is deeply in the red? What is the problem here? Now I realize that you may be able to answer right away and say “it must be risk and money management” and I will agree. But the question was if I knew the problem, why couldn’t I resolve it with the solution which is better risk and money management? This seems to be a simple solution right? Again, it goes back to the question in the title. It wasn’t the fact that I didn’t believe in ME, it was the fact that I didn’t believe in other factors that affected me and therefore positive results did not follow. If you believe something so strong, yet another belief interferes with the first, you will have a conflict that cannot be resolved until both beliefs align to produce the same truth. I hope I haven’t lost you here, but just in case let me explain. After that year of trading torment, I chose to really focus on my discipline, money management and risk and did much better. My account started growing and I was really feeling great about things, yet I had this feeling inside me that I still didn’t “get” what I was doing. I felt 99% there, but mentally I still struggled with the ease of trading and felt uncomfortable placing trades and fear started to set in. Why do you suppose this was the case? I had seemingly corrected what I was doing wrong and the results followed and yet I still didn’t feel I had “arrived”. While reading a certain book one day it occurred to me that I had a belief, so simple yet so deeply disguised that I never had addressed it properly. I had tried so hard to “beat” this market that I did not realize that I was NOT in control. You may think that is common sense, and to be quite frank, it is, yet I could not see that I was acting out that belief. The belief that I could beat this market at any time because of my pattern or price recognition, my smarts, or my savvy techniques was so strong that it conflicted with the truth which is I CANNOT CONTROL THE MARKET. When I realized, however so simple that I can only attain a certain number of trades and that losses are part of the game and started to BELIEVE that, I finally felt the mental burden remove from my shoulders. You see, I had believed that I could achieve. I had believed that I could and would win and I did. I won 80% of the time, but I also did not believe that the market was in control and could do anything at anytime. I would get into a trade based on my analysis and say to myself, “this trade could go against me” but under my breath I would say “but it won’t.” There in lied the problem. It may be simple to most, yet to me it was a conflict that took me nearly three years to resolve. The resolution finally came when I realized that I was not competing against a chart. The chart pattern was not a math problem that always gave the same answer. I finally understood that I was entering into an environment against an opponent that cannot be beat. I would not go out into a tornado storm and stand in front of it saying “come on, I can defeat you and I am not scared of you”, yet I would get into trades expecting the market to stop where I had my line or where I had my target for exit and when it didn’t do exactly like I thought, I would get mad at the market or think that my lack of analysis was the problem. I wanted to be right on every trade and when the market proved me wrong, I could not accept that mentally. Two major factors helped to turn that around. The first one I have already exposed. I had to truly believe with all that was in my soul that this market could do anything at anytime. I finally realized that although I can see what the market is doing at a particular moment based on my technical knowledge, I can not ever know what is going to happen next. Any number of traders could enter or exit the market at anytime and cause me to gain or lose profit. The key was, as long as I really believed that when I entered the market that this is true then I was right every single time. This really eased the need to be competitive with the market because I had come to terms that I am right about the market in every trade. It can do anything, so when it went against my position, although other factors such as a better entry may have helped out my cause, that was irrelevant at this moment in time and the market would either give me profit, or take it from me. When I implemented this belief, the other major factor started contributing to the ease and lack of emotion in placing trades. I started considering my risk and truly believed that I could lose that amount at any time. When a trader starts to use that mental approach, they will be much more comfortable because they know that they have done everything within their control up to that point, now it is up to the market and that is something they cannot control. Proper analysis will give you the edge and a higher probability of profit, but you cannot be assured that any particular trade will work out every time. Again this seems simple, yet I would suggest this is a major factor.

Of course, you must learn and gain knowledge about the market. You must learn how and where to enter a trade, proper management of that trade and all the aspects of trade execution and implementation. You must learn how to observe price action and recognize key levels of opportunity, but once you have done so, it may come down to something totally simple and seemingly insignificant that will finally give you the mental confirmation that you have finally “got it”. The question is, will you find out where that conflict is and will you address it? Chris gave me all the tools that I needed to become successful. His methods, in my opinion, are the only way to truly understand the behavior of the market. My trade win/loss ration proved he had given me the knowledge I desired. It wasn’t until I resolved my conflicting beliefs that I could truly say, “I am a successful trader”. So keep believing that you can achieve. That is very important to your success in anything and is a true statement to be sure. But, if you find yourself in a continual struggle, it might be that there is a hidden belief in something else that is sabotaging your success and you must address that before you can see the results you truly desire. I guess it’s how strong you believe in your success that will finally lead you to addressing that conflict, no matter how long it takes.


Happy trading to you,

Daniel Shortridge