Quote from MGJ:
Market Wizards, interview #6, page 167:
Interviewer: What is the most important advice you can give the average trader?
Wizard: That he should find a superior trader to do his trading for him, and then go find something he really loves to do.
Typical.
There are people with all professional skills that don't want you to learn, they would rather sabotage the competition than risk being surpassed.
It's called insecurity.
When I was learning to play drums as a kid, I would hang out with a kid who was a little older and already very good at drumming, I would watch and learn.
One day I said to him, "Look, I got the snare part down for this song, took me awhile, but I got it!"
He said, "You could practice ten years and still not be able to play that." I just thought to myself, "Yeah right you fuckin' asshole, you're just scared of me. I already do this better than YOU do!" I grew up to be a highly-skilled and well-respected drummer.
Still, I never made much money as a drummer and at 26, needed a skill to carry me through life so I got in the plumbers and pipefitters union. This story is the opposite, I did this against my OWN self-doubt.
As a plumbing apprentice in the union, people would talk badly about me, I would get brought before the board for poor performance...I thought I would never learn the trade. Other apprentices would tell me that journeymen spoke of me as "a good kid but not mechanically inclined".
I was programmed to mess up. Give me a 50/50 chance of getting it right, 95% of the time I would screw it up. I eventually broke it down over time, meditated on what I am doing wrong and needed to change and then decided that I need to be more consistently successful than unsuccessful, not just think it, BE IT. Over time I turned the tables and became a competant professional journeyman. I am now a licensed contractor (non-union) and have done very well for myself.
Once I left the union and started my own business, I found the time to do what I always wanted to learn to do....trade.
So in my three years of trading, recently I decided that there was a similar problem in my trading psychology that I experienced as a newbie plumber.
It was the same need to develop a winning attitude and to make the transition from net loser to net winner.
If I see a plumbing task that requires special tools, more help, WD40, whatever it takes to do it...I will take the time to do it right, I will not RISK taking a 50/50 chance that will substantially cost me in materials and labor if it goes wrong. I will not RISK damaging a very expensive part trying to "force it", or use the wrong fitting or wrong part for the job just because it would be "inconvenient" to do it right.
I have recently carried this attitude and practice over into my trading and have had drastically improved results. Just had my first net positive year (well not in futures but in stocks and stock options).
The best things in life, as far as careers go, usually come from years of true dedication, searching, and learning.
240K and a stock account just gives you the opportunity to win or lose. Not the hard-won skills to be a winner.
