What You Secretly Expect Tells The Real Story

I traded stock options for 4 1/2 years during the late 1990s. It wasn’t just any four years though. I traded at the very peak of the dotcom craze. That means I rode the whipsaw of a snake called the stock market right to the very top and then sharply down.

One thing that became very apparent was that I had an uncanny knack for entering a position at the worst possible time. I bought ‘calls’, I bought ‘puts’, (meaning I sometimes anticipated the market dropping, and other times I thought it was going higher). Watching myself as I traded, a pattern soon became apparent: I had an uncanny knack for entering a position at the most expensive price and then selling at the cheapest price.

Let me tell you: this is a formula for running out of money, and quickly too!

I knew it wasn’t just ‘bad luck’ that I kept having losing trades. Something about my expectations or beliefs was causing me to secretly choose failure.

I spent the next month reprogramming my subconscious until my secret expectations finally matched my outward ones.

How did it turn out? I immediately started entering very favorable positions and then selling at just the right time. I’d completely reversed things and they were now going my way!

The lesson? Take a closer look at what you secretly expect and then make sure you align it with what you’re outwardly looking to have happen.