Trading Education: 3 Mental Obstacles For Traders

Hi. Today we're going to talk about three obstacles to learning that impact almost every trader out there. Right. Probably including you. Got me, too. Anyway, years ago, a little backstory on this. Years ago when my daughter was just three years old. She's grown and out of the house now, but anyway, when she was little, I was really interested in her, you know, being able to learn, get her, you know, going with reading and all this kind of stuff. So I was looking at, you know, looking into books on learning, and I ran across this one. It was really cool. It was called Learning how to Learn. And. And in this book, they talked about three specific obstacles that people run into when they're trying to learn about something. And what was cool was each of these obstacles has a physiological response that goes with it. Something physical that you feel in addition to just, you know, having some difficulty learning about something. So anyway, there are three different obstacles, and all three of these are ones that traders run into. Part of it's just the nature of trading. The first one is he refers to as a lack of mass. And what he's talking about here is essentially the more abstract something is, the harder it's going to be for somebody to grasp it and really have a thorough understanding of it. Anyway, when he was talking about lack of mass, it's like if you're trying to explain what a torque converter is to somebody and they've never heard of it, they've never seen one, you can talk about it all day long, and they're going to have kind of a limited understanding of, you know, what it really is and, like, just really having a good grasp of it. Now, if you can show somebody pictures, that helps. That's better. Still not great. You can watch a video, even better. But there's nothing quite like having the thing in front of you to actually see what it's about and, you know, to be able to, like, touch it and feel it and watch it move and hear it and get all your senses involved. That's when you can really have a good, thorough understanding of something. And so that was like the first obstacle and is the lack of mass or the more abstract something is, the tougher it can be to comprehend. Of course, the markets are very abstract. You know, you sit there looking at charts and the whole thing with, you know, the, you know, the stuff that goes on in the marketplace and, you know, price, movement, all that kind of stuff. Options. Yeah, we're talking about all abstract stuff. Okay, so that's the first. Now the second obstacle, and this one again, really very applicable to traders. He called it jumping ahead on the gradient. And what he means is with most, with most bodies of knowledge, with most subjects, there's going to be certain basic information that you need to learn before you can move on along. For example, if you want to teach somebody math, well, the first thing you have to do is teach them about numbers. And then you move from numbers to counting, and then you can go into addition and subtraction and multiplication, division and, you know, and then the higher math. Well, the thing is, if you just teach somebody how to count, you know, you teach them numbers, you teach them how to count, then you try to go straight to multiplication, they're going to have a really tough time because they kind of skip some steps and they're really fat. You know, they're, they're foundational things. Again, traders. This happens to traders all the time. They'll jump into it. Looking at it, you know, trading, and look at the charts, see, okay, I understand how it works. You know, buying and selling, buy low, sell high. But when you're, you know, you're talking about, you know, going long, going short, the market moves, all the different stuff that, you know, is part of trading. There's, there are certain basics that you need to learn. I mean, if nothing else, you need to learn, you know, what the different things are in trading, right? I mean, you need to know what the different types of orders are. You need to know what, you know, a call versus a put, going long versus short. You know, you need to understand what these things are before you can really even get into the, you know, sophisticated strategies and that kind of stuff. Before you can talk, you know, start talking about pivot points and, you know, iron condors and all that kind of stuff, you have to understand some basics. There's, there's a gradient to it. I mean, first of all, you have to understand what the markets are about and trading in, you know, at the most basic level, and you build from there. Well, unfortunately, a lot of traders, they miss out on some of the basics and they jump right into it. I mean, they blew me away years ago. Talked with this one guy, she came to me, she said, brian, I've really been struggling, and I just, I'm confused a lot of the times. And she'd been trading for two years and she didn't even know what a put was, a put option, and nothing against her, but she just, you know, the way she had been trained, she was just kind of thrown into it. And here, you know, click here and click there, Click There. And nobody really explained what all this stuff was to her and what the different positions were that she was getting into and didn't explain the different, you know, types of orders that you're placing. All that kind of. She just knew, click here and click there. And so to get, you know, jump ahead on the learning gradient. That happens to traders a lot. And if you skip, you know, levels, you know, if you skip some stuff that you need to have for where you're at, it can be really tough to wrap your head around this and avoid mistakes. And that's why this whole, you know, obstacles to learning thing is such a big deal, because if you. If you're having a hard time getting it all in your head, you know, where you understand it and you grasp it fully, it's hard to be competent at it, and it's easy to make a lot of mistakes. Okay, so the first one was, you know, lack of mass or the more abstract something is, the tougher it's going to be to understand. The second one is jumping ahead on the gradient, you know, and not following the progression of the knowledge. So that's the second obstacle, learning the third one. And this is huge. And wind up being key with my daughter. Before I share this last one with you, I got to tell you the story, though, because she was. She was real. She was a little toddler, and I would read to her every night, and she'd be laying on my shoulder here next to me, and I'm holding the book up, and, you know, we're reading along, and she had memorized the books. So, you know, I'm reading it out loud, and she's. She's saying it with me, and I'm like, here, you know, go ahead. And, you know, you read it. No, I want to. Come on, just sound out. Sound out the letters and. No, I don't want to. And like, fine. And so I got this book and, you know, I'm learning about the obstacles to learning. And what was cool was the third obstacle is misunderstood words. And one of the responses to when somebody encounters misunderstood words, one of the first ones is, you know, you might be reading something and you run across a paragraph, and there's a word in there. You can't tell by the context or the, you know, the word itself. You know what it means. It's like there'll be a blank spot in your. In your mind, and you can read that whole paragraph and you move on. And it's like that whole paragraph is just gone because your brain was like, short circuiting when it's trying to figure out that word. And part of the other response to it is a feeling of defensiveness. And so, you know, with my daughter, I'm like, well, okay. These things that I'm saying to her, she doesn't know what I'm talking about. She doesn't know what read means. She doesn't know what letter means or word. So no wonder she. She's, you know, she's frustrated. I take these. These words for granted because I know what they are. You know, over the years of growing up and everything, they just, you know, they're there. But she doesn't know what I'm saying. I might as well be speaking a foreign language. And so I figured out how to explain, you know, what word means, what a letter is. You know, a letter is just how we, you know, how we write. Draw a picture of a sound that we make when we speak. And a word is, you know, word sounds. When you put them together, it makes sense. And reading, it's just being able to look at letters and words and understand what it tells you. And when I explained all this to her, it was so cool because that night, bam, she just took off, read the whole book. And from there forward, no issue with reading. And it was so cool. But that was the main thing I've learned in every job that I've ever had, and especially when I was running the Quality Lab, I would tell people, do not let people use words that you don't understand. Make sure you understand all the words that you're using. And in trading, this is so huge. You got to understand the words that are part of your occupation here. And if you don't, it's going to be a. It's going to be a struggle. You're going to continue to fight, you know, issues that you think are just discipline issues. And the thing is, it could be one of these obstacles to learning where you just. You've been trying to understand it and you kind of figured it out. And it's like with. With kids, you know, eventually it gets beaten into them what, you know, the different words mean, like read letter and, you know, word, all that kind of stuff. But you don't want to do that with trading. You need to make sure that you understand all the words that you're using that are part of your trading. Make sure you understand the nomenclature that goes with this body of knowledge. Because if you don't, you will continue to fight issues without understanding why they're difficult. And it kills me because there's so Many people that get into trading, this might include you outside of trading. Very capable, very successful trading man. Getting my butt kicked. And this is part of the reason why is because it's. Some of these obstacles to learning make it just tough to get your head around and operate at the normal competency that you would, just like you do with anything else. And again, part of this comes down to the poor training that most of us, almost everybody gets when you get into trading. The thing is, when most of us get into trading, you know, we're taught how to open an account and how to fund it and how to maybe, you know, trade a, you know, here's this method. We'll throw you in our trading room or here, you know, we'll give you this, you know, these signals or these trading tips. But we're not taught how to be a trader and we're not taught the vocabulary. We're not taught all these things that are part of being a trader. And then everybody wonders why it's so blooming difficult. It's because it's, this is not that simple of an occupation. I mean, it is pretty straightforward. But there are some things to it. You have to understand the body of knowledge and not skip steps on your learning curve. You're going to have to understand the words that you're working with. And again, the fact that it's very abstract makes it a challenge. That by itself makes it a challenge to, you know, get a really thorough understanding of this where you have a good solid handle on it and you can be really good at it. So anyway, the training that you never got as a trader at the beginning, again, that's probably one of the main struggles that you're having. That's what I find when people come to me, they, you know, they say, brian, you know, I'm having trouble, you know, controlling my emotions and you know, I just have these, you know, discipline problems. It's like, I'll talk to them. And it's like, no, you don't have psychological issues, you don't have discipline issues, you have lack of training issues. And that it's true of almost everybody, myself included. When I first got into trading, nobody was teaching me how to be a trader. Nobody was teaching me all this stuff. It's like, here, here's how you place trades. Go. And so we have to learn all these things. We learn all these things by the school of hard knocks, which sucks. That's why it takes so long. If you would like to shorten the curve and fill in the gap on some of the stuff that you missed when you first started out trading. Book a call with me. Come by inside out trading. Book a call with me and let's talk about, you know, what's going on with your trading, what you've been missing, you know, what kind of challenges you're running into so we can get you past it. Because if you have the right help, if you have the right training, it doesn't take very long to get competent and confident and really where you know what, you know, where you have a solid handle on what you're doing and you're successful. But you got to get that good training, you got to fill in the gaps because as long as those gaps are there, and the thing is, you don't know what you don't know and you can't see what you can't see. And this is not an occupation where it's easy to figure out. So book a call with me, let's talk and like I said, we'll identify, you know, what, what's holding you back, what are the obstacles you're running into and how to best work past them. It's free call and I would love to help you get on past, you know, whatever's holding you back and get you to that, you know, being successful with your trading and enjoying it like it's supposed to be. Anyway, hope this has been helpful. Swing by Inside out Trading. Love to talk to you. Talk to you soon. Cheers. So do you sometimes struggle with inconsistent results from your trading, you know, a little too much variability and in what you're getting, as far as, you know, winners and losers. If you like, some help with your consistency, that's my area of expertise. I used to be a quality assurance manager and quality is all about getting consistent results, predictable, reliable results. So if you'd like my help with your trading, swingbyinsideouttrading.com Schedule a call with me, we'll get on, we'll talk about your situation, see if I can help you improve the consistency of your trading results. Talk to you soon.