The Invisible Hand That Limits Your Trading
- Thread starter Rande Howell
- Start date
To quote the line from West Side Story: "I'm depraved on account'a I'm deprived!"
Genetics. White trash as far back as anybody could trace. Catholic Navy chief as a father. Baptist alcoholic carnie as a mother. Long family history of alcoholism and vileance. Child of divorce. Early glue sniffer, purely hobby related, bien sur. Never inhaled, but the rooms were always so filled with smoke, I couldn't not breathe. Heavy alcohol amuser since 19 (years, not months). Clear case of Asperger's, before Asperger even published. As Temple Grandin said of her father: "Remote, pedantic and socially inept." But it's ego syntonic for me, so I get by.
My favorite song is The Doors' "When You're Strange."
I will be so bold as to advance the proposition that insanity is GOOD for trading. Why? Because the only things I have found to work are insanely absurd. And I would not have found them had I not been insanely searching for insane patterns. So therapy may make your trading WORSE.
Thanks Red, I will. I think it will be interesting and beneficial to others and me, specially if we have someone with the experience of Rande on the board.
I must step outside for the rest of the afternoon but will post when I get back.
It helps to be outside the box looking in. Or as some creativity coach once said "There is no box."
A very perspicatious question, it did not occur to me. Well thought on your part!
Upon deflection, I think my long struggles with trading made all my hands visible. Richard Bandler famously wrote "Multiple personality is the thing of the future!" I took that to heart and named all my now visible hands and made them personalities. They talk to me, and I talk to them. I made no attempt to cure them. I accept, if not always love, them. Each one has his and/or her uses in my trading. But, wait. There IS one invisible hand. The hand that dreams my systems at night. I owe all to that hand. It did me a good job, as hands go.
Let me give you another example where insanity pays off. Imagine that you go on a vague job interview:
"What does the job entrail?"
""Do you mean entail?"
"Yes, sorry, please continue."
"You do basic research, formulate theories, convert the theories to practice, design products, produce them, take them to market, account for the sales and run the IT infrastructure."
"Oh. That''s ALL? What's the pay?"
"Mimimum wage."
That's your job when you start trading.
"What does the job entrail?"
""Do you mean entail?"
"Yes, sorry, please continue."
"You do basic research, formulate theories, convert the theories to practice, design products, produce them, take them to market, account for the sales and run the IT infrastructure."
"Oh. That''s ALL? What's the pay?"
"Mimimum wage."
That's your job when you start trading.