Understand and Eradicate the Mysterious Riddles in Your Trading

What phenomenon does this partial quote describe?

“…people all of whose human relationships have the same
outcome: such as the benefactor who is abandoned in anger
after a time by each of his protégés, however much they may
otherwise differ from one another, …or the man whose
friendships all end in betrayal by his friend; … or, again, the lover each of whose love affairs with a woman passes through the same phases and reaches the same conclusion”

Furthermore, can a parallel be found among traders in their patterns of trading? Do traders have characteristic ways of making mistakes? Do they complain that they “did IT again”? From my perspective the answer is a resounding YES. From hedge fund managers with a billion dollars under their management to experienced individual money managers, the complaint that describes a repeating scenario comes from everyone.

So how does anyone fix it?

It’s not easy – that I will admit. But it is possible to make significant progress through understanding the fractal nature of one’s experience (seemingly small early experiences get unconsciously recreated in adult life through expectations, explanations and judgment calls) AND through verbalizing all feelings in service of creating new emotional experiences.

The latter is where the coach comes in. The most powerful techniques arise when the coach understands there is a transference of earlier experience both into trading AND into the coaching the relationship. Handling that transfer and the typical resistance to see it, is the job of the coach.

Education can also play a powerful role. Some people learn that this unconscious transference and resulting repetition is happening and practically just stop. It’s rare but it does happen. Even when one can’t eradicate the repetition through simple knowledge, the knowledge can alleviate frustration and in doing so interrupt meltdown events (sometimes referred to as trading temper tantrums).

In short, what’s your fractal repetition?

(PS The quote is from Sigmund Freud in one of his earliest descriptions of The Compulsion to Repeat).

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