[idaxtrader]

A loss never bothers me after I take it. I forget it overnight. But being wrong -- not taking the loss that is what does the damage to the pocketbook and to the soul.

The message of the tape is the same. That will be perfectly plain to anyone who will take the trouble to think. He will find if he asks himself questions and considers conditions, that the answers will supply themselves directly.

Therefore the thing to determine is the speculative line of least resistance at the moment of trading; and what he should wait for is the moment when that line defines itself, because that is his signal to get busy.

It sounds very easy to say that all you have to do is to watch the tape, establish your resistance points and be ready to trade along the line of least resistance as soon as you have determined it. But in actual practice a man has to guard against, many things, and most of all against himself -- that is, against human nature.

When a man makes his play in a commodity market he must not permit himself set opinions. He must have an open mind and
flexibility. It is not wise to disregard the message of the tape.

A speculator must concern himself with making money out of the market and not with insisting that the tape must agree with him. Never argue with it or ask it for reasons or explanations.

It would not be so difficult to make money if a trader always stuck to his speculative guns -- that is, waited for the line of least resistance to define itself and began buying only when the tape said up or selling only when it said down. He should accumulate his line on the way up. Let him buy
one-fifth of his full line. He is wrong temporarily and there is no profit in being wrong at any time. The same tape that said up did not necessarily lie merely because it is now saying NOT YET.

It is simple arithmetic to prove that it is a wise thing to have the big bet down only when you win, and when you lose to lose only a small exploratory bet, as it were. If a man trades in the way I have described, he will always be in the profitable position of being able to cash in on the big bet.

He did not stick to his own proved system. That's the trouble with most of them,"

The speculator's chief enemies are always boring from within. It is inseparable from human nature to hope and to fear.

The successful trader has to fight these two deep-seated instincts. He has to reverse what you might call his natural impulses. Instead of hoping he must fear; instead of fearing he must hope. He must fear that his loss may develop into a much bigger loss, and hope that his profit may become a big profit.

It is absolutely wrong to gamble in stocks the way the average man does.