If you are on a winning streak, and you reduce your stake size, you are essentially anticipating the pain of losing some of your gains.Perceived pain or real pain matters not to the subconscious.

Rationalizing Pain

Consistency and BeliefProfitable trading requires trust.You need to believe. The belief comes from doing.What you become in life is dependent on the decisions you make and how you react to decisions made on your behalf.

Beliefs and Attitudes

Fear and HopeYour focus is on fear rather than opportunity.A lot of traders are fearful when they should be hopeful, and hopeful when they should be fearful.When they are confronted with a profitable position, they are afraid the profit will disappear. The operative word here is fear.Why do people bet less when they are winning and bet more when they are losing? Fear.

Behavioral Patterns in Trading

For every hour you spend on technical analysis, you must set aside at least 25% of that time for what I call internal analysis.

Internal Analysis

If you want to make money trading, you need to do that which the majority finds difficult to do.In trading, consistent winners think differently from everybody else.

Unique Approach

When you want what you want more than you fear what you want, you will have it.

The Importance of Failure<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">How you feel about failure will, to a very large degree, define your growth and your life trajectory in virtually every aspect of your life.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Losing and failing might be a blow to the ego, but it can also be rocket fuel for growth.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">I am ready to fail without losing my composure.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">I am exceptionally good at losing. When speculating in financial markets, the best loser wins. Do not underestimate these four words.</li></ul>

Mindset and Personal Growth

The winning trader is not emotionally attached to an idea of “cheap” or “expensive.I don't really want to feel anything - if I get overly happy about a win, tend to get overly sad about a loss. I don't want that.

Handling Emotions

Adding to winning positions is an absolute key trait of the successful trader.When you are in a winning position, instead of thinking where to get out, why don't you think where to get in more?It is easier to add to a losing position than a winning position.

Adding to Positions

The lesson comes after the test.Only through a dedicated approach to practice, with a specific attention to finding your mistakes, will you improve.I have trained myself to expect the pain.

Adapting and Learning

What we focus on is what we attract.The more fear we experience, the less information the mind will focus on.I must be like water, and flow.

General Wisdom

99% still don't get it - when they win, they start betting less. Bet more!

How you feel about failure will to a very large degree define your growth and your life trajectory, in virtually every aspect of your life.

Tools do not make you a top trader. Techniques do not make you a top trader.Trading profitably has nothing to do with the instrument you use.There is nothing wrong with trend lines, but they will not make you rich. What will make you rich is how you think when you trade.

Tools and Techniques

Your relationship with fear and adversity will to a very high degree define your life.

Control your mind - control your future.The market agrees with you. LET IT RIDE.Emotions kill trading accounts.It isn't the lack of knowledge that's stopping you from winning big. It's the way you handle yourself when you are in a trade.

Controlling Emotions

What truly defines your growth as a person is not the information you possess, but rather how you use it in real life. When you make mistakes, take responsibility for them and learn from them.

The Power of Action

Dealing with PainFacing our fears removes their power over us.I use fear to achieve my goals.Neurobiology has shown we experience a financial loss 250% more intensely than an equivalent financial gain.

Psychology and Neuroscience

Someone who opens an account with less than 100 pounds will, with a very high degree of certainty, lose that money, sadly.Someone who trades everything and anything, overtrading, will eventually lose their money.If you are normal - as in you do what everyone else is doing - then you won't make it.Don't you want to make money? Don't you want to separate yourself from the herd?When the trader is confronted with a loss they hope it will turn around. The operative word here is hope.

Common Pitfalls

Shift your focus to being process orientated.Focus on the process. Focus on what you can control.If you follow the process, the outcome will take care of itself.I don't set goals. I just focus on my process.We worked on it. Then we evaluated our process. We didn't actually focus on the outcome a all.

Process Orientation

as a trader, this is the best book I have ever read on trading psychology

Best Loser Wins is an intimate insight into one of the most prolific high-stake retail traders in the world. Tom Hougaard is the winner of multiple trading competitions and on one occasion traded £25,000 into more than £1 million over the course of a year. While the average retail trader risks £10 per point in the underlying asset, Tom Hougaard frequently risks up to £3,500 per point. This risk exposure requires a mindset that is out of the ordinary. Normal thinking leads to normal results. For exceptional results, traders must think differently. This book will guide and inspire you in ways no other trading book has. It is not about strategies and money management. It is about mind management. Tom Hougaard provides a unique and refreshingly personal account of how an ordinary trader elevated his game to incredible heights by focusing as much on his mental approach as on his technical analysis. Best Loser Wins explains how you, by thinking differently when you are trading, can elevate your game from mediocre and sporadic, to excellent and consistent. No amount of technical analysis will ever do that for you. Tom Hougaard says, “People don’t fail because they don’t know enough about technical analysis. They fail because they don’t understand what the markets are doing to their minds.” Best Loser Wins is an antidote to conventional and flawed thinking in trading, and a blueprint for a new belief system for traders who want to elevate their results to levels they never dreamed they could reach.

TOM HOUGAARD

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