April 2023 Trading Review

This month was the time of both internal and external change. This month I made my trader's journal completely free to use. I built this online tool using my own hands more than a year ago. Initial and further development work took around 3 months working full time. Since last year, the tool has been tried out by quite a few people organically and while for some people it served well, some of the other people lacked motivation to use it continuously. Up until now I've been using a hybrid pricing model (all features are free up to a certain usage limit), so only a handful of people have ever paid for the premium membership. Since my main source of income is trading and earning money from the journal tool was never among my goals, I made it completely free so that more people could use it.

About changes in trading. Up until now I thought that the more currency pairs I'll watch, the more I'll earn. But I didn't evaluate the burden on my mind - when I'm watching many charts, am I actually seeing and perceiving, or just watching? Also, while reading the statistics of one of the prop firms, I found an interesting fact - among a few thousand of researched traders, the biggest share of profits is taken by those who trade only one pair/symbol. I decided to trade only one currency pair.

Having realised how strong the power of focus is and that by focusing my attention to one point I can achieve more, I made two more changes: I decided to trade using only one strategy and trade only when expected reward/risk ratio is big (10:1 and more). These decisions were the most profitable so far. I was suffering from the diseases of maximalism and perfectionism for a long time, and now after breaking my mind and having realized that less brings more, I only want to thank the Universe that we live in this environment of surprising laws of nature and that we're able to comprehend them.

About internal changes. A few years ago at the profile of one rich man I saw this quote: "everything is happenning in your mind". Although these words sounded intriguingly, at that time I could only comprehend them superficially - on the mind level only. But this month I've received deeper realizations. I started paying a lot of attention to observation of my mind while trading. Because I stumbled upon some sort of a glass wall that I couldn't break. It seemed that no matter what I did - both externally and internally - my results were not getting better. I felt like I stopped improving and I couldn't rise to the next level anymore. On the inside I was having various sorts of negative emotions, and on the outside - after so many hours at the charts and backtesting I was almost vomiting, I couldn't see anything new in there, it seemed that everything was learnt already and intuition was screaming to me that I'm looking for answers in the wrong place.

And then I received a realization that the 2 year old lesson about uniqueness of present moment wasn't actually learnt. Two years ago we set off to the seaside together with the soulmate. After driving just a few kilometers outside of the town, the mirror dropped, on the driver's side. Driving became very unsafe and uncomfortable. We stopped at the nearest town's service station to change it. Next day at the beach I was reading a psychological book for traders. The book said that only after perceiving the uniqueness of present moment a trader can expect for their internal suffering to end. Then it came to me that the mirror happening taught me exactly that. While driving, I had actually noticed that the mirror is slightly shaking. But I didn't consciously perceive that, because I had a shaking mirror in my previous car as well, but it was for a different reason. It wasn't a critical problem requiring immediate solution, so my mind learned to ignore it. And when I saw the shaking mirror this time, my mind automatically ignored it, connecting this to the experience it already had, not even recognizing that I was sitting in a different car. The uniqueness of present moment remained unperceived. After this event, I thought that I already learned the lesson.

But now it came to me that I had only learned that lesson on the mind's level, but I wasn't truly living in that realization. For a person who is injured by his own intellect (i.e. me), it was very difficult to perceive that the market can actually do anything at any time. Because I have professional understanding about how this market works, I can analyse well, my prediction success rate has increased to 90-100%. That created a treacherous illusion that I know what the market will do in the next hour. This illusion created a lot of stress. It became gross to live with this illusion. I understood that I have to trade without predictions, expectations and accept that every situation will be unique, what happened in the past will never repeat in the future with 100% accuracy. Not just "know" about it, but soak it up with my whole material and spiritual being. Not just "understand" it, but be in it. Bringing this to practice wasn't easy.

I had to come to a realization that everything that is happening in my mind are programs which are always repeating. And more - everything that is happening on the outside is the result of those programs. And unexpectedly, at exactly the right time a notebook came to my hands which had my 4 year old notes from a deep experience. It was so spot on that I read it all in one go. In those notes, I had this line: "mind, go to hell, I'm going to celebrate life". Soon after, my mind started exploding. My programs rose from deep waters into my field of conscious observation. I could perceive them clearly. It became so funny. All of the fights, conflicts, hardships, mood storms, standard trader's reactions - all of that was made up in my mind. I created all of that. And then I got horrified: God, so I came to trading with all of these programs? And how I could even think about breaking the glass wall when I had such hells happening inside of me?

In just a few days my trading transformed from the hardest job in the world to the almost easiest and most pleasant walk in the park.

But I will stop here before you started thinking that I'm high (I don't take anything, not even caffeine). Because the deeper I'll go, the less practical it will be for you. And for traders there's no need to read novels - you just have to work and experience everything that you have to experience. But if, while experiencing, you'll have some reference points, it will be easier to recognize what's happening inside of you now. I wish you all the best. Patience, success.

P.S. The photo, attached to the article, was taken by me in March 2019. At the time I described it this way: "Joy – like other feelings – is a matter of perception. When you connect to the Ultimate Creator and ask for joyful experiences – they are revealed in the most unexpected ways." After rising with a drone and taking this picture of Singapore, it brought me a lot of joy. I understood that the park I was walking in looked so unexpectedly playful from above. It was the Creator's Garden. And the Creator is you. Your task is to create the most beautiful, playful, joyful garden of life. And don't forget that everything is happening in your mind, so all of the limits dwell only there. You are the Creator, therefore you can change it. Go ahead.