The Weekend Note: Trading For The Good Times

The past couple of weeks I spoke about various possible reasons why people might try trading for a living. What I often presume and not mention is that traders enjoy what they do and their motivation to make money at this quirky, difficult, frustrating and risky business is really for the good times.

Good trades like good times propel us to try once again. I won't go into the the chemistry of it because I have very limited knowledge about the science of chemistry, but trust that the brain gets motivated by chemicals when we are feeling good. They get triggered by touch, taste, smell, and sound which we all know, but they also get triggered by knowledge. Just the sheer fact that we think we 'know' something makes us feel good. Apply that knowledge to a task resulting in feeling of achievement and success, and you have that feeling of satisfaction, and the release of more feel good chemicals. Test it out for yourself or recall when you shared or taught what you know. Parents can related this best when passing on or teaching their kids what they know. When that feeling of achievement/satisfaction occurs is when we know more chemicals were released for us to enjoy that feeling.

I was not good at chemistry but I know that those little gray cells like to be tingled and anything that has a chance to give them that feeling they will encourage, so we try and to do it again. Many of us try it over and over again perhaps to the point of addiction and quite possibly it's this feeling which propels us forward to success or at least to try and succeed again and again.

Does that give you an answer to why we do something over and over again and whence the definition of insanity is born? Perhaps now with this understanding you now know why you try repeating that trade over and over again and will help you to give yourself a break, both figuratively and literally, May take only one taste of success at this business which hooks us into the loop and recognizing that in itself can perhaps will help you get off the hamster wheel.

Equally, if you do succeed over and over again, it too propels you to keep repeating the task again and again. So I could argue that ultimately, whether we get them or not, we are trading for the good times.