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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We don't know who we are until we see what we can do…Martha Grimes
Last weekend, I spoke with a trader about the challenges she was facing. After a brief telephone conversation, I requested that she send me her trading plan and strategy, and all of her paper trades for the past five years. Things started to get interesting when she told me that she had a plan but did not keep a record of any paper trades.
She said that she had spent over 8,000 hours watching one particular commodity futures market. She claimed to know that market "better than anyone else." She added that there was no reason to keep paper trade records because almost every trade that set up according to her plan was a successful trade. Moreover, since she had spent so much time watching this market, she had a genuine "intuitive" feel for how it was going to move. She compared her "results" with those of some of the best-known traders working today, and said that if I overlaid her plan against theirs, hers would be at least as good.
Several red flags went up immediately with this conversation. She claimed to know everything and refused to listen to instructions. Each step that I suggested to her was met with resistance, and her e-mails became more and more confrontational. Then, she began sending me her weekend schedule and her cell phone number so that I could reach her anywhere, including at a family reunion she was attending on Sunday.
Now, here's the interesting part: Despite all of these hours she spent watching this one market and all of its fabulous trades, she had never made a trade in real time with real money–not once. As soon as she saw one of her wonderful signals, she did something to distract herself. These avoidant activities included looking away, walking away, calling someone on the telephone or just sitting there in a "frozen" state. Additionally, she described the rush of emotions that went through her as she saw that a trade might be setting up. In these instances, the feelings ranged from mild anxiety to sheer panic as she felt she would have to "pull the trigger" and actually make a real trade.
She went on to tell me that she was completely frustrated with her inability to make even one trade and sat in disgust as all the great trades she saw moved in her favor "without me." She described herself as being "locked up" and "paranoid to the max." The only way to relieve the tension she felt when there was a "perfect" signal was to let the trade pass and then sit there and wait for another one to "set up." As the next trade began to form, her relative calmness began to morph again into mild anxiety, fear and paranoia. This process repeated itself through the morning until she just gave up and walked away. She described the situation as "rat brain hell."
The more I questioned her, the angrier and more confrontational she became. She told me that she started watching this particular market at around 2:30 a.m. ET and that there were at least three to four "profitable" trades generated during that time. I offered to be with her on the phone in the early hours of the morning when this particular market was active and her fabulous trades were setting up. I offered to watch the market with her and to be totally present as she experienced this range of feelings. I offered everything I knew from my years of coaching to help her through this and to get her to actually pull the trigger on trades. She continued to resist and started to tell me how fruitless this would be, since she knew best about the trades and didn't see how my being there would help her in any way to get through what was clearly a rat brain out of control.
I tell you without any doubt whatsoever that this person did not want to hear what I had to say. She knew all the answers and did not want help. She wanted to continually avoid making real trades and to expect the same results (the panoply of feelings she experienced during this process of inaction). She wanted to boast to everyone about her great system and how many awesome signals she was spotting. She wanted to compare her method to that of some of the greatest traders in the world. She did not, however, want to trade. She wanted to pretend to trade and then use every avenue to convince herself that she was a great trader without ever making one penny as a trader. She wanted to talk the talk but not walk the walk.
It makes no difference how good your trading system is on paper. What matters is putting that system to the test in real time with real money. What matters is your ability to put years of study and thousands of hours of practice into real time in the markets. Win or lose, trading is about taking risks; it's about overcoming fear; and it's about falling down and getting up again. Great traders have courage and take personal responsibility for their action or inaction. Great traders walk their talk. Great traders actually trade!
Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts…Winston Churchill
Until Next Time,
Good Trading and Brain On!
Janice Dorn, M.D., Ph.D.
janice@thetradingdoctor.com
P.S.—Take a sneak peek at my new book, Personal Responsibility: The Power of You, published in January, 2008, at www.personalresponsibilitybook.com.
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