It's About Mindset: How Gamblers & Traders Think

Find your edge and learn to love the process. Good luck and Godspeed!

Hello satoshi snipers!

This is definitely the last post for a while as I start spending more time in my IDE (writing some software) than in TradingView but I’ve had a blast teaching others how to trade and encouraging more folks to, at the very least, explore this possible avenue for synthetically-mining ones efforts to “stack sats”; well, it’s fun for the right type of person.

I encountered this talk with Nate Silver on “How Gamblers Think” and I thought it was worth sharing here in this final post — I think you’ll enjoy his short presentation and I can’t wait to buy and read his book.

I’ve pulled out a few of the slides with a few additional thoughts as well:

Successful gamblers (and traders) think probabilistically. Mark Douglas via the Trading Library reminds us constantly that it’s a series, not an event. One must definitely be comfortable with this if you’re trading.

As a trader, you have to care about the “small edges” and any advantage that can come your way, even and especially signal that you may not necessarily naturally agree with. This is super-hard for most folks to stay this flexible when determining a trade. It’s the process that you’re going to want to hone and refine and know that luck will always play an important part of any trade.

But, you can get an edge to minimize risk and to minimize how much “luck” is in the actual equation! Research, practice, “time in the market” is how you get that edge because the best care about it deeply.

Structured thinking helps as well:

You have to keep growing and to stop is to lose your edge and your alpha (e.g. gains or net return on investment / profit). Never stop learning, never stop gaining that edge if you want to make this a long-term (and profitable) profession!

This next slide is obvious but most folks can’t seem to really operate without a complete set of information — one must learn to be very comfortable not knowing most of what is about to happen with any trade, despite how much confidence you sense or feel.

And, of course, you have to “take shots” — you actually have to get out there and play with real “skin in the game” to make it real. Paper trading is how you practice your workflows and your processes / systems but using real money is how you know you’re trading and are becoming one.

The mindset is everything as a trader as the mechanical requirement of “hitting buttons on screen” is not hard for anyone. But, mental toughness is everything and, again, as I’ve said repeatedly, you’re going to just have to practice to build this type of stamina and fortitude to be consistently successful.

Your attitude, as well, plays an enormous part as well and cannot be understated. If you’re in a bad (mental) state you should not be trading (that day). Take a back seat, relax, get some rest.

A well-rested body and mind gives you the sharpest and clearest thinking and to engage in something as challenging and complex as trading the market when you’re not in your best shape is as arrogant as it is stupid.

And you don’t want to be stupid with your hard-earned money! Good luck; you got this.

To infinity & bitcoin,

— 8ɃIT

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I’ve made a final update to the large and, at this point, comprehensive Trading Library so you have everything you need (and more) to learn how to trade bitcoin. Here are a few more additions before I take some time off:

Good luck and have fun (not staying poor)! Stack those sats! It’s go time.