At the root of many trading problems is a sense of scarcity or a lack of belief in the abundance of wealth and opportunity. To trade effectively, I believe, a person needs to have a sense of life's potential bounty.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines abundance as an overflowing state or condition; as superfluity; as plenteousness. Abundant is defined as more than enough. Scarcity is defined by the OED as frugality, parsimony, meanness and as an insufficiency of supply. With abundance we have more than enough. With scarcity we have barely enough or not enough.

Successful traders have confidence that the markets will provide abundant and recurring opportunity and that they can identify and take advantage of those opportunities. The same is true in general of people who are successful in life. Successful people believe that life offers a cornucopia of opportunities and that they can identify and take advantage of some of those opportunities. For them it's really a matter of selecting which advantageous possibility they will commit to and go after.

A look at successful traders and entrepreneurs also shows that they have been able to survive failure as many times as they have had to. They use failure as feedback. They learn from it and make changes and go on. Many super traders have experienced crushing loss in their early trading years. All of them picked themselves up, and with the sure belief that they could make it back, they did just that. They never said, "It can't be done."; or "I can't do it." They never said, "With that money gone, the game is over." Successful traders and entrepreneurs find ways to replenish their capital and proceed toward their goals.

Successful traders are able to ride through periods of draw down easily because they believe the draw down to be only temporary. They hold an attitude of recurring abundance. Their confidence in their methods and their ability and their vision of what the markets can provide reassures them about their future success. Any period of loss is impermanent and therefore unimportant.