Commentary on The Journey from the Basement

The Journey from the Basement - commentary

The Journey from the Basement thread has been closed, (a) to preserve its unique content, and (b) because it was becoming unwieldy to manage with nearly 1,100 posts.

So this thread has been started for anyone and everyone to continue their discussions about the subjects introduced in The Journey from the Basement, together with opinions and pontifications.

For reference, the following is the link to the original thread:
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/showthread.php?t=10672

Good morning Soc

My full title is "idiot savant" but you may shorten it to "idiot" if you prefer.
Your preconception that the duffers have learned nothing from this thread is wrong. In actual fact there is one lesson that is prevalent in all the animal lessons and in particular in the hedgehog lesson that I use each and every day in my trading.
It has nothing to do with persona and everything to do with trading yet few seem to have grasped even those who posted in response to the lessons. Im sure that as people digest this thread they will have their own Eureka moment.

I wish you luck in your trading
" Live long and prosper"

DC2000 wrote:
Your preconception that the duffers have learned nothing from this thread is wrong.

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I have to agree with DC. Before I read this thread I was happily losing my 10,000 paper trading account, just trying different things to see what worked and what didn't. Although I am still consistently losing, I find that it is happening in a different way, and I am learning different things from each days exercise.

JO Duffer

As usual I'm late

Dear All,

As usual I arrive as the party is ending. But what I have learnt from carefully reading every post on this tread has made it well worth it and I would still like to make some observations:

Firstly I would like to say that I agree with The Bramble when he says:

TheBramble said:

Although the effort involved in working through these issues on a personal basis will provide the greatest benefit, there is also much to be gained IMHO by sharing those findings with interested others. Much like a Scientific Symposium.

To this end, rather than watch this thread slowly run down, I believe it would be very much in the spirit of its original inception to continue to use for discussion of issues raised and unresolved.

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I think that this thread has further to go and that there are still unanswered questions that others can answer or further observations that people like me would like to make.

Socrates is the first person I've met who thinks like I do (or maybe that should be the other way round). Usually, when I start talking about my theory that "The most basic instinct of animals (including humans) is to survive and therefore all human behaviour can be attributed to survival. This can be survival of the individual or survival of the group." people think I'm mad - I must be moving in the "wrong" circles. :cheesy:

A few people seem to think that developing a TP is a waste of time because they are getting on quite well without it. But I say to them you are wrong, very wrong. HP sees everything in terms of survival and it treats trading no differently. It does this because it sees financial security as being linked to survival and I can understand why. Every day, in my day-job a see people who have been pushed right to the edge because they have no financial security. So having a house, not worrying about how to pay the next bill or being able to provide for their children are all seen as successfully surviving. And because trading is tied up so completely by the HP, emotions are enhanced. When a trade goes right there is elation and personal back clapping, praising yourself and further enhancing the ego. When things go badly depression sets in, panic and fear that they will not be able survive or provide for their group. Also, the buz a person gets from trading can become very addictive. However, all of this is stifling the intuition. So yes, you may be doing quite well without having a TP, but if you were able to free your intuition and open the channel to the huge amount of information stored in your subconscious you would do immeasurably better.

But what if you are like me and don't have a huge amount of trading information stored? Socrates said the following:

SOCRATES said:

Also a very comprehensive understanding of how markets work has to be in place as well to which a methodology is applied within the framework of the TP. It is taken for granted that these two foundations are already in place.

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Some people are probably saying, "I'll build up my comprehensive understanding and then concentrate on creating the TP." I know because I thought this but immediately rejecting the idea. Many comparisons within this tread have been made between a soldier's training and the TP. A Soldier's Persona (I think this was referred to as the War Persona) is built up over time so that they can act effectively on the battlefield. The armed forces don't train civilians how to shoot and then build up their WP, they don't build up their WP and then train them how to shoot. They do both at the same time and we should do the same. There are also advantages to doing both. As a person's TP progresses so will their speed and understanding of trading increase.

I've found the best place to concentrate on the first steps was lying on my bed. I was then able to relax but even doing something as "simple" as studying myself studying a television meant I had to concentrate as the HP subtly tries to divert the attention away. I started by imagining watching myself playing on the Playstation, as I incorrectly understood that the process was to analyse the emotions produced (I picked the Playstation because it quite easily elicits emotions like excitement, aggression, anger and pompousness). This actually produced some interesting results that lead to me asking myself why XX produced YY emotion. But I now understand that what we are actually looking for is something that does not elicit any emotion. Can someone tell me if I am right in this?

I’d also like to comment on Socrates’ discussion about time. The way I see how it could work is by altering time by altering the speed of thought. The tick tock time is constant. But by altering the speed that a person thinks, time would actually change. I’m sure everyone reading this has at one time or another had thoughts or ideas occur to them instantly. But this is largely involuntary – imagine if you could control how fast you processed information from your subconscious. Also, if the theory of time travel is correct, it might be possible for a person to think fast enough that they could actually think ahead of time. Could this be futurology?

But what does everyone else think?

Hi,
plenty of good ideas, I'd say. TP v HP I'd agree you need a TP that can avoid the HP 'survival' bit, but I'm not convinced you need to totally switch survival off - put it this way, you see a trade your TP wants to take, the house catches fire... do you really sit there clicking on a website while your life expectancy diminishes?

Time - our perception of time alters constantly.. a trivial (but true) example: I arranged to meet a friend from about 15 years back, it actually took us a year to meet, we sat in a pub and chewed the fat. From 7.30pm to 8.30pm it felt like we'd been there for hours. From 8.30 to midnight 'felt' like 30-45 minutes, I was stunned to discover that the first hour dragged yet the next three or so passed like lightning. Tell me you can see into the future, however, and I'll happily provide an environment and equipment to test this scientifically, as I'd love to see it done (honest) as it would open up a whole new field of interesting things to look at - but I bet you can't do it to my satisfaction. (That isn't because I'd set overly difficult targets, but because I'm going to make sure chance can be discounted).

I have yet to see a shred of proof for genuine precog ability, if you can see or manipulate the future you won't only 'guess' the market moves (you may just be very good at TA) but you'll be able to pick a suibstantial number of winners at Haydock Park (assuming that's still a racecourse <g>) and you'll squirt the Ketchup (blinfold) just in time to hit 10 burgers in a row.....

Trivial examples, but genuine precog ability is just that - and a genuine precog could do all that... Now, given that a number of systems (turtles, for example) have proved profitable for those prepared to work at things like position sizing and money management, why bother about predicting the future in preference to getting the money management right? (After all, precog is very much disputed whilst it's accepted that anyone with the ambition and an O level in Maths can hack money management....)

Dave

Jungle Jim,

You and Socrates are by no means the only people to think of survival in those terms, and it's by no means new. Check out Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&q=survival+love+%22self+actualisation%22

As for Trading Persona and Higher Persona do a search on Google:

http://www.google.com/search?q="trading+persona"

http://www.google.com/search?q="higher+persona"

Not much there is there?

If you want to study psycology go ahead but there is no need to take on the beliefs of one individual. A knowledge of psycology won't give you success in trading, successful traders are from all walks of life.

Have you read any Mark Douglas BTW?

cheers,
Pete.

DaveJB said:

Time - our perception of time alters constantly..

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Dear DaveJB

Thank you on your thoughts on "our perceptive of time". It is interesting how the same time can go slow or fast depending on what we are doing. Part of my reason for posting previously was to try and keep the thread going even though Socrates has left. However, I would like to discuss the time element some more. Why do you think that the first half of your "meeting" went slower than the second? Do you think it possible for a person to consciously slow down or speed up "time" or does it change only because a person is unconscious of the time passing? Could our understanding of this area make any difference to trading?

smileypete said:

You and Socrates are by no means the only people to think of survival in those terms, and it's by no means new. Check out Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

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Dear Smileypete,

Thank you for the above link. It is actually nice to know that a theory I formulated on my own is not just one of my mad ideas and that it does have scientific evidence to back it up.

There does not seem to be a lot about Trading Persona and Higher Persona on the Internet.

I don't tend to "take on the beliefs of one individual" unless I feel myself that there is logic that person's argument. In this instance I think that trading without emotion would make me a better trader as my emotions do tend to cloud my judgement. I can think of several trading sayings that all relate to taking emotion out of trading (but there are probably just as many that say the opposite :cheesy: ).

smileypete said:

Have you read any Mark Douglas BTW?

Click to expand...

No, I have not read any of his books. Which ones have you read and as I would like to know more about removing my emotions from my trading. Any advice on what to read would be greatly appreciated.

I have no belief in the thought that a human being can physically manipulate time. I do believe that perception of time changing speed is an everyday occurence and I don't think it is very complex at all. IMO it is a function of the degree with which you are concentrating on something. That is , concentration , being absorbed in a subject deflects your conscious monitoring of time so that it appears retrospectively to have been moving faster or slower as the case might be. So when your date says this evening lasted forever she/he was obviously bored to tears ,but was being too polite to say so

IMO this has nothing at all to do with 'seeing' the future . The latter is an activity as old as mankind or skimkind 'Seeing' the future IMO is a preoccupation that has more to do with people's need to cope with uncertainty and on occasion create a deflected sense of responsibility. By that I mean how many people rely on third parties to 'see' their future for them so that they can then escape the necessity of actually working and planning planning theirown future. This is the 'they' syndrome. 'They' the govt 'screwed up' my future by doing abc... 'they' the teacher (Socrates ?) did not teach me what I needed to know...'They' the astrologer got it wrong...'They' the parents did not give me sufficient opportunities to succeed etc etc

The ability to 'see' the future...I don't buy it..the ability to use your experience to be right more often than random chance ...that I can accept as rational.

Cheers

Chump

Agree, but maybe people can, in effect, manipulate time by speeding up their thought processes. Often happens in real emergencies like a car crash when you seem to have time to take a lot in (and watch your life flash before you !!) in the split second it takes. Maybe F1 racing drivers are able to move their speed of thought up a few gears when racing which enables them to react to situations when you and I would just hit the wall. In essence, if your "normal" thought process is 4 frames a second and you could raise it to 8 frames a second everything would seem (to you) to be taking place at a much slower pace giving you more time to react?

So far as precognition is concerned I, too, don't believe it. There's no doubt, though, that sometimes your instinctive conviction about what is going to happen is so strong that it seems like you have foreknowledge of the event. I think that conviction can only be born from a subconscious analysis of all the information before you . Now if when trading you could train yourself to make that analysis at will and at 8 frames a second ..............

jon

I think it all comes down to the definition of 'manipulation of time'. If that definition incorporates the physical changing of time and presumes to rely on some mystical unexplainable ability to 'see' the future then I can't accept such a definition on the basis of what I presently know.

A definition of 'manipulation of time' based on a change of perception I have no problem with. Likewise I accept your view that such a definition can have a physical outcome in the sense that a person can train themselves to achieve more in a particular timespan by improving their ability to process information more quickly and perhaps more accurately. This latter statement is caught under the heading of experience.

Edit, I did not explain that very well above. IMO what experience / training does is not really manipulating time so much as manipulating what you can do with time, as such it is not perceptual at all , but a physical reality.

Cheers

JJ/Chump/Barjon,
I pretty much agree with Chump and Barjon, our perception of time depends on how 'engaged' we are in the activity, how interested we are in it, and probably whether we're doing most of the talking or the listening. (My lessons are 50 spellbinding minutes of scientific whimsy and delight, my pupils think they're about 4 hours too long.....)

I don't see that as manipulating time, which would require that I really did slow it down or speed it up. A changing perception of passing time does not in any way imply that a similar shift of viewpoint will enable me to see into the future, the best I can hope for is as per the F1 driver idea - by careful training I might be able to think at a greater rate, thus allowing my perception to alter to the point I seem to slow time down. (I'm guessing here, but I consider it likely, and logical, as I know we can exercise our thinking skills to improve efficiency).

Dave

BTW,
I regret Soc's decision, as whilst I am unconvinced on this score I'd be more than happy to be proved wrong - whilst there is a certain amount of personal discomfort in being shown to be wrong, my logical part reminds me that this is a part of the learning process... I have long felt that it is not necessary, nor is it sensible, to be embarrassed by being shown to be wrong - you should only be embarrassed by sticking to your incorrect idea(s) when you know yourself to be in the wrong. The former is a matter of education, the latter pig headed.

Dave

Crikey,
I've moved! Telekinesis - does that count?

Hi JungleJim,

Mark Douglas wrote 'The Disciplined Trader' and later wrote 'Trading in The Zone' which expanded on the ideas in the first book. He came out with some very good ideas on trading psycology, although the books do labour the point a bit. If you can borrow them or have an hour to kill in Borders then you can get a good idea of what he's talking about, also take a look at the reviews on Amazon to see what other people think.

Coming back to Maslow, some people treat trading as a way of gaining self esteem and self fulfilment as well as basic survival (paying the bills). However when trading isn't going well all these needs are no longer met and their whole 'reason for being' is under threat.

Personally I feel it's best to just treat trading as an everyday job, and find other things to meet the higher needs. Then when trading isn't going well we have other things to draw strength from.

Also a lot comes down to self confidence, why get upset when opportunities are missed, if we're confident that we can take advantage of opportunites later on? There's always opportunities in trading sooner or later... :cheesy:

cheers,
Pete.

In this matter I feel assured in the knowledge of not being proven wrong. As a person who rarely believes in black / white , yes /no , correct / wrong , possible / impossible I do not adopt such a position lightly. To chase this issue of manipulating time past the ideas that have been posited in the hope of establishing a new scientific possibility is to me the ultimate waste of resources.

If you want an issue of worth to follow up on consider the comment made by Socrates "You cannot have it all all of the time". That one was never commented on ,but if my interpretation was correct it offers far more positive rewards to the would be trader / investor.




Cheers

Dear all,

I personally think, for the benefit of all that Socrates be banned - ideally removed and his posts left where they are as the warning to future scam merchants and bullsh!ters of how they will be treated.

If Mr Socrates is so damn intelligent perhaps he could explain to use his outburts and irrational behaviour. If Mr Socrates is so know it all perhaps he could tell us all about his methods in a proper explicit way so as to leave no doubt to the imagination, rather than hide it all in some mumbo jumbo so he can get as much attention as possible, along with his patronising and often irritating remarks.

If Mr Socrates is so damn perfect perhaps he ought to know that even the greatest get it wrong - because that's what we call Chaos theory in action.

I'm sick and tired to reading that thread thinking that he might be onto something when I realised that there was really nothing there. The fact that it had over 100,000 views tells me one thing : nearly everyone is desperate to get into successful trading so they can give up the rat race, 9 - 5 and be "free" as Socrates calls himself since he doesn't have to work and he has to be nice to others because they are not "free" etc . . . Well even the lesson of the life of Mr Livermore should tell you that man is never "free".

Anyway, I've had enough. And I'm sure a lot of other people have had enough.

If you want to be a successful trader you have to work for it, but listen to such crap from someone like Socrates (I'm saying that it's crap simple from his conduct of how he has treated other people, even though some of it is good, but others also have good advice if not better). You need to lose your ego, but at the same time have the will power to prove things out for yourselves, you are literally alone in this quest and to learn from someone who belittles others shows only one thing : lack of self belief. Why crowd roung the snake oil man all the time?

Also you got the understand that most of you will never make it, and the answers simple - that the nature of things. Just how many Einstein's can the world produce? One a century at best, and no amount of work on mere mortals will ever get them to his level, there are things that cannot be bought - EVEN with HARD WORK and DEDICATION. You either got it or you haven't. Only YOU can decide whether you want to take the journey

Thats the funniest post I've read in a long time.

The ones who should be banned from the grown ups threads are all the newbies like you, who just dont 'get it'. That would leave all the rest of us, who understand so clearly what is being said and value the knowledge of Socrates, to get on and learn in peace and quiet without having threads continually interupted by newbies out of their depth.

Why do newbies always feel the need to post utter rubbish when it is patently clear they now absolutely nothing about the subject being discussed? Look and learn, dont embarass yourself by your ignorance of grown up trading matters. If you want to play in an adults playground, learn the rules first.

But it is still a corker of a post temptrader - not had a good belly laugh like that for ages.

ladies, please! whilst i may not agree with the manner of the whole Socrates affair (coming to a cinema near you this autumn), i do believe that temperance and tolerance should be adopted, with people treating each other respectfully. otherwise this is gonna end up as bad as the original thread. it is not a reason for those "in the know" to smugly mock "newbies". we were all newbies once.

besides, my dad could beat up your dad any day.

FC

We were all newbies at some time. There are those newbies who pay attention, are pleasant and polite and show a willingness to listen and learn. And then there are those who feel they can sit at the back of the class, hurl rubbers, rules and pencils at the teacher and do their utmost to disrupt to ensure that NOBODY benefits.

The original thread made clear it was for advanced traders. Newbies are not advanced traders, and if they were advanced they would know precisely what was being discussed. OK so it is over the heads of newbies, but does that give them the right to disrupt and hurl abuse? No it does not.

Any newbie who wants to learn from the best needs to sit and pay attention, and in time they will be rewarded with knowledge.

You need to learn to walk before you can run, which is something that so few round here are prepared to admit, whitch is a shame.

The expression is if you cannot stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. So wonder there are SO FEW TOP TRADERS WILLING TO SHARE when all they are met with is grief, hassel, and downright rudeness.

The polite respectful ones who are desperate to learn are the ones who lose out because Socrates has I believe left the boards.