Ankur Mangla

“My trust (in the markets and in myself) supports my patience. My patience (that a setup will materialise) feeds my confidence. My confidence (that I will win) dictates my inner dialogue. My inner dialogue (what I tell myself while I am trading) supports my process-oriented mindset. The process enables me to stay focused in this moment. I support this loop with my mental exercises. They feed, nourish and sustain the loop.

I trust. The research underpins the trust. The trust supports the patience. The patience is underpinned by the mental exercises, and it nourishes my confidence. My internal dialogue is driven by it; it nourishes my confidence. My internal dialogue is driven by a process-oriented mindset, fuelled by my confidence. I focus on what I can control – my mindset, my risk approach – and I let the market do what it wants to do. Whatever it does, does not trigger the fearful side of my mind. That has been trained away. I am not afraid of the market. The only thing I am afraid of is that I do something stupid in the market. If I trust myself, this does not happen.”
― Tom Hougaard, Best Loser Wins: Why Normal Thinking Never Wins the Trading Game – written by a high-stake day trader

“Your life shouldn’t be an accident. While most things in life are unexpected, we must continually ask ourselves, “How did I come to this point?”
― Darius Foroux, Focus on What Matters: A Collection of Stoic Letters on Living Well

“Opiates are powerful analgesics that suppress normal levels of pain by stimulating the brain’s endorphin (natural painkilling, pleasure-inducing neurotransmitters) and pain-management systems, providing an intense euphoria. Unfortunately, pain exists for a reason (to let us know about harm or damage), so the brain responds by increasing the potency of our pain-detection system, to cut through the blissful cloud of opiate-induced pleasure. So users take more opiates to shut it down again, and the brain strengthens it further, and so on.
Then the drug is taken away. The user no longer has something that made them incredibly calm and relaxed. What they do have is a super-enhanced pain detection system! Their pain-system activity is strong enough to cut through an opiate high, which for a normal brain would be agonising, as it is for a drug user going through withdrawal. Other systems affected by the drug are similarly altered. This is why cold turkey is so hard, and legitimately dangerous”
― Dean Burnett, Idiot Brain: What Your Head Is Really Up To

“Now I have the skills to make money, and I trust that the market will give me opportunities to make money. This trust has been built and strengthened by my intense study of market charts for every period I desire to trade. The trust is further strengthened by my humble dedication to my vocational skillset.
The patience flows from my trust in the market and in myself. I have an emotional connection between trust and patience. I trust the process will come, if I am patient. If I am patient, I will win. Winning does not determine anything else to me. If I am not patient, I will not win. I will do anything to win. Therefore, the trust overrides any sense of impatience that may arise in my mind, because I trust that when I miss this signal, there will be another one coming.
My confidence comes from continuously working on my game. I learn technical analysis once. I learn all the time. Some markets move. Some markets are dead. Some markets require larger stops. Some markets are faster to trade with orders because they move so fast. The markets are forever changing, and I change with them.
The confidence and patience arise from the trust and the patience and the process. Of course, yours truly has bad trading days. I just don’t care. I am grounded in this moment. I focus on the process. That is all I can do. I can’t dictate to the market what it should do. I must be like water, and flow. I must flow with the spirit of the market. I don’t fight the market. I flow with the market. “Just flow,” as I tell myself.”
― Tom Hougaard