Traders are different; they know that they are going to lose money on a significant portion of their trades, for some traders, even most of the time. They understand that the uncertainty that underlies each trade keeps them from being able to win all the time. So for traders, losing is a normal part of the process. They don’t expect each trade to be successful. The best traders know that uncertainty can bite hard at times, so they focus on controlling risk and keeping the downsides of market uncertainty to a minimum. They focus on containing the negative outcomes. Traders are pragmatic realists. Rather than thinking about how much money they are going to make on a particular trade, they think about all of the ways that a trade can go wrong and how to minimize their losses when the unhoped for happens. Traders think defensively because they know that capital preservation is critical. In fact, even before they buy, all good traders have a price in mind at which point they will exit the losing trade. Since they expect to lose, they suffer minimal emotional pain when their trade hits an exit point and they have to get out of the loser. Traders have their ego invested in their strategies, not any particular trade. They are concerned with the long run, what happens over the course of many trades. They change course easily on any given trade because that is what enables them to continue trading.