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

by Mark Douglas

5. I pay myself as the market makes money a...

6. I continually monitor my susceptibility fo...

7. I understand the absolute necessity of these principles of consistent success and, there...

Being objective means there’s no potential to define, interpret, and therefore perceive any market information from either a painful or euphoric perspective.

The way to be objective is to operate out of beliefs that keep your expectations neutral and to always take the unknown forces into consideration.

The instant you either decide or assume you know what’s going to happen next, you will automatically expect to be right.

In a state of illusion, you are neither objective nor connected to the “now moment opportunity flow.”

Instead, you become susceptible to committing all the typical trading errors (hesitating, jumping the gun, not predefining your risk, defining your risk but refusing to take the loss and letting the trade turn into a bigger loser, getting out of a winning trade too soon, not taking any profits out of a winning trade, letting a winning trade turn into a loser, moving a stop closer to your entry point, getting stopped out and watching the market trade back in your favor, or trading too large a position in relationship to your equity).

When you stop making trading errors, you’ll begin trusting yourself.

As your sense of self-trust increases, so will your sense of self-confidence.

When you genuinely accept the risks, you will be at peace with any outcome.

When you’re at peace with any outcome, you will experience a carefree, objective state of mind, where you make yourself available to perceive and act upon whatever the market is offering you (from its perspective) at any given “now moment.”

with as much conviction and clarity as possible, that more than anything else you desire consistency (the state of mind of trust, confidence, and objectivity) from your trading.

For example, if you’ve been trading to get high from the euphoria of catching a big move, to impress your family and friends, to be a hero, to fulfill an addiction to random rewards, to be right about your predictions, or for any other reason that has nothing to do with being consistent, then you’ll find the force of these other motivations will not only act as an obstacle making the trading exercise I’m about to give you very difficult, but it could very well be strong enough even to keep you from doing the exercise at all.

To even start this process, you have to want consistency so much that you would be willing to give up all the other reasons, motivations, or agendas you have for trading that aren’t consistent with the process of integrating the beliefs that create consistency.

knowing the risk and accepting the risk are two different things.