Trading on Target: How to Cultivate a Winner's State of Mind

AN OPEN MIND VS. AN EMPTY ONE

Recently, I read a column from an expert in human development about the importance of learning every day. He went on to discuss the need for the individual to search out the truth for himself. Although this advice, on the surface, sounds logical and sound, it reminded me of the blind man whose experience of an elephant was feeling its trunk. His conclusion was that an elephant was long, thin, and round and exactly like a snake. If you are not a trained investigator of the truth, you can easily find yourself learning anything but the whole truth and then coming to the wrong conclusion. For a trader, that mistake could be ruinous.

Here are some guidelines I would like to offer you in your quest for an on-going search for learning and the truth. Please take them with the same measure of skepticism that I am suggesting you apply to all of your daily learning experiences.

Apply a Healthy Dose of Skepticism to Everything You Learn

There are few things as pathetic as an individual spouting misinformation he recently read with trusting naiveté. Just remember that so many of the laws of nature that everyone knew to be true in the past have been proven wrong.

Just ‘Cause You Read It, Don’t Make It So

These days, virtually anyone can get his opinions and his take on the truth into print. This dramatic expansion of the access to the printed media has become a double-edged sword. Without an editorial screening mechanism to check facts, sources, and a writer’s own ...