Shinken Trader

This is a very interesting article on human emotion. I sourced this from Elliot Wave International.

To grow up in relative affluence does not make it easier to be content with what you have; in fact, one’s own relative affluence can actually look deficient when greater affluence is close enough to see and touch. Human nature is prone to compare “up,” not “down.”

So, in turn, many folks who’ve had it pretty good will make themselves unhappy indeed if they have to subsist more than about 10 minutes with less than what they’re used to.

Now, the rebuttal to this line of thought is that “everyone aspires to something more or better,” and that’s true. Yet my reply is that there’s a world of difference between “aspire” and “expect” — which is to say, to simply expect something better will not make it so.

Nowhere is this more true than in stock market investing and in trading. Most people expect the market to go up; and when you invest your capital with that expectation, “up” becomes synonymous with “good.” I need not spell out what “bad” is in this scenario, nor elaborate on the comparisons and unhappiness that the “bad” will produce.