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That is, after all, what meeting our needs through interactions with others is all about.
When we talk about being disciplined online investors, perhaps the most transparent way we mean this is to have self-control. We have mentioned in previous chapters how hard it is to control our inner world, and we have offered a number of tools to try and gain mental and emotional balance while trading. We have also identified various personality types and their respective approaches to trading. We suggested that some trading types favor feeling more in control and, therefore, are less risk-taking than other types.
Because self-control is so important to the process of being a good trader and investor, in this chapter we will focus on the two basic modes of control, and strategies for employing them during and after trading. One of the reasons this topic warrants attention is that it is readily apparent that there is so much having to do with online trading in the financial markets that is out of our personal control.
Here is a sampling of the variables that as online traders we may experience asor in fact arebeyond our personal control. Some of these are short-term conditions which may eventually come under control with further knowledge and experience. Others will never be in our power to accurately predict or to influence and may come suddenly and without warning:
Feeling out of control of technical aspects of hardware and software. Examples: How to find the right keys under pressure? How to make sense of all the real-time data filling the monitor? How to keep up on all the news of the markets when things are changing so rapidly? How to determine what news and data really matters and what isn't crucial? How to gain enough knowledge to make the data most useful for trading? How to make all the hardware function smoothly? How to know which trading software is rightnot too sophisticated, not too simple? How to deal with technical glitches and system crashes in the middle of trades? How not to get caught up in obsessive "tweaking" of software, monitors, hardware? How not to blame hardware and software for poor trades?
Physical and mental fluctuations while trading. Fluctuations such as sleepiness, pain, distraction by outside noise, commotion, and interruptions. How to deal with periods of preoccupation with other life issues? How to cope with mental laziness? How to keep from making poor trading decisions when swept up in various passing moods, lapses of concentration, or fuzzy thinking? How to keep

 
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