Trading in the Zone: Master the Market with Confidence, Discipline, and a Winning Attitude

by Mark Douglas

When you learn the trading skill of risk acceptance, the market will not be able to generate information that you define or interpret as painful. If the information the market generates doesn’t have the potential to cause you emotional pain, there’s nothing to avoid. It is just information, telling you what the possibilities are. This is called an objective perspective—one that is not skewed or distorted by what you are afraid is going to happen or not happen.

You are still disappointed and betrayed by the markets, time and again, because of something you didn’t see or give enough consideration to. It will feel like you can’t trust the markets; but the reality is, you can’t trust yourself.

the very reason we are attracted to trading in the first place—the unlimited freedom of creative expression—is the same reason we feel a natural resistance to creating the kinds of rules and boundaries that can appropriately guide our behavior.

Instead of controlling our surroundings so they conform to our idea of the way things should be, we can learn to control ourselves. Then we can perceive information from the most objective perspective possible, and structure our mental environment so that we always behave in a manner that is in our own best interest.

Remember, the best traders think in a number of unique ways. They have acquired a mental structure that allows them to trade without fear and, at the same time, keeps them from becoming reckless and committing fear-based errors. This mind-set has a number of components, but the bottom line is that successful traders have virtually eliminated the effects of fear and recklessness from their trading. These two fundamental characteristics allow them to achieve consistent results.

You have to learn for yourself how to get what you want out of the markets. The first major step in this learning process is taking complete and absolute responsibility.

Although it may feel as if you are fighting the market, or it is fighting you, the reality is you are simply fighting the negative consequences of not fully accepting that the market owes you nothing; and that you need to take advantage of the opportunities it presents by yourself, 100 percent and not one degree less.

Remember our definition of a winning attitude: a positive expectation of your efforts with an acceptance that whatever results you get are a perfect reflection of your level of development and what you need to learn to do better.

Developing and maintaining a state of mind that perceives the opportunity flow of the market, without the threat of pain or the problems caused by overconfidence, will require that you take conscious control of the association process.