Why I love To Trade

Questioning the reasons why you do what you do is one of the most empowering questions you can ask yourself.

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This, incidentally holds true for pretty much everything you do in life, and is not only relevant to your job as a trader. The road to success is often peppered with tests to one\'s conviction and commitment. With regard to my trading journey I figured many years ago that:

A definition of love is...

...what you are willing to give up for it. Symbolically speaking at least. Since the universe is basically a constant exchange mechanism, there is a finite amount of energy which cannot be added to or subtracted from. It soon becomes apparent that you will have to give something in order to gain something else. This may sound rather like a paradox when applied to trading, but it holds true. Either one grows with the challenge or one falters along the way.

Trading taught me about universal laws. It taught me the wisdom of cycles and the wisdom of alignment with what I see on my charts, without judging what I see.

When I began trading I thought that I could make lots of money with relatively little effort. while at the same time being totally self reliant. I liked the idea of total freedom and trading to me was the way to freedom.

Since these early days, and many years of personal development later, I have come to understand that trading taught me about myself. the BS facade has long vanished to reveal a human being who had to clear issues I did not know I had . Well, trading brought it all out.

Trading has been and still is my biggest teacher:

On the path to trading success I have endured many a failure. It took me a long time to understand that I could learn from losing trades. Often I was close to giving up. I hit upon one unexpected psychologic block after another, not to mention financial problems. Alas, the journey was also totally life transforming.

On the path I learned about the power of love, acceptance and being at peace with myself. I learnt resiliance to outside circumstances and forgiveness, particularly of myself. I learnt to live my trading life and life in general from  the questions I ask and to take full responsibilty for all my actions.

Fulfilling a dream is the ultimate goal

There were times when I thought that I would never make the grade. My lack of confidence and seeming inability to turn my vision into reality often got the better of me. On occasion I felt that I had a split personality. On the one hand I knew it was possible to make money trading, yet psychological blocks stopped me from making money. I loved the markets and always have done, from a very young age. As a 12 year old I already had a fascination with the stock market.

The path to successful trading was a path of self discovery, it still is..

Yet, when I look back now, the one thing I love about the markets more perhaps than anything, is their ability to teach. Without trading I wouldn\'t be who I am today. The challenges on the way made me wiser and opened me up to having a worthwhile relationship with myself beyond anything I dreamt was possible.

The person who is writing this article today is a very different person from the one who decided 12 years ago to make a living from trading.

One thing that never changed was my need for inner freedom.

I believe to this day that trading is the most interesting vehicle to enjoy ultimate freedom. I am not only talking about financial freedom. That\'\'s a mere bagatelle in comparison to the emotional freedom I received as a present  along the trading way. 

In this sense, you could say that I  literally traded my way to freedom...

This inner freedom is worth a trillion plus, and more than any amount of money could provide. One is only ever free to enjoy the gifts of success when one is truly free from the trappings of the conditioning that imprisons most of us without our conscious knowledge.

Writing about what I learned through trading, and coaching traders on trading psychology are ways of expressing myself and helping others.

When I can help some of you with what I have learned and shorten your journey to success and trading joy that is a great compensation for the hard learning path and makes my life path worthwhile. My trading journey is allowing me to give something back to other traders.

Learning something new every day from my trading keeps me connected

In my daily trading mantra I say that | learn from all my trades, wining and losing trades, I forgot to add that I also learn from the trades I do not take...

Life is about being open and learning and actively participating. Trading has taught me this truism more than anything else in life. Trading is my guide that lets me know when I am not in touch with myself and my environment. Trading helps me to grow, become a stronger and above all a better person.

It is teaching me every day anew the values of staying power, endurance, calm detachment, non judgement and being one with myself, thus allowing me to contribute to your lifes.

And finally, to sum it all up...

I love the markets: They are alive, they move, they have spiritual energy.. They are an expression of the universe and of course they are my mirror..They are the medium through which I choose to express myself and grow.
I am grateful for this and the technology that allows me to participate and trust that the markets will always be there, no matter what change is upon us in the coming years.

 I invite you to check out my book on trading psychology: The Buddhist Trader