Facing our demons
- Thread starter Old School
- Start date
Yep, another top 10 I think. When to get bigger, when to get smaller or stop completely...
As a prelude to another thread I'll start, I'll simply say this, for those who are posting their demons here and are in a condition of "I'll do anything at this point", there's hope. And I won't even charge you $19.99 + s/h.
Stay tuned.
But I warn you, this is for ONLY those that are in condition red. People who'll do anything to overcome their demons.
drsteph,
Sorry for the editing, but hopefully I got the main points in. As a trader, all I can say is, are you sure you really WANT to be a trader? It's a real question, not rhetorical. Ed S. was one of my idols when I was trading.
RM,
I've known a few that were very conservative traders who might be called gun-shy.
You might say they were the most boring millionaires you will meet.
Trading's like most things in life, many ways to skin the cat, even with our individual demons.
whistler,
Perhaps I should have re-phrased.
By intelligence, I did not mean IQ per say. While I agree that you need not be Einstein (and yes, perhaps he would not have been a good trader in your analysis), I really meant to drive home the point that, "being lazy" is no way to trade. It's hard enough, would you really want to be lazy and trade at less than your potential?
But I think your point was about the "IQ" thing, yes?
Agreed.
Disagree.
all things being equal, I'll let the brighter guy on my desk over the "dimmer" guy.
"By intelligence, I did not mean IQ per say. While I agree that you need not be Einstein (and yes, perhaps he would not have been a good trader in your analysis), I really meant to drive home the point that, "being lazy" is no way to trade."
absolutely. but what possible correlation do u see between intelligence and laziness (or lack thereof)?
absolutely. but what possible correlation do u see between intelligence and laziness (or lack thereof)?
I estimate several million in missed opportunity over the last 5-6 years. And yes, I would donate my left nut to medical science if it enabled me to remove that thorn, if only I knew how. Unfortunately I haven't found a "silver bullet" that really works yet.
Luckily I have other traits that have compensated for being somewhat lazy. Still, I continue to try and find some way to address that problem, and have made some modest progress and improvements. I just wish they could happen faster, and would be very interested to hear from anyone else who got over it successfully.
Bruce Kovner, George Soros, Jim Simons, Nassim Taleb are all "academic types", so I can't really subscribe to this theory. Maybe if someone could show me the deluge of former Chicago cab drivers who are running multi-billion dollar hedge funds, I might start to believe it.
I agree that the need to pursue trading fully is what stops most budding trading successes from doing any other career for very long. But in that case, on might as well say that *all* career "types" suck at trading. That's a tautology - if they didn't suck, they would be traders, wouldn't they? Why single out academia? What about real estate brokers, software programmers, engineers, athletes, garbage disposal workers, janitors etc?
I think it's pretty simple. People who are likely to be great at trading will become almost obsessed by it from the moment they first encounter the idea of the markets. It will suck them in and they will do everything they can to get into that field. Anyone who, after encountering the markets, does not go full out to work in that field within a few years, is unlikely to possess the drive and love of the game sufficient to become great. A future chess grandmaster or poker champion would have fallen in love with it within a few games or hands, and would rather grind out a pittance doing 16 hour days for years in that field, than have to work a normal job and give up their passion. Someone who chose to become a college professor and get tenure, whilst pursuing chess or poker as a hobby, while always have it as a "hobby", and never as a calling. That's why academics suck at trading, because you are studying the self-selecting sample who never bothered to pursue it seriously and with true focus and effort. The ones who did that became traders and if they were ever in academia, dropped out eventually to pursue trading full-time.