BlueWaterSailor: trading journey and journal

Overnight said:
In my mind, here's futures trading...
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Flashback time! I drove an ice cream truck in Brooklyn for about three weeks while waiting for my hack license to come through. The neighborhood was so bad ("how bad was it?") that I had tiny little kids threatening to shoot me if I didn't give them a cone. Not even kidding.

And here's option trading...
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Hah. I'd probably have gone for Liszt's "La Campanella", or Eubie Blake's "Tricky Fingers". More about performance complexity than just the produced sound itself. Rachmaninov also used to mess with people by producing music that was really hard to play without his freakish handspan... yeah, more like that.
 
BlueWaterSailor said:
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Hah. I'd probably have gone for Liszt's "La Campanella", or Eubie Blake's "Tricky Fingers". More about performance complexity than just the produced sound itself. Rachmaninov also used to mess with people by producing music that was really hard to play without his freakish handspan... yeah, more like that.
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I am not that sophisticated.

So Rachmaninov had a handspan equal to his chode? I did not know this.
 
Overnight said:
I am not that sophisticated.

So Rachmaninov had a handspan equal to his chode? I did not know this.
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Cue "big pianist" joke... :\

My niece, who is a classical pianist, had a pic of his hands on her wall. It looked like a damn octopus. Just alien.
 
BlueWaterSailor said:
...Just alien.
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And to think...If extra-terrestrials were to finally arrive and try to settle down here, they'd find that comment you made racist.

Which is oddly counter-intuitive, because it SHOULD be "speciest", if there is such a word. Why? Because of all the social media transmissions they've received from us while on their way here.

(And before you ask me why aliens would have iPhones? I will tell you, because Steve Jobs was an alien. Fact. Like Elvis.)
 
$29.08 TWTR 191115P36.5 / P38.5 -$2.01 -$33.00
Out of Twatter; paid $1 more than max loss to get out early. Not bad for something that dropped ~25%!

Low IV used to drive me nuts; now, it just drives me to studying. In fact, there's something quite cozy about snuggling up with Sinclair's "Pricing and Volatility Strategies and Techniques" while having a trade in CL running in the background. I have my screen set up so the chart just peeks around the right edge of the PDF, so glancing at the latest snail track takes no effort at all. (Ah, "order filled" - so nice to hear!)

What makes it such a pleasure is that I'm actually getting it, this time around. Back at the beginning of this process - around May or so - I dove into Natenberg and Hull (in addition to the intro stuff at OptionAlpha and Tastyworks)... ran out of air and came up gasping. The material was just too alien, too disconnected from anything I knew, for me to swallow in one gulp. Fortunately, there were enough basic concepts that stuck, and I could at least trade - which was one hell of a learning experience all its own.

At this point, though, the theoretical bits have started to connect with practice - and that's a joy. I've still got a long, long way to go, but this is a milestone I've been waiting for.

This may be a subtle distinction to anyone not living inside my head, but: I like money as much as the next guy, but that's not what excites me here, nor is it what I'm so laser-focused on chasing. Competence in this field is. And while there are all sorts of fierce dragons protecting every penny of the treasure hoard, there's not too many of them in the way when it comes to acquiring the necessary knowledge...

In war, the way is to avoid what is strong, and strike at what is weak.
-- Sun Tzu
 
BlueWaterSailor said:
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In war, the way is to avoid what is strong, and strike at what is weak.
-- Sun Tzu
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It is nice to see you are progressing, BWS. But quoting Sun Tzu is so last century. I mean, all the guy does is come up with aphorisms that any feeble-minded bastard can come up with in his or her sleep.

"A broken clock is accurate twice per day" and "Your left foot is only mindful of the right foot, if it steps in it's own path" and all sorts of other profundities.

No more quoting the Art of War, please. The Chinese just tried to co-opt common sense with pithy and clever sayings a thousand years ago, like the Russians are trying to do with ET now.

Don't believe the hype! They are all fake-makers!

 
Overnight said:
It is nice to see you are progressing, BWS. But quoting Sun Tzu is so last century. I mean, all the guy does is come up with aphorisms that any feeble-minded bastard can come up with in his or her sleep.
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Dude... have you actually thought about how deeply his aphorisms must have penetrated, and how effective they must have been, for any feeble-minded bastard to quote them? That's a tip.

Robert Heinlein made a similar point when someone complained about E. E. "Doc" Smith's plots being "hackneyed". They had been ripped off by pretty much every sci-fi writer for decades, and still are. Same reason.

But since you've asked for something less common: my attitude in pursuing this knowledge can be well expressed by the Japanese iinarawashi "七転び八起き" (Nana korobi. Ya oki.)

I doubt you'll find too many FMBs quoting that one. Enjoy. :)
 
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