Trading Psychology  |  BON 2006

The Gravity Of Trading by Adrienne Toghraie

Stocks & Commodities V. 24:13 (18-21): The Gravity Of Trading by Adrienne Toghraie Make money in the markets… and keep it. Do you want to make money in the markets and learn how to keep it? Then learn to appreciate gravity. There is an oftencited correlation between the laws of gravity and the laws of trading. Gravity is not negotiable and its laws are immutable. It does not care if you ignore them and fall, just as it does not care if you follow them and fly. For many years, market gurus have invoked this principle to explain the facts of life as they apply to trading. Here are the reasons why, incontrovertible and immutable: • The Markets Are Immutable: Trading is not open to negotiation. When the market is plunging and you are holding a long position, there is no way to negotiate your way to a win. There is no way to exert leverage on the markets because the market does not entertain any arguments, excuses, or reasons that will change its direction to meet you halfway. The only way to win when dealing with an unchangeable force is to move in the direction that it is moving. This is how gravity operates and that is how the markets operate, too. • The Markets Don’t Care: A trader is in the wrong profession if he expects to find a caring world where others are concerned if they hurt him. The markets are as unfeeling as gravity. When one trader makes a killing in the market because it went his way, one or more traders are experiencing loss. As you have heard many times, futures trading is a zero-sum business — for someone to win, someone must lose.

by Adrienne Laris Toghraie