Time Takes Time

by Janice Dorn, MD, PhD, The Trading Doctor^SM | July 17, 2009

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Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change… Thomas Hardy

Most people act like they are going to live forever. Often, there is little systematic or productive review of the past or meaningful planning for the future.

Crowd behavior is more primitive and impulsive than that of any one individual, since crowds tend to pay less attention to time. It is as if whatever is happening will go on forever.

Gustave Le Bon described the crowd as a collective mind-set that is completely different from what that individual would feel, think or do in isolation. Freud believed that attitudes toward group leaders stemmed from childhood feelings toward the father---a combination of trust, fear, desire for approval and imminent rebellion. “Groupthink” of this type can be regressive and infantile to the extreme. This is part of what manifests, on a larger scale, as panic buying and panic selling.

This situation is exacerbated by the volumes of information, disinformation, misinformation that assault the brain of the trader every day. The primitive rat brain (designed for flight or fright) is attuned constantly to the possibility of attack, thus paranoid and vigilant about deceptions that are perpetrated on a daily basis in the financial markets. The “old” rat brain reacts with fear, greed, anger, retribution, sarcasm and loathing of self and others. The “new” rational brain filters information, makes a logical decision about its importance and then responds. Successful traders know when to react and when to respond and are acutely aware of the difference. They have learned to make the old brain and new brain work in harmony and flow, rather than battling continually with each other.

Time and price are facts of economic life. People repeat behaviors and cycles repeat. Unfortunately, the majority of traders are unable to recognize these cycles because they are blinded by noise. It is only when they are able to separate from the noise that they achieve the clarity of their brain “time machine” to recognize cycles and cycle changes.
Today we are faced with a logarithmically- accelerating rate of change of technology that permeates our minds and bodies in such a way that everything is urgent, breaking news, want it now, get in and get out quickly, take the profits and run. It is not without coincidence that frenetic is synonymous with inflammation that underlies most human diseases and falls under the general rubric of "stress."

Accelerating change aside, human emotions have not changed. Greed and fear are the same now as they have been from the dawn of civilization. Those who win consistently more than they lose have learned to self-regulate the forces of greed and fear. They have trained themselves to harness and respect the power of cycles, time and numbers. They have learned that time takes time, and that a trade keeps working until it doesn't. They allow time, price and pattern to play out.

Good traders have learned to filter, modulate and use whole brain thinking to their advantage as they trade the numbers. They realize that when the time is up, it is up and they get out and prepare for the next opportunity. From a place of relative calm, stillness and centering, they open themselves to receive and act on the messages that their whole brain time machine is telling them.

Each moment is a place you've never been… Mark Strand

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Time Takes Time

by Janice Dorn, MD, PhD, The Trading DoctorSM | July 17, 2009

by Janice Dorn, MD, PhD, The Trading Doctor^SM | July 17, 2009