Day Trading Tips
Mind & Money Part 6

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Learn to use Elliott Wave in your Day Trading

Step II - Know What You Do Not Want

These are the emotional states and feelings you will do the most to avoid. We all have specific states we just do not want to experience and will do almost anything to avoid. Following is another list of emotions most of us do not want.

Put this list in the order of which you most want to avoid to the least important to avoid.

Do you most want to avoid loneliness? Does that explain why you would probably turn down an opportunity to take a job with great pay, benefits and hours, but one where you would work alone, and not be able to make contact with others at all during your workday?

What if rejection was your number one emotion to avoid? Would you want a job in sales? Using our own individual lists of what we want and do not want is how we all order our lives and make our daily decisions.

This list of things we'd rather avoid can be more important to a trader than the list of things we want because we will generally do more to avoid pain than to create pleasure. Consider this: Any one of these values can keep you from making a trade.

You may fear the outcome, you may experience guilt when you lose money, you may be frustrated because you seem to take the losing trades but let the winners go by. Any of these strong emotional states can cause a trader to become paralyzed and unable to pull the trigger. Now that we know all of this, how does it help us to overcome the inability to take a trade?

Bringing it all Together - Rearrange Your Priorities

Believe it or not, you can simply reorder your values to better align with your true purpose. Ask yourself the following questions and write your answers down on paper.

1. What values are most important for me to achieve my goals?
2. What other values do I need to add.

Can you really make a change simply by reordering a list on a piece of paper? Yes, you can. The mind is a powerful ally, use it. What if you want to rearrange your list of moving away from values to switch fear from the top to the bottom. You must then make something else your top value to avoid. Why not choose something that doesn't occur in trading like rejection?

Let's make rejection our number one moving away from value (unless you are a salesperson) and see how it could impact our trading every day. There doesn't seem to be much chance of being rejected when you place a trade. Your broker is happy to execute any trade you place, unless you have issued it incorrectly, in which case you are not being rejected, but corrected.

Let's put fear at the bottom of the list, so before you can worry about fear, you first need to consider loneliness, guilt, and all the other negative emotional states. Do you want to miss a trade because you might be more lonely? Does that even make much sense? Not to me, perhaps if you are truly creative you could come up with ways that taking this next trade will cause you to be lonely, but I doubt it.

When you consider whether to take a trade, consider also whether you might be rejected, or more lonely afterwards? If not, take the trade. Place embarrassment at the top of the list. Now, not taking a trade should cause you to be embarrassed. Do you worry about being embarrassed.? I know I don't.

Reordering your list will not cause your fears and beliefs to magically disappear, but they will be lessened in severity and with practice can be eliminated entirely. If only for a moment, you are able to take action based on what you believe to be good information, you will be on your way to overcoming the issue of Pulling the Trigger.

Changing your beliefs and values takes time, but a conscious effort will reward you greatly. Try it. It can and will work.