ZF Capital

Successful traders don’t need to trade to be successful; their trading success is an extension of– and is permitted by– their other life accomplishments. The markets can be challenging, rewarding arenas; but they are not life and they cannot fulfill the panoply of legitimate human needs. To pursue one’s development as a trader at the expense of one’s personal development is to court the very emotional interference that generates inconsistent, substandard results.

– Brett Steenbarger, The Psychology of Trading

I strongly suspect that even the most successful traders have a constructive side and a destructive side– a self that is capable of mastering the markets and a self that is capable of implosion. The traders who are ultimately successful have found ways of continuously accessing the mastery they possess.

The ones who fail may be every bit as knowledgeable and experienced, but they remain locked in states that undermine their goals. Overcoming problem patterns is only half the game. The equal challenge is to cultivate successful patterns that can be invoked at will. This is only possible to those who have developed a high degree of intentionality– the capacity to sustain significant effort and purpose.

– Brett Steenbarger, The Psychology of Trading

There is only one valid reason for trading the markets, just as there is only one valid reason for being a psychologist, a dancer, or an architect: because it is your calling, the arena that best draws on one’s talents and passion for self-development.

– Brett Steenbarger, The Psychology of Trading

It is an irony that successful traders plan for “failure”; unsuccessful ones fail to plan.

– Brett Steenbarger