Janice Dorn, MD, PhD
Neuropsychological Trading Coach
Janice Dorn, M.D., Ph.D., has been a full-time futures trader since 1994. Doctor Janice holds an M.D. in psychiatry and is board-certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in general psychiatry and addiction psychiatry. She holds a Ph.D. in brain anatomy. A graduate of Coach University, she is a pioneer market psychiatrist and financial neurobehaviorist. Doctor Janice has written over 500 articles on the financial markets and coached over 600 traders worldwide. She is the Global Risk Strategist for Ingenieux Wealth Management Group, Sydney, Australia.
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Kansas City Chaos turns to productivity when panic is not part of the equation.
Remember upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all.
Unity-- Alexander The Great
352-323 BC (Alexander III Ancient Macedonia)
We came to Kansas City, armed with computers, agendas, energy and the determination to come together as the www.trending123.com team in order to streamline and evolve our service in the best possible way to maximize profit potential for you--> "our subscribers."
So-there we were at 8am in the conference room, coffee and pastries supplied, computers set up and, the agenda on the blackboard and each of us bright eyed,
determined, enthusiastic and ready to go. So far so good, right?
We stopped into the Online Trading Room to say Hi, and then got down to work. Well, sort of. We actually could not work in the manner we wanted to. Why?
Because from the beginning of the morning, there were constant challenges with Internet access from the hotel here in Kansas City. I had to, at least three times, leave the room, go down to the front desk and ask for someone to come and help us. One by one, people began to trickle into the conference room in an attempt to help get all of our multiple computers up and running. The "fixes" were, for the most part, quick and not effective. We got Internet access, and lost it almost as quickly. Excuses from the hotel as to why this was happening escalated until, finally, it was blamed on Hurricane Rita. In other words, the Internet provider to the hotel was down, and it was because of Rita.
We could not continue with our meeting. We had to have Internet connectivity. So-we could scrap the meeting and go home or move to another location where we could continue. In other words, we could give up, run away and just say "the heck with this, we are giving up"...OR we could work together to do something about this in order to achieve our goal of just getting this done.
In other words, we needed to MAKE a contingency plan on the spot. We had not planned for this, so we had to act immediately. Once again, we were exposed to an outlying event (the Internet not working when we needed it and wanted it to be). We didn't know what we didn't know. On an unconscious level, yes-we all knew that this could happen. However, consco We were fooled by the randomness of an outlier event.
So-how did we respond (notice I did not say react, I said respond). Jan went immediately to speak with the hotel manager, David and John ran across the street to another hotel and our programmer scrambled to make alternate plans re: location.
Interesting, we lost each other geographically for about ten minutes, and then-as if magically we all come together in the hotel lobby at the same time. On the way back up to the conference room, we pretty much had decided that we were moving everything to another hotel-like NOW.
Once back in the conference room, within a matter of minutes, the Internet was up and running and, somehow like a flood of Synchronicity, we were working as if nothing had happened.
What are the lessons for trading here:
If something can go wrong, it will
You will not know what will go wrong before it does (you do not know what you do not know)
Do not panic
Respond (do something) rather than react (feel something).
Stay united and work together, be it in your own mind or in the trading room or group setting.
Keep your head (even if you get a headache in the process)
Take personality responsibility for your own failure to prepare for everything that happens to you.
Watch your positions and be sure to cover your back-just in case.
Wherever and whenever possible, make lemonade out of lemons
Read the Rudyard Kipling poem entitled "If"
Write and let me know about how you have handled encounters with being confronted by a random event (chaos) and how you responded to it (something you are proud of or maybe not so proud of)?
No matter what happens, DO NOT GIVE UP. No matter how hideous things may seem at the time, this too shall pass.
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