There
are two unpleasant experiences that every trader will face in his
lifetime at least once and, most likely, multiple times. First, there
will come a day after a devastatingly brutal and agonizingly long
stretch of losing trades and you’ll wonder if you will ever make a
winning trade again. And second, there will come a point you begin to
ask yourself why it is you make money, and if this is truly sustainable.
The first experience tests an individual’s grit; does he have the
stamina, courage, guts and smarts to get up and engage the battle
again?
» I knew that I really did not know. «
The
second moment of enlightenment is the one that it is actually scarier
because it acknowledges a certain lack of control over anything. I think
I was 38 years old when, one day, in a moment of frightening
enlightenment in 1993, I knew that I really did not know exactly how and
why I had made all the money that I had over the prior 17 years. That
threw my confidence for a jolt. It sent me down on to a path of
self-discovery that even today is a work in progress.
Many of us are blind to key psychological elements of ourselves; that’s why people go to therapists or get outside help for any number of problems. That was what happened to me in 1993. Then, a combination of people helped me discover that my trading style had incorporated some inimitable traits, completely unbeknownst to me. These bad habits were responsible for the worst year of my career, and the only one that came close to being negative for my trading accounts.
Many of us are blind to key psychological elements of ourselves; that’s why people go to therapists or get outside help for any number of problems. That was what happened to me in 1993. Then, a combination of people helped me discover that my trading style had incorporated some inimitable traits, completely unbeknownst to me. These bad habits were responsible for the worst year of my career, and the only one that came close to being negative for my trading accounts.
2014