Gerald Loeb’s Market Wisdom 1. The most important single factor in shaping security markets is public psychology.2. To make money in the stock market you either have to be ahead of the crowd or very sure they are going in the same direction for some time to come.3. Accepting losses is the most important single investment device to insure safety of capital.4. The difference between the investor who year in and year out procures for himself a final net profit, and the one who is usually in the red, is not entirely a question of superior selection of stocks or superior timing. Rather, it is also a case of knowing how to capitalize successes and curtail failures.5. One useful fact to remember is that the most important indications are made in the early stages of a broad market move. Nine times out of ten the leaders of an advance are the stocks that make new highs ahead of the averages.6. There is a saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” One might paraphrase this by saying a profit is worth more than endless alibis or explanations. . . prices and trends are really the best and simplest “indicators” you can find.7. Profits can be made safely only when the opportunity is available and not just because they happen to be desired or needed.8. Willingness and ability to hold funds uninvested while awaiting real opportunities is a key to success in the battle for investment survival.-9. In addition to many other contributing factors of inflation or deflation, a very great factor is the psychological. The fact that people think prices are going to advance or decline very much contributes to their movement, and the very momentum of the trend itself tends to perpetuate itself.10. Most people, especially investors, try to get a certain percentage return, and actually secure a minus yield when properly calculated over the years. Speculators risk less and have a better chance of getting something, in my opinion.11. I feel all relevant factors, important and otherwise, are registered in the market’s behavior, and, in addition, the action of the market itself can be expected under most circumstances to stimulate buying or selling in a manner consistent enough to allow reasonably accurate forecasting of news in advance of its actual occurrence.12. You don’t need analysts in a bull market, and you don’t want them in a bear market Trend Following Lessons from Jesse Livermore

 Gerald Loeb’s Market Wisdom

1. The most important single factor in shaping security markets is public psychology.

2. To make money in the stock market you either have to be ahead of the crowd or very sure they are going in the same direction for some time to come.

3. Accepting losses is the most important single investment device to insure safety of capital.

4. The difference between the investor who year in and year out procures for himself a final net profit, and the one who is usually in the red, is not entirely a question of superior selection of stocks or superior timing. Rather, it is also a case of knowing how to capitalize successes and curtail failures.

5. One useful fact to remember is that the most important indications are made in the early stages of a broad market move. Nine times out of ten the leaders of an advance are the stocks that make new highs ahead of the averages.

6. There is a saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” One might paraphrase this by saying a profit is worth more than endless alibis or explanations. . . prices and trends are really the best and simplest “indicators” you can find.

7. Profits can be made safely only when the opportunity is available and not just because they happen to be desired or needed.

8. Willingness and ability to hold funds uninvested while awaiting real opportunities is a key to success in the battle for investment survival.-

9. In addition to many other contributing factors of inflation or deflation, a very great factor is the psychological. The fact that people think prices are going to advance or decline very much contributes to their movement, and the very momentum of the trend itself tends to perpetuate itself.

10. Most people, especially investors, try to get a certain percentage return, and actually secure a minus yield when properly calculated over the years. Speculators risk less and have a better chance of getting something, in my opinion.

11. I feel all relevant factors, important and otherwise, are registered in the market’s behavior, and, in addition, the action of the market itself can be expected under most circumstances to stimulate buying or selling in a manner consistent enough to allow reasonably accurate forecasting of news in advance of its actual occurrence.

12. You don’t need analysts in a bull market, and you don’t want them in a bear market

Trend Following Lessons from Jesse Livermore

Remember, you do not have to be in the market all the time.

Profits take care of themselves – losses never do.

The only time I really ever lost money was when I broke my own rules.

Throughout all my years of investing I’ve found that the big money was never made in the buying or the selling. The big money was made in the waiting.

Reasonable people act unreasonably when they are afraid. And people become afraid when they start to lose money, their judgement becomes impaired. This is our human nature in this stage of our evolution. It cannot be denied. It must be understood.

The successful speculator must always have cash in reserve, like a good general who keeps troops in reserve for exactly the right moment, and then moves with great conviction, and commits his reserve armies for final victory, because he has waited until all the odds are in his favor.

I believe that the public wants to be lead, to be instructed, to be told what to do. They want reassurance.They will always move on masse, a mob, a herd, a group, because people want the safety of human company. They are afraid to stand alone because the pressure is to be safely included within the herd, not to be the lone calf standing on the desolate, dangerous wolf-patrolled prairie of contrary opinion.

Think about these immortal words. Nothing ever changes. Internalize these thoughts from Jesse Livermore and you will be on your way to be a better trend follower

There is A Solution for Everything…..

 

There was a father who left 17 camels as an asset for his three sons.

When the father passed away, his sons opened up the will.

The Will of the father stated that the eldest son should get half of 17 camels while the middle son should be given 1/3rd (one-third). The youngest son should be given 1/9th (one-ninth) of the 17 camels.

As it is not possible to divide 17 into half or 17 by 3 or 17 by 9, three sons started to fight with each other. So, the three sons decided to go to a wise man.

The wise man listened patiently about the Will.

The wise man, after giving this thought, brought one camel of his own and added the same to 17. That increased the total to 18 camels.

Now, he started reading the deceased father’s will.

Half of 18 = 9. So he gave the eldest son 9 camels

1/3rd of 18 = 6. So he gave the middle son 6 camels

1/9th of 18 = 2. So he gave the youngest son 2 camels.

Now add this up: 9 plus 6 plus 2 is 17 and this leaves one camel, which the wise man took away.

The attitude of negotiation and problem solving is to find the 18th camel i.e. the common ground. Once a person is able to find the common ground the issue is resolved. It is difficult at times. However, to reach a solution, the first step is to believe that there is a solution. If we think that there is no solution, we won’t be able to reach any!

Letting Winners Turn in to Losers

 

Trading problem that I want to focus on is allowing winning trades to turn in to losers. Many of us have probably had a time when a trade was making big loot, and we started to count the profits like they were ours before we exited the trade. When the stock started to lose the ground it had gained, we avoided selling because we had built up an emotional attachment to the paper profits we had seen. Instead of selling the stock to lock in some gain, we opted to hold out for the stock to go back to where it used to be, promising to sell when it came back to the point where we felt good about the trade. The stock drifts lower, and eventually the gain turns in to a loss. We ultimately sell it at the bottom, swearing never to do it again. But without some reprogramming, we probably will.

The Solution

Like Kenny Rogers used to sing, “Don’t count your money, when you are sitting at the table, there will be time enough for counting, when the dealing’s done.” Do not calculate your profits before you lock them in. Avoiding the profit watch will help you avoid an emotional attachment to the paper profits, giving you greater clarity to take the exit door when the market tells you it is time to do so.

I hope this outline of mental problems and some solutions helps you become a better trader. The difference between those who succeed in trading and those who fail is not the system they play, but how well they play it. Your mind is a powerful thing, don’t let it beat you in the market.

21 Things a Trader Should Know About Trading

1. Never try to make money the same way twice in a row.

2. Don’t trade inactive markets.

3. Don’t assume that the relation between your two favorite markets will stay the same from year to year.

4. Be alert to big minimums on Monday as they tend to reverse.

5. Try not to sell markets that have big drifts upwards like stocks.

6. Try to go with with the central banks.

7. Be one with the idea that has the world in its grip and be on the side of the market that will further that grip.

8. Never go for small profits as the vig is too great relative to your gain as a %.

9. Don’t trade when a loved one is very sick.

10. Round numbers will be broken.

11. Gold has been a store of value for a long time. When it gets hit hard, think of all the people in the world and the institutions that use it for insurance.

12. Don’t sell premium in the grains as they move explosively.

13. Never trade so that you exceed your margin. (You will have to get out at the close unless it moves in your favor and that makes you weak).

14. Don’t listen to tips or try to follow fast moving operators as you won’t know when they are going to change positions and how strong and on what basis their views are made.

15. Let your profits run after you have a big loss and get back to even sell to the sleeping point.

16. Don’t take positions that you plan to extricate from in inactive trading hours.

17. After or just before a major announcement don’t use limits.

18. Only buy the worst markets or stocks at the end of a quarter or year.

19. Never trade when you’re out of the office or on vacation or on a whim.

20. Beware of trading when the market is going to be closed and you will not be able to extricate from your position like European markets when they close for a month around Christmas.

21. Don’t short big up opens.

Wisdom from Market Wizards Tony Saliba“How do you lose money? It is either bad day trading or a losing position. If it’s a bad position that is the problem, then you should just get out of it.”“Clear thinking, ability to stay focused, and extreme discipline. Discipline is number one: Take a theory and stick with it. But you also have to be open-minded enough to switch tracks if you feel that your theory has been proven wrong. You have to be able to say, “My method worked for this type of market, but we are not in that type of market anymore.”“Until recently, I set goals on a monetary level. First, I wanted to become a millionaire before I was thirty. I did it before I was twenty-five. Then I decided I wanted to make so much a year, and I did that. Originally, the goals were all numbers, but the numbers are’t so important anymore. Now, I want to do some things that are not only profitable, but will also be fun.”Dr Van K. Tharp“The composite profile of a losing trader would be someone who is highly stressed and has little protection from stress, has a negative outlook on life and expects the worst, has a lot of conflict in his/her personality, and blames others when things go wrong. Such a person would not have a set of rules to guide their behaviour and would be more likely to be a crowd follower. In addition, losing traders tend to be disorganized and impatient. Thet want action now. Most losing traders are not as bad as the composite profile suggest. They just have part of the losing profile.”“One of the basic problems that most traders face is dealing with risk. For example, two primary rules to successful speculative trading are: Cut your losses, short and let your profits run. Most people cannot deal with those two rules. For example, if making money is important to you – as it is to most people who play investment games – then you will probably have trouble taking small losses. As a result, small losses turn into moderate losses, which are even harder to take – all because it was so hard to take a small loss. Similarly, when people have a profit, they want to take it right away. They think, “I’d better take this now before it gets away.” The bigger the profit becomes, the harder it is to resist the temptation to take it now. The simple truth is that most people are risk-averse in the realm of profits – they prefer a sure, smaller gain to a wise gamble for a larger gain – and risk-seeking in the realm of losses – they prefer an unwise gamble to a sure loss. As a result, most people tend to do the opposite of what is required for success.”“Generally, I find that top traders believe 1) Money is NOT important; 2) It is OK to lose in the markets; 3) Trading is a game; 4) Mental rehearsal is important for success; 5) They’ve won the game before they start.” Market Beating lessons On the school of hard knocks: The game taught me the game. And it didn’t spare me rod while teaching. It took me five years to learn to play the game intelligently enough to make big money when I was right. On losing trades: Losing money is the least of my troubles. A loss never troubles me after I take it. I forget it overnight. But being wrong – not taking the loss – that is what does the damage to the pocket book and to the soul. On trading the trends: Disregarding the big swing and trying to jump in and out was fatal to me. Nobody can catch all the fluctuations. In a bull market the game is to buy and hold until you believe the bull market is near its end. On sticking to his plan: What beat me was not having brains enough to stick to my own game – that is, to play the market only when I was satisfied that precedents favoured my play. There is the plain fool, who does the wrong thing at all times everywhere, but there is also the Wall Street fool, who thinks he must trade all the time. No man can have adequate reasons for buying or selling stocks daily – or sufficient knowledge to make his play an intelligent play. On speculation: If somebody had told me my method would not work, I nevertheless would have tried it out to make sure for myself, for when I am wrong only one thing convinces me of it, and that is, to lose money. And I am only right when I make money. That is speculating. On respecting the tape: A speculator must concern himself with making money out of the market and not with insisting that the tape must agree with him. Never argue with it or ask for reasons or explanations. On human nature and trading: The speculator’s deadly enemies are: Ignorance, greed, fear and hope. All the statute books in the world and all the rule books on all the Exchanges of the earth cannot eliminate these from the human animal. On riding the trend to the big money: Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon. I found it one of the hardest things to learn. But it is only after a stock operator has firmly grasped this that he can make big money. It is literally true that millions come easier to a trader after he knows how to trade than hundreds did in the days of his ignorance. Confusion and Frustration for Traders Maslow one commented that, when all you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as a nail. So it is with psychologists that involve themselves in markets. Lacking an understanding of actual speculative strategies and tactics–not to mention portfolio construction–they reduce performance problems to the lowest, psychological denominator. In so doing, they confuse cause and effect: they observe frustrated traders and assume that relieving frustration is the key to making money.The professional speculator, unlike the retail daytrader, rarely falls into performance problems because of derelict discipline or runaway emotions. Rather, it is the very competence of the professional that leads to performance challenges. *It is when pros are most in sync with markets, identifying and profiting from themes and patterns, that they are most vulnerable to ever-changing patterns of direction, volatility, and correlation*. The confidence that permits healthy risk-taking under the best of speculative conditions inevitably gives way to confusion and frustration when skilled participants are no longer in sync with their markets.The wise speculator utilizes this confusion and frustration as information: they often are early signs that something meaningful has shifted in the marketplace. The proper intervention in such circumstances is not to quell the frustration with psychological exercises. Rather, it is to extract the information from the situation and feed that forward into strategy and tactics. Very often, today’s bad trade was a good trade in yesterday’s regime: there is information in that.It is when the confusion and frustration are taken personally, as threats, that setbacks are most likely to turn into slumps. If one stops looking for ever-changing market patterns, then the only other source of changed performance is oneself. The internal focus leads to altered trading behavior, much as a pitcher experiencing a control problem might start aiming the ball and altering his delivery. Such alterations begin vicious cycles of diminished performance and unhelpful adaptations.Ironically, in embracing ever-changing patterns–and the inevitable responses to those as regimes shift–traders are most able to make helpful adaptations. It is when good trades turn out to be losing trades that speculators gain some of their most important information about markets. A to Z -Motivational Tips ■A – Achieve your dreams. Avoid negative people, things and places. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” Consume yourself with the motivation to achieve tremendous results from everything you attempt ■B – Believe in your self, and in what you can do. Motivation comes from within, if you trust in your abilities you will come out on top. ■C – Consider things on every angle and aspect. Motivation comes from determination. To be able to understand life, you should feel the sun from both sides. Never say never, there is a way of accomplishing anything if you keep an open mind and never give up. ■D – Don’t give up and don’t give in. Thomas Edison failed once, twice, more than thrice before he came up with his invention and perfected the incandescent light bulb. Make motivation as your steering wheel. The only way you lose for sure is when you quit. ■E – Enjoy. Work as if you don’t need money. Dance as if nobody’s watching. Love as if you never cried. Learn as if you’ll live forever. Motivation takes place when people are happy. Maintain a positive attitude under any circumstance. Fill your mind with positive thoughts and the whole world will be your playground. ■F – Family and Friends – are life’s greatest ‘F’ treasures. Don’t loose sight of them. So often we look past our greatest treasures, remain motivated to always seek the treasures in your family bonds. ■G – Give more than what is enough. Where does motivation and self improvement take place? At work? At home? At school? When you exert extra effort in doing things. Try to give more than what is asked of you, this shows true self motivation. ■H – Hang on to your dreams. They may dangle in there for a moment, but these little stars will be your driving force. Dreams keep us motivated to go after the things that excite us in life. Holding onto your dreams shows a strength in your character of positive expectations. ■I – Ignore those who try to destroy you. Don’t let other people to get the best of you. Stay away from toxic people – the kind of friends who hates to hear about your success. Surround yourself with positive people and you will all keep each other motivated to seek out the positives in life. ■J – Just be yourself. The key to success is to be yourself. And the key to failure is to try to please everyone. Believe in your strengths and live by your positive terms. ■K – keep trying no matter how hard life may seem. When a person is motivated, eventually he sees a harsh life finally clearing out, paving the way to self improvement. Motivation keeps you striving for the best, hang onto the values brought on through positive thinking. ■L – Learn to love yourself. Now isn’t that easy? You cannot give love to others unless you love yourself. Learn how to motivate yourself into working on your own personal development. You will never grow as a person until you learn to take responsibility for your own self improvement. ■M – Make things happen. Motivation is when your dreams are put into work clothes. Motivation is one of the strongest characteristics you can have. When you live your life filled with motivation you become a person who really gets things done. Let’s Take A Motivational Break Now That We Have Made It To The Half-Way Mark! Now you have to ask yourself; is stopping half-way through any projects you have taken on something you find yourself doing often? This tends to be the breaking point for many, they set out to complete a task but at the first sign of trouble they give up because their motivational skills are weak. Is this what happens to you? It is up to you to not allow your dreams to slip away in night. You must do whatever it takes to keep yourself motivated if you are to achieve any type of significant success in your life. The next time you are working towards a goal and you come across a bit of resistance remember to put your motivational skills to work. It’s OK to stop and re-group at the half-way mark but that is all that you do, once you are sure your still on the right path it’s time to get moving again. ■N – Never lie, cheat or steal. Always play a fair game. A person with a good moral standing will go further in life than an unmotivated cheat. Never look for short-cuts to good things, this will lead to missed opportunities and challenging possibilities. ■O – Open your eyes. People should learn the horse attitude and horse sense. They see things in 2 ways – how they want things to be, and how they should be. Life is full of possibilities, keep the motivation to go after the wonders in the world. ■P – Practice makes perfect. Practice is about motivation. It lets us learn repertoire and ways on how can we recover from our mistakes. Maintaining the motivation to work hard towards the things you truly want out of life will bring you more rewards than sitting back and expecting things to happen. ■Q – Quitters never win. And winners never quit. So, choose your fate – are you going to be a quitter? Or a winner? ■R – Ready yourself. Motivation is also about preparation. We must hear the little voice within us telling us to get started before others will get on their feet and try to push us around. Remember, it wasn’t raining when Noah build the ark. The boy scout motto is “Be Prepared” and this is a way of life we should all adapt to. ■S – Stop procrastinating. Nothing kills motivation more then procrastination. Choose to spend your time accomplishing positive things in your life. ■T – Take control of your life. Discipline or self control jives synonymously with motivation. Both are key factors in self improvement. When you know what you want out of life and you are motivated to work towards the attainment of your dreams, you will accomplish more then the average person lacking motivation. ■U – Understand others. If you know very well how to talk, you should also learn how to listen. Yearn to understand first, and to be understood the second. Understanding another persons problems in life and being motivated to offer help to others, builds your own character. ■V – Visualize it. Motivation without vision is like a boat on a dry land. Your mind can bring you whatever you desire in life. Visualize success and success will be yours, visualize defeat or loss and failure will encompass your life. Maintain the motivation to visualize success and achievements. ■W – Want it more than anything. Dreaming means believing. And to believe is something that is rooted out from the roots of motivation and self improvement. When you have strong wants this leads to the motivation to attain what you truly desire. ■X – X Factor is what will make you different from the others. When you are motivated, you tend to put on “extras” on your life like extra time for family, extra help at work, extra care for friends, and so on. Set yourself apart from others, stand out in the crowd, hold your head up high with pride and conviction. ■Y – You are unique. No one in this world looks, acts, or talks like you. Value your life and existence, because you’re just going to spend it once. Use the fact that you are one of a kind to excel at everything you do in life. True motivation is for you and you alone, use it to move forward in life, show your uniqueness. ■Z – Zero in on your dreams and go for it!!! Never lose your motivation to go after your dreams because living your dreams means you are living your life. Implicit memory and Decisions

Wisdom from Market Wizards

Tony Saliba

“How do you lose money? It is either bad day trading or a losing position. If it’s a bad position that is the problem, then you should just get out of it.”

“Clear thinking, ability to stay focused, and extreme discipline. Discipline is number one: Take a theory and stick with it. But you also have to be open-minded enough to switch tracks if you feel that your theory has been proven wrong. You have to be able to say, “My method worked for this type of market, but we are not in that type of market anymore.”

“Until recently, I set goals on a monetary level. First, I wanted to become a millionaire before I was thirty. I did it before I was twenty-five. Then I decided I wanted to make so much a year, and I did that. Originally, the goals were all numbers, but the numbers are’t so important anymore. Now, I want to do some things that are not only profitable, but will also be fun.”

Dr Van K. Tharp

“The composite profile of a losing trader would be someone who is highly stressed and has little protection from stress, has a negative outlook on life and expects the worst, has a lot of conflict in his/her personality, and blames others when things go wrong. Such a person would not have a set of rules to guide their behaviour and would be more likely to be a crowd follower. In addition, losing traders tend to be disorganized and impatient. Thet want action now. Most losing traders are not as bad as the composite profile suggest. They just have part of the losing profile.”

“One of the basic problems that most traders face is dealing with risk. For example, two primary rules to successful speculative trading are: Cut your losses, short and let your profits run. Most people cannot deal with those two rules. For example, if making money is important to you – as it is to most people who play investment games – then you will probably have trouble taking small losses. As a result, small losses turn into moderate losses, which are even harder to take – all because it was so hard to take a small loss. Similarly, when people have a profit, they want to take it right away. They think, “I’d better take this now before it gets away.” The bigger the profit becomes, the harder it is to resist the temptation to take it now. The simple truth is that most people are risk-averse in the realm of profits – they prefer a sure, smaller gain to a wise gamble for a larger gain – and risk-seeking in the realm of losses – they prefer an unwise gamble to a sure loss. As a result, most people tend to do the opposite of what is required for success.”

“Generally, I find that top traders believe 1) Money is NOT important; 2) It is OK to lose in the markets; 3) Trading is a game; 4) Mental rehearsal is important for success; 5) They’ve won the game before they start.”

 

Market Beating lessons

On the school of hard knocks:

The game taught me the game. And it didn’t spare me rod while teaching. It took me five years to learn to play the game intelligently enough to make big money when I was right.

On losing trades:

Losing money is the least of my troubles. A loss never troubles me after I take it. I forget it overnight. But being wrong – not taking the loss – that is what does the damage to the pocket book and to the soul.

On trading the trends:

Disregarding the big swing and trying to jump in and out was fatal to me. Nobody can catch all the fluctuations. In a bull market the game is to buy and hold until you believe the bull market is near its end.

On sticking to his plan:

What beat me was not having brains enough to stick to my own game – that is, to play the market only when I was satisfied that precedents favoured my play. There is the plain fool, who does the wrong thing at all times everywhere, but there is also the Wall Street fool, who thinks he must trade all the time. No man can have adequate reasons for buying or selling stocks daily – or sufficient knowledge to make his play an intelligent play.

On speculation:

If somebody had told me my method would not work, I nevertheless would have tried it out to make sure for myself, for when I am wrong only one thing convinces me of it, and that is, to lose money. And I am only right when I make money. That is speculating.

On respecting the tape:

A speculator must concern himself with making money out of the market and not with insisting that the tape must agree with him. Never argue with it or ask for reasons or explanations.

On human nature and trading:

The speculator’s deadly enemies are: Ignorance, greed, fear and hope. All the statute books in the world and all the rule books on all the Exchanges of the earth cannot eliminate these from the human animal.

On riding the trend to the big money:

Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon. I found it one of the hardest things to learn. But it is only after a stock operator has firmly grasped this that he can make big money. It is literally true that millions come easier to a trader after he knows how to trade than hundreds did in the days of his ignorance.

 

Confusion and Frustration for Traders

Maslow one commented that, when all you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as a nail. So it is with psychologists that involve themselves in markets. Lacking an understanding of actual speculative strategies and tactics–not to mention portfolio construction–they reduce performance problems to the lowest, psychological denominator. In so doing, they confuse cause and effect: they observe frustrated traders and assume that relieving frustration is the key to making money.

The professional speculator, unlike the retail daytrader, rarely falls into performance problems because of derelict discipline or runaway emotions. Rather, it is the very competence of the professional that leads to performance challenges. *It is when pros are most in sync with markets, identifying and profiting from themes and patterns, that they are most vulnerable to ever-changing patterns of direction, volatility, and correlation*. The confidence that permits healthy risk-taking under the best of speculative conditions inevitably gives way to confusion and frustration when skilled participants are no longer in sync with their markets.

The wise speculator utilizes this confusion and frustration as information: they often are early signs that something meaningful has shifted in the marketplace. The proper intervention in such circumstances is not to quell the frustration with psychological exercises. Rather, it is to extract the information from the situation and feed that forward into strategy and tactics. Very often, today’s bad trade was a good trade in yesterday’s regime: there is information in that.

It is when the confusion and frustration are taken personally, as threats, that setbacks are most likely to turn into slumps. If one stops looking for ever-changing market patterns, then the only other source of changed performance is oneself. The internal focus leads to altered trading behavior, much as a pitcher experiencing a control problem might start aiming the ball and altering his delivery. Such alterations begin vicious cycles of diminished performance and unhelpful adaptations.

Ironically, in embracing ever-changing patterns–and the inevitable responses to those as regimes shift–traders are most able to make helpful adaptations. It is when good trades turn out to be losing trades that speculators gain some of their most important information about markets.

A to Z -Motivational Tips

■A – Achieve your dreams.

Avoid negative people, things and places. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” Consume yourself with the motivation to achieve tremendous results from everything you attempt

■B – Believe in your self, and in what you can do.

Motivation comes from within, if you trust in your abilities you will come out on top.

■C – Consider things on every angle and aspect.

Motivation comes from determination. To be able to understand life, you should feel the sun from both sides. Never say never, there is a way of accomplishing anything if you keep an open mind and never give up.

■D – Don’t give up and don’t give in.

Thomas Edison failed once, twice, more than thrice before he came up with his invention and perfected the incandescent light bulb. Make motivation as your steering wheel. The only way you lose for sure is when you quit.

■E – Enjoy. Work as if you don’t need money.

Dance as if nobody’s watching. Love as if you never cried. Learn as if you’ll live forever. Motivation takes place when people are happy. Maintain a positive attitude under any circumstance. Fill your mind with positive thoughts and the whole world will be your playground.

■F – Family and Friends – are life’s greatest ‘F’ treasures.

Don’t loose sight of them. So often we look past our greatest treasures, remain motivated to always seek the treasures in your family bonds.

■G – Give more than what is enough.

Where does motivation and self improvement take place? At work? At home? At school? When you exert extra effort in doing things. Try to give more than what is asked of you, this shows true self motivation.

■H – Hang on to your dreams.

They may dangle in there for a moment, but these little stars will be your driving force. Dreams keep us motivated to go after the things that excite us in life. Holding onto your dreams shows a strength in your character of positive expectations.

■I – Ignore those who try to destroy you.

Don’t let other people to get the best of you. Stay away from toxic people – the kind of friends who hates to hear about your success. Surround yourself with positive people and you will all keep each other motivated to seek out the positives in life.

■J – Just be yourself.

The key to success is to be yourself. And the key to failure is to try to please everyone. Believe in your strengths and live by your positive terms.

■K – keep trying no matter how hard life may seem.

When a person is motivated, eventually he sees a harsh life finally clearing out, paving the way to self improvement. Motivation keeps you striving for the best, hang onto the values brought on through positive thinking.

■L – Learn to love yourself.

Now isn’t that easy? You cannot give love to others unless you love yourself. Learn how to motivate yourself into working on your own personal development. You will never grow as a person until you learn to take responsibility for your own self improvement.

■M – Make things happen.

Motivation is when your dreams are put into work clothes. Motivation is one of the strongest characteristics you can have. When you live your life filled with motivation you become a person who really gets things done.

Let’s Take A Motivational Break Now That We Have Made It To The Half-Way Mark!

Now you have to ask yourself; is stopping half-way through any projects you have taken on something you find yourself doing often? This tends to be the breaking point for many, they set out to complete a task but at the first sign of trouble they give up because their motivational skills are weak. Is this what happens to you?

It is up to you to not allow your dreams to slip away in night. You must do whatever it takes to keep yourself motivated if you are to achieve any type of significant success in your life. The next time you are working towards a goal and you come across a bit of resistance remember to put your motivational skills to work. It’s OK to stop and re-group at the half-way mark but that is all that you do, once you are sure your still on the right path it’s time to get moving again.

■N – Never lie, cheat or steal.

Always play a fair game. A person with a good moral standing will go further in life than an unmotivated cheat. Never look for short-cuts to good things, this will lead to missed opportunities and challenging possibilities.

■O – Open your eyes.

People should learn the horse attitude and horse sense. They see things in 2 ways – how they want things to be, and how they should be. Life is full of possibilities, keep the motivation to go after the wonders in the world.

■P – Practice makes perfect.

Practice is about motivation. It lets us learn repertoire and ways on how can we recover from our mistakes. Maintaining the motivation to work hard towards the things you truly want out of life will bring you more rewards than sitting back and expecting things to happen.

■Q – Quitters never win.

And winners never quit. So, choose your fate – are you going to be a quitter? Or a winner?

■R – Ready yourself.

Motivation is also about preparation. We must hear the little voice within us telling us to get started before others will get on their feet and try to push us around. Remember, it wasn’t raining when Noah build the ark. The boy scout motto is “Be Prepared” and this is a way of life we should all adapt to.

■S – Stop procrastinating.

Nothing kills motivation more then procrastination. Choose to spend your time accomplishing positive things in your life.

■T – Take control of your life.

Discipline or self control jives synonymously with motivation. Both are key factors in self improvement. When you know what you want out of life and you are motivated to work towards the attainment of your dreams, you will accomplish more then the average person lacking motivation.

■U – Understand others.

If you know very well how to talk, you should also learn how to listen. Yearn to understand first, and to be understood the second. Understanding another persons problems in life and being motivated to offer help to others, builds your own character.

■V – Visualize it.

Motivation without vision is like a boat on a dry land. Your mind can bring you whatever you desire in life. Visualize success and success will be yours, visualize defeat or loss and failure will encompass your life. Maintain the motivation to visualize success and achievements.

■W – Want it more than anything.

Dreaming means believing. And to believe is something that is rooted out from the roots of motivation and self improvement. When you have strong wants this leads to the motivation to attain what you truly desire.

■X – X Factor is what will make you different from the others.

When you are motivated, you tend to put on “extras” on your life like extra time for family, extra help at work, extra care for friends, and so on. Set yourself apart from others, stand out in the crowd, hold your head up high with pride and conviction.

■Y – You are unique.

No one in this world looks, acts, or talks like you. Value your life and existence, because you’re just going to spend it once. Use the fact that you are one of a kind to excel at everything you do in life. True motivation is for you and you alone, use it to move forward in life, show your uniqueness.

■Z – Zero in on your dreams and go for it!!!

Never lose your motivation to go after your dreams because living your dreams means you are living your life.

 Implicit memory and Decisions

Implicit memory is comprised of unconscious emotional patterns of relating to ourselves and others. It’s the kind of memory you access without thinking. It’s what makes you feel characteristically you.

These are the types of behavioural patterns laid down implicitly in the brain:

How do you feel about yourself?

Are you good at self-care? Do you accept all aspects of your personality? Or do you tend to deny yourself, or verbally beat yourself up?

How are you with others?

Do you naturally gravitate towards others and enjoy their company? Or do you prefer being on your own?

Implicit memory guides our behavior automatically, without thought or effort. You can think of implicit memory as a set of instructions or procedures encoded in the brain. However, a procedure can’t easily be described in words or contained in images. These procedures are nonconscious and nonverbal.
Implicit memory starts early

For the first 18 months of our lives the implicit memory system is online establishing the basis of our character. Explicit memory, the kind of memory we can consciously recall (“I remember the time when I….”), doesn’t come fully online until much later.

After an infant learns to identify her mother’s face, voice, touch and smell, she learns how to communicate her needs to this “person”, all based on trial and error. Successes and failures are recorded, with particular attention given to memories of interactions with caregivers, and gradually a patterned and predictable way of responding to the world evolves.

This kind of memory is necessarily implicit because the newborn has no conceptual or verbal ability and must depend on its inborn capacity to learn what it needs quickly and nonconsciously, in an environment where survival itself depends on emotional connection.

Implicit memory is procedural. This means implicit memory is difficult to change. For instance, you just can’t tell yourself, “Don’t be stubborn” and hope this will change you permanently. This is like the left brain telling the right brain what to do. It is not going to happen this way. This is not how our brain works. It takes hundreds of hours of deliberate practice and constant repetition to turn a desired behavior into a habit.
Procedural memory is the basis for our character.

The procedural memory system stores the instructions for our habitual responses. In other words it patterns how we do things. More profoundly, it is about who we are.1

In other words, procedural memory is the basis of our character, those aspects of ourselves that make us unique.

When we learn a behaviour or an emotional response it becomes part of our procedural memory. Once it’s been “programmed” into the procedural memory system we don’t need to decide how to respond to a specific situation because it has now become automatic–after all, that’s the whole point.

You see these “overlearned” patterns are the “behind the scenes” kind of memory that frees up our attention for more important tasks.

For instance, I can drive my car and carry on a conversation at the same time. The ‘driving’ behaviour is encoded in procedural memory. Since I’ve overlearned the skills needed for driving I don’t need to be conscious of every detail in order to keep my car on the road.
When procedural memory kicks in, it’s like being “on autopilot”.

Procedural memory is important in counseling because many of our emotions and behaviours that accompany them occur ‘automatically’. In order to change a behaviour we need to bring it into conscious awareness and ‘out of procedure’.

Procedures take a while to learn but they make life a lot easier. Can you imagine for instance if we had to sound out every letter of every word in order to read? Reading becomes a procedural skill.

An important feature of procedural memory is that it tends to persist; it’s resistant to change. This is a good thing because you don’t want to have to keep re-learning behaviours. But this also means that you can’t change a procedure, unless and until you pay attention to how and when it operates. And procedural patterns take a while to unlearn.

Let’s say you like to play tennis; you were self-taught and have played for years. You decide to take some lessons. The instructor shows you how to swing the racquet more effectively.

But you soon discover that you just can’t just tell yourself to swing it differently. The old pathways interfere with the new ones. It’s hard to interrupt a well-established procedure.

In fact, those original neural pathways, though weakened, will always be there, for we currently have no reason to think that they will deteriorate. Under conditions resembling the initial circumstances in which they were laid down they may even be reactivated!

But the good news is that the new, regulated pathways will eventually override the old ones.

Once you unconsciously trigger a procedure, which could be any routine task, it’s difficult to stop yourself from completing it. That is, it’s difficult to interrupt the procedure.

Want to know why you repeat the same pattern in relationships even though these strategies clearly don’t work? You’re not alone. Benjamin Franklin once observed that “the definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”.

Once you understand how procedural memory works you’ll have a better handle on why you repeat ineffective, even self-defeating, behaviours.

Once a procedure is initiated it acquires a forward momentum that is uncomfortable to stop. This is the source of the desire to continue the procedure. Procedural memory dances with our cortex which can always come up with a “rational” explanation or justification for our automatic behaviors.

It takes many repetitions of a behaviour or an emotional response before it’s ingrained, and once that procedure is established it’s difficult to change.

For the same reason, we can’t change our way of relating (i.e. implicit memory) simply by tellingourselves to feel differently. It requires special conditions for the change to occur.