The gap between knowing and doing

What trading is teaching me about myself.

Photo by melvin Ankrah on Unsplash

I got into trading to make money. That was the point.

I didn’t expect the experience to teach me so much about myself.

But the more I trade, the more I find myself thinking about things that have very little to do with the market.

My impatience. My greed. My need to be right. My reluctance to admit when I’m wrong.

In Monday’s column, I showed receipts — the actual losses from my options trades. The numbers told one story. The decisions behind them told another.

The biggest thing I’m realizing is that knowing what you should do and actually doing it are two different things.

Nothing has exposed the gap between what I know and how I actually behave quite like trading.

We know what it’s like to recognize the right thing to do and still struggle to follow through. We stay too long, act too soon or let pride get in the way of a decision we know we need to make.

I can convince myself I’m being patient when I’m really avoiding a decision. I can mistake confidence for certainty because I want things to work out the way I’ve imagined. And admitting I’m wrong can be harder than it should be when I’ve already invested time, money or pride in a particular outcome.

I don’t think these tendencies are unique to me or to trading. We see them in our careers, our relationships and the everyday decisions we make.

I have to be honest with myself, question my assumptions and accept that changing course doesn’t mean I’ve failed. I’m still working on that, and I know recognizing a pattern doesn’t mean I’ll automatically break it.

And trading gives those habits very little room to hide.

You can study strategies, learn the mechanics and develop a plan. But executing that plan when real money is on the line is another challenge entirely.

Managing a trade also means managing the person making it.

When I wrote the first Money Talks column, I said, “The pursuit of money is not what’s paramount. It is simply a byproduct, but an important resource nonetheless.”

I also wrote that transformation would require sacrifice, discipline, patience and an insatiable appetite for learning. I ended with three words: “But I’m ready.”

Now I’m knee-deep in it, learning what transformation actually demands.

I started trading to make money. I’m still trying to do that.

But I’m learning that the hardest thing to manage isn’t the market. It’s myself.