The Melbourne Tribe for Traders is currently active.
We meet every 2-3 weeks on Sunday mornings to work on improving our trading and investing. We base our approach on the Trading Tribe Process ™ invented by the famous trader Ed Seykota. Ed was profiled in the well-known book “Market Wizards” by Jack D. Schwager. Market Wizards documents Ed’s extraordinary audited track record of 16 years of above 63% returns compounded after tax (over 85% before tax) and his innovative approach to trading success.
Disclaimer: While our approach is based on Ed’s work, the Melbourne Tribe is independent and not endorsed or controlled by Ed Seykota.
Ed’s Approach and the Trading Tribe Process ™
The core idea is that the major challenge in achieving trading success is not in finding winning indicators, or finding the right chart patterns, or in complex mathematics or statistics. The main problem is dealing with the psychological challenges of trading: Dealing with losses and sticking to your strategy; Dealing with success and the issues that can raise; Keeping focussed; Taking your losses; Letting winners run when you want to grab the profit before it goes away; The uncomfortable process of reviewing past trades and analysing your mistakes; Keeping your work rate and commitment up to a high level; Not fooling yourself about how you are going.
Experienced traders will tell you that managing your mental state is the key to trading success. The Trading Tribe Process is the most effective way I know to do this.
In Tribe we do two main things:
First, we maintain a “snapshot” of where we want to get to. This is a simple picture of our desired state. Tribe members review each other’s snapshots to make sure they are real, achievable, concrete, and emotionally motivating. We then monitor progress towards achieving those snapshots. Often when you try to move forward to your goals, feelings come up. This is where the “hot seat” comes in.
Second, we do “hot seats”. This process is described in detail on Ed’s web site and in his book. In brief, the idea is to allow the trader to fully experience the emotion that is troubling him or her and to make that emotion his or her friend. We hold that every feeling has a positive intent and our aim is to find and uncover that positive intent. We experience a lot of success with hot seats. Tribe members have experienced dramatic transformations in their trading and in their lives as a result of hot seats. Sometimes we take a hot seat to the next level, which is the Rocks process. This is a powerful technique for resolving dysfunction patterns of thinking and behaving that we have learned and substituting more effective and proactive patterns into our lives.
Usually after our tribe meeting we have a light lunch where we chat about trading and so forth. But the main focus of the Tribe is to work on our emotions especially as they affect our trading.
Contact Details
Two members of the Melbourne Tribe have attended Ed’s workshop in the USA. Collectively we have several years of experience of running and participating in Trading Tribes.
Ed’s Trading Tribe site is here http://www.seykota.com/tribe/. You can find links to Ed’s book, the FAQ (a huge list of questions to Ed and his answers) and other resources including workshops that Ed runs from time to time.
You can contact me and the Melbourne Tribe via the Tribe Directory at
http://www.seykota.com/tt/directory/default.html
We welcome visitors and new members who want to work to improve their trading and their lives!
Tim Josling
