Chapter 7 - In the Market Environment, Reasons Are Irrelevant (catch up) W - “In fact, however, the market’s behavior is mostly irrational, if you define rational as any action that is the result of a specific methodology or is planned in advance and definitely not random because irrational behavior is very predictable. If you want to learn to predict price movement, you don’t need to pay attention to reasons. What you need to do is determine how the majority of traders perceive the external conditions in relationship to either their fear of scarcity, or their fear of missing out, or both.” (p. 64) A - There is nothing predictable about the market except for how predictably irrational it is. There are millions of traders in the world interacting with each other and expressing their behaviors onto the market through the price action on the charts which is the only way we can perceive the market’s direction as a whole. A - Reading charts has become very important in my trading strategy. It is more important to me than indicators, moving averages, studies, order book, etc. It is the way I perceive the collective behavior of the market.

Chapter 11 W- To learn a skill, we usually break the skill down into a series of small steps and concentrate on each individual step until we can put all the steps together into a series of effective movements. A - Mark explains how we learn a skill to us… he further discusses that once we learn each skill; we can automatically access it so our attention is freed to learn more A - I think this is good to remind ourselves. One step at a time. We know this to be true. We don’t expect our kids to be able to be experts instantly at new skills, but we all come into trading expecting to reach an expert level overnight. Lol. It’s kinda funny in retrospect

Chapter 11 Why We Need to Learn How to Adapt W- What motivates us to want to actually trade has many various elements to it. Sometimes when you define what motivates you, you can find additional inspiration. A- Mark said that the more you know more about the driving force for your action the easier it is to fulfill your needs and goals. A- I plan on applying this over all thought to my last week “how I’m going to apply”. I plan on adding this to my thought processes from last week’s apply segment, elaborating just not thinking of one happy word like family, instead thinking of words like family parties.

Chapter 8 - The Three Stages to Becoming a Successful Trader (catch up) W - “Your degree of self-valuation will regulate how much money you will give yourself (the market doesn’t give you the money, you give it to yourself based on your ability to perceive opportunity and execute a trade) out of the maximum potential available or perceivable at any given moment or time frame perspective. Regardless of the depth of understanding you have of market behavior or what you consciously intend, you will only “give” yourself the amount of money that corresponds to your level of self-valuation.” (p. 72) A - The market does not take money or give money. It is our ability to perceive the opportunities in the market and to execute based on our level of experience and time in the market that will allow us to take profits. A - I used to thank the market for giving me whatever profits I was able to take from a trade. That was an erroneous thinking on my part because if the results of my trades, good or bad, are my full responsibility, then profit taking is the result solely based on my ability to perceive opportunity and execute trades. It’s all up to me and no one else.

Chapter 6 - The Market Is an Unstructured Environment (catch up) W - “Understanding yourself is synonymous with understanding the markets because as a trader you are part of the collective force that moves prices. How can you begin to understand the dynamics of group behavior well enough to extract money from the group, as a result of their behavior, if you don’t understand the inner forces that affect your own? When you do understand the inner forces that affect your behavior and take responsibility for what you do and don’t do, and what you can and can’t do, you will begin to perceive how and why other traders comprising the group behave the way they do." (p. 56) A - Mark begins with the fundamental truth of trading within an unstructured environment: we can only understand how the collection of individuals who participate in the market move prices if we understand the motivation behind our own behaviors and take responsibility for our own action. A - To understand myself and my motivation for why I do the things I do is the most important task that I work on every day. The better I can understand, control, and accept my behaviors during the trading day, the better I can interact with the market to take advantage of the opportunities that are presented to me.

Chapter 10 W: “Traders who are motivated to act out of fear generally aren’t aware that their fear drastically reduces the choices they perceive as available, making their behavior very predictable to an objective observer (someone not caught in the same cycles of fear)”. A: Mark tells us our fear narrows our view and perception. We see only what fear allows us to see. A: Fear is one of the biggest obstacles to overcome. More often than not, fear drives our decision during trading, and we are not aware of. Constant work and awareness.

Chapter 10 W- There are many things that happens in our mind that we can’t totally grasp because it’s in our subconscious. One of the emotions that traders deal with in some part of their trading journey is fear. A- Mark talks about how fear and association mixes together. By clicking buttons we can create the fear that we are trying to run away from even though there is not any straight reason to be afraid. A- To apply this, I have to break the obvious cycle of the feeling of fear associated with clicking buttons. My idea might not be a sound one but I’m going to think of something that makes me happy when I press the button to trade.

W- "Fear (high degree of negatively charged energy) has a profoundly limiting effect on the range of information that we pay attention to." A - Mark is talking about how fear can actively blind and artificially focus - to the point of delusion - our attention. He also goes on to talk about how fear can focus our attention on what we fear (we feel we must act) - or create blind spots because we are avoiding what we fear (we withdraw into inaction). A - This is very interesting. The two faces of fear - the focused fear of losing/being wrong that compels action "get out of the trade." Vs the blind spot fear of being wrong that locks me into a losing trade because all I'm seeing is the candles that confirm my relief. I am working on trading "peacefully" - by talking myself through and acknowledging the difference between what the market is actually doing vs my fear/projections/interpretation/internal experience. The benign up and down of colored candles on a screen - that inform my process VS the emotional roller coaster of "Phew, I'm right... / Shit, I'm wrong...." It's a work in progress - and I'm making inroads towards recognizing the difference. The next steps are to take myself out of my internal experience and into just seeing the market. I am getting better at knowing when I'm feeling intense and then being able to come out of that so that I can see what is happening. My primary goal is to trade peacefully - with optimism and self-trust. I agree with Susan's assessment of seeing how people (including myself) can talk themselves into versions of "reality" that are not real because they are triggered into the fight/flight mode. (arguably this perfectly describes life since 2019 - LOL, not LOL). I would suggest that everyone should learn to trade and have to trade live for a certain period of time - to learn this about themselves. In life, you can really get away with living your illusions and never recognize reality and that it's not the world - but you who are creating that reality. Trading is immediate and happens multiple times a day - so the learning curve is intense and rapid - it's a bit like therapy on steroids. In life there isn't that immediate and direct feedback. But then again - I'm jumping ahead in the book.

Chapter 10 - How Memories, Associations & Beliefs Manage Environmental Info As a side note - if you are finding some of these chapters tougher to read; hang in there. He is giving a lot of context on how things work in our head. I read through some of chapter 13 and did a few exercises yesterday on the Techniques to Effect Change. It was good....a bit exhausting to my mind like a deep gym work out would be to my body, but that is what I want & need. I am going to go through all those notes today and have a plan to start implementing the tools and things I discovered on Monday. I look forward to discussing what you learned this week and digging in deeper in the next few weeks:). Be proud of yourself for doing this work! W - (I have a few things that jumped out so I am writing a few W's we can review together & talk through) * Perception - What we learn creates an energy loop between the inner & outer environment. We can call this energy loop perception. Learning how to read the market is an example of the energy loop between the inside & outside = perception. Once we learn something, mental energy will then act as a force on our senses to recognize in the environment what we have learned about. The event is different for each individual b/c we all experienced it differently. A - Mark is explaining how perception exists in our lives and in trading. A - I have always found it interesting how people perceive the same event quite differently (in life & in the market). We see this everyday. To one trader; they feel it was a tough day in the market and to another the market was on fire. lol. We all participated in the same market and sometimes traded the same stock so why such a variance? It comes down to how we perceived the market & how we traded it....it could be our set ups or simply our execution. To me execution is all about psychology. We have the strategy and yes sometimes it will fail as is the reality of playing a game of probability. How often is it the strategy failing vs our execution failing? This is the key and something we should all be analyzing.... while we are not in control of the market; there is so much in our control that can enhance our trading. W - Beliefs - If we believe that things exist in only 1 particular way, then our beliefs will act as a natural mechanism to block the acceptance of any conflicting information. Beliefs allow us to tune into 1 channel of the environmental info at a time. A - Mark explaining how our beliefs effect what we can "tune into" - "perceive." A - I see this all the time in the world; people believe something and therefore cannot "see" anything else. It is limiting for most people. If you have ever scrolled through twitter the political posts really get to me. People attack each other b/c they believe all republicans/democrats are XYZ; they cannot fathom the thought that there are so many people in the middle on both sides and only seem to focus on the extremes. Without getting too much into politics; if you believe that all Dems/Reps or any other group of people are good/bad/smart/stupid/etc - you may only be able to see & perceive them from this point of view (which in my opinion is small & limiting). It is not always our fault either. If someone who looked a certain way hurt you or someone that identified with a certain group; you may have inadvertently formed this belief. As an example; my last boss was military and he was a real piece of work. As I transitioned into BBT; I was a little afraid of Mike/John. I came to realize this was silly as they are both wonderful men to know & work with, but I let this last person cloud my mind and I formed this belief that "all military are XYZ". I am glad I realized the error of my way and was able to learn from and form a nice relationship with 2 of my mentors. I notice anytime I see a middle aged woman that is tall and blonde; I immediately feel warmth. My mom has passed and she was tall with short blonde hair. I like being reminded of her so I do not mind this feeling, but it is important to be aware when these things are happening to us and to judge people/stocks/situations in the moment and not on some past belief or preconceived notion:)....Take note of anytime your mind is telling you "ALL or ALWAYS" - question that thought...rarely is anything or any group "ALL or ALWAYS XYZ". W - Fear - I am not going to write notes out, but can go through this in book club if no one else writes their thoughts on Fear related to this chapter. Have a wonderful week and talk Thursday!