The Option Trader’s Mindset: Think Like a Winner

The Option Trader’s Mindset is designed as a guide to developing a proper mindset, or way of thinking, that increases any trader’s chance of achieving better results. This is not ‘all you need to succeed.’ Instead it is a collection of commentaries with a common theme. Each is designed to suggest a way of thinking about trade decisions and finding a good (efficient) method for handling the situation.

Author’s Note:

To become a winner in the option-trading game, it is important to have a proper mindset. This is not a question of having confidence or believing that you can do anything if you put in a good and honest effort. It is more subtle than that.

Do you remember the E*Trade commercials that aired during the technology bubble of the 1990s? The ads suggested that opening an account is the path to buying your own island, or the equivalent of winning the lottery. Sure those ads were humorous, but behind them was the destructive mindset that anyone could become rich by trading. There is no doubt that many people adopted that mindset by quitting their jobs to trade full time. As long as those new traders remained bullish and as long as the market cooperated, there was easy money to be made. However, times change and these inexperienced traders had no idea how to adapt to the new market environment. When the bubble burst, few adapted and fewer survived. They had one idea that worked. They followed a single (bullish) mindset, and when it stopped working they were doomed.

In this book I refer to situational mindsets that can harm a trader’s performance. None is as dangerous as the one mentioned above. However, when we adopt a trading methodology based on ideas that we KNOW (or assume) are true; it is difficult to find the path to becoming a winner. No matter what we do in our lives, an ever-present risk is that we do not know what it is that we do not know. The situation is even worse when what we ‘know’ turns out to be incorrect.

Contents:

• The Nature of Risk
• Set Aside your Current Mindset
• Trader Mindsets
• Bragging Rights
• Choosing an Option Strategy
• The Iron Condor Mindset
• Weekly iron Condors
• The Greeks
• Time Decay
• What can I earn as a Trader?
• Trading to Recover Losses
• Being Right vs. Making Money
• Option Trading and Slippage
• Holding a Losing Trade
• When to Exit
• Adjusting. How Much Should I Invest?
• Maximum Allowable Loss
• The Killer Blind Spot
• Rolling for a Credit
• The Trade or the Trade Plan. Which is More Important?
• A Truly Terrible Trade
• The Ultimate Winning Mindset

The Option Trader's Mindset: Think Like a Winner By Mark Wolfinger pdf