When rational expectations economists create their model of the average man they envision a person with foresight of Einstein, the patience of Mahama Gandi and the memory of IBM’s Big Blue. Those are not my words, but rather the writings of Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in their new book entitled “Nudge: Improving Decisions about Heath Wealth and Happiness.” The reality the authors argue is diametrically different. And who amongst us could honestly disagree?

I often tease my kids that they come from the moron generation because more young people these days vote for the American Idol than vote in the American primaries. But looking at my own baby boomer cohort I can hardly make a case that we are paragons of Platonic virtue striving for physical and intellectual perfection. We are in fact an overweight, over medicated, infantile society of barely literate human beings and even the best amongst us are prone to massive idiotic mistakes in judgment.

When it comes to trading, that is perhaps the single most important point that we overlook. When we approach a trading strategy, we come to it with assumption that we will implement the idea with all the fortitude and precision of homo economius – the perfectly rational man of economists imagination. In reality we would be lucky to make three trades in a row EXACTLY as planned before tinkering or adjusting our ideas out of either boredom or frustration and disgust.

I challenge you to an experiment. Design a strategy that makes logical sense and then try to trade it for a week. Keep a diary of every trade and record whether it was in keeping with your ideas. Trade REAL money and I guarantee you won’t make it to ten trades before you go off the rails especially If you hit 3, 4 or 5 losers in a row. As human beings our flight or fight instinct kicks in and all we want to do is flee once the losses pile up. Yet it is precisely at those moments that we need to need to stand up and fight.

“Quitters never win and winners never quit,” may have been a tried and true platitude that my football coach used to yell at me all the time, but when it come to trading is the foundation of success. Losing is a universal reality of trading, but what separates the winners from those who fall by the wayside is their ability to fight back. We may be idiots most of the time, reacting impulsively instead of rationally to the ebbs and flows of the market, but we also posses the ability to change our behavior, to remain disciplined in the face of stomach churning drawdowns. When it comes trading, the ability to fight is ultimately more important than the desire to win.

Boris Schlossberg serves as director of currency research at GFT, and runs bktraderfx.com.