The Wait: Course workbook
Eleven lessons on the trader in the chair: sitting through the wait, what losses do to judgement, certainty, complexity, hiding, and a protocol that holds.
The other three courses teach rules. This one is about the person who has to follow them.
Most traders who fail don’t fail for want of a method. They fail in the gap between knowing the rule and doing it while the market is moving and their money is on the line. The Wait is about that gap: why sitting still is the hardest skill in trading, what a loss does to the next decision, why the trades you’re surest of are the dangerous ones, and what to build so that a bad hour doesn’t turn into a bad month.
The case notes come from real trading journals, kept trade by trade over more than a year, the worst weeks included. Names are left out and some details are changed. The research behind each lesson is named, so you can read it yourself and decide how far it applies to you.
Contents
- The wait is the job
- Freeze and chase, one fear with two faces
- How a loss changes the math
- Anatomy of a blow-up
- When you’re surest, stop
- The complexity trap
- The not-enough scanner
- Hiding the trade
- Trades seven to twelve
- Read your own record
- The protocol and the check-in sheet
FreeLessons 1 and 2 are free. The rest come with the daily read. Members can also download the whole course as a PDF.
How each lesson works
Every lesson has the same four parts. A case note from the journals, so the idea has a face. What the research says, with the study named. A short list of rules. And an exercise to do on your own trades, because reading about discipline changes about as much as reading about push-ups.
Do the exercises in order. Several of them build a record that later lessons ask you to read.
This course is not therapy
The Wait is about trading behaviour. It is education, not therapy, diagnosis or medical advice, and it can’t take your situation into account.
If trading is costing you sleep, money you can’t afford to lose, or the people around you, talk to a professional. In the US, the National Problem Gambling Helpline is free, confidential and open at any hour: call or text 1-800-MY-RESET (1-800-697-3738).
Education only. Nothing here is advice about your account.