You Don't Have To Have An Opinion
"We have the power to hold no opinion about a thing and to not let it upset our state of mind — for things have no natural power to shape our judgments."
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Today's meditation is quite a tough one to compare to trading. This is because when we find a trade that fully meets the criteria for our strategy, we have formed an opinion based on the stats/data that we have available to us. Because of this, we believe that the event is more likely to play out in our favour; otherwise we wouldn't be trading it in the first place of course!
Once the race/game goes in play however, our opinion becomes neutral because we are now at the point where we are trading what we are seeing and not what we believe will happen or want to happen.
So put quite simply; as traders we have to have an opinion, or we wouldn't have anything that we believe gives us an edge for a successful trade.
People have different opinions in all areas of life and when it comes to trading, we have to stick to our own strategies and not be swayed by other people's opinions.
Maybe for traders this should be titled "You don't have to have an opinion on everything". This way it means we are sticking solely to our strategies and not being distracted and wasting our time and energy by forming an opinion on what others are doing.