Emotions Traders Don't Talk About

6/7/2026 - I once had a therapy session in which the client announced that he was depressed and wanted to end his life.  He then showed me the gun he was carrying.  I assumed it was loaded, and I assumed things would not go well if I called for help. 

My response was immediate.  I showed no particular emotion and actually felt calm.  I said to him, "Look, if you definitely wanted to end your life, you would have done it by now.  You certainly wouldn't come here.  We're here together and that tells me that at least a part of you wants to work this out.  What do you say if you put the gun down and we talk about the part of you that wants to live?"

To my surprise, he put the gun down and we had a great session.  He surrendered the weapon at the end of the meeting and went on to make progress in therapy, including help for his depression.

The point here is that when you've seen enough crisis situations, you can respond to crisis with understanding and familiarity, not with panic.  If you engage in enough practice trading, you'll see plenty of moves against your positions and you'll respond with experience.  In a crisis with someone I work with, I react with focus, not emotionally.  It's a sense of "all hands on deck".

That hyper focus during times of crisis is itself an emotion, a definite feeling.  It comes from experience and the realization that you can handle adversity.  The best way to handle fear and greed is focus and that only comes from practice and practice.

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6/5/2026 - Suppose you were looking for a romantic partner because you were feeling very isolated and lonely.  Every part of you wants and needs to find someone.  The odds are good that you'll jump at the first possibilities to fill your void.  Need, not values, will guide your choice--and will help ensure that you never truly connect.

So it is when we need to be successful in our trading.  We define ourselves--and our life's success--by our P/L.  In such a situation, the one thing we can't tolerate is sitting out of the market.  We need to trade because we need P/L.  

Neediness begets greediness.

If we need profits to feel good about ourselves, we will overtrade and oversize trades.  That neediness is an emotion that no one talks about because it betrays the bankruptcy behind the quest for P/L.

The measure of a trader is what they do when markets are closed and especially when markets don't offer opportunity.  The great traders are motivated by curiosity and the quest for ideas; they love the process of digging deeper and seeing what others miss.  

In their relationship with markets, they are not motivated by need; they are motivated by values.  That is what drives great romantic relationships as well.