Opportunity or Threat?
Your Mindset Filters Every Signal
In Steve Ward’s book Bulletproof trader (a great traders stocking filler…
) he shared a cool little exercise.
He wrote this:
OPPORTUNITYISNOWHERE
And asked the question, what do you see?
Opportunity is nowhere
Or
Opportunity is now here?
Now of course, how you read that doesn’t necessarily mean you are doomed to a lifetime of pessimism or optimism!
But Steve simply uses this to illustrate the point…
OPPORTUNITY OR THREAT?
How you frame things changes everything.
Say you’re long, and the market pulls back.
Is that an opportunity or a threat?
Do you see a great place to maybe add more, or the market taking away your unrealised gains?
Because how you perceive that pullback will determine your next actions.
How about a rough patch in your trading?
A drawdown in your equity curve?
Is this the worst thing in the world?
Or do you frame it as:
“Alright. This is where I prove I can come back.
Glad it happened while I was trading small, not with 10x size later on.”
Year-end can be tough when you’re a developing trader, especially if you’re red.
You often have this internal battle going on.
On the one side, there’s a voice saying:
“Look how hard you tried, you spent so much time on this, and you still lost money. This isn’t for you.”
On the other side, the voice says:
“You might be red… but you’re not the same trader you were a year ago.
You’ve learned more, seen more, and handled things you couldn’t before.
The P&L doesn’t always capture that growth.
Think of the bamboo tree… months of watering with nothing to show for it, then suddenly it shoots up.
The work isn’t wasted.
Keep going.”
How you find opportunity in difficult times is the ultimate separator in this business…