The Tao of Publias

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PubliasEnigma

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This thread will serve as a portal into the mind, spirit, and trading of Publias (my TRUE/AUTHENTIC self) :))...

This will be my way of giving back to my fellow trading brethren here @ ET some of the wisdom that the market has so graciously funneled through me over the years...

You will not find much "technical" knowledge on this thread. I will not be discussing set-ups, indicators, etc.

This will be my attempt to express verbally my trading experience.

Try and keep an open heart, mind and spirit...

And please folks try and keep in mind this one simple truth about trading...

Trading at the higher echelon is an experience, and as such words will never do it justice, for what one can express with the use of words will always be immeasurably less than what one can experience...

To put it a little more poetically and to quote one of my favorite Zen proverbs;
~The finger pointing at the moon; is not the moon itself~

I had planned on starting the thread off with some past material that I have written, but that all seemed to contrived and artificial. So what I plan on doing is just posting new material as it comes to me when I am reflecting upon my daily and weekly trading and letting the thread take on a genuine life of its own...

Till tommorrow my friends :)

Publias
 


I want to share an experience that I had on the 4th...

My friend Tommy (titus) has created a game called Washers, much like the game horse shoes, except you throw washers :)
U stand 25 feet away and attempt to fling these little washers about the size of 1/2 your palm into a little wooden box with a coffee can in middle. (5 pts for the can and 3 pts for the box)...
Needles to say this is not an easy game

Well for the first maybe 10 or so games and 10 or so beers I was preety friggon pathetic. I mean horrific. It was truly a sad thing to watch, but I took it all in with an open heart, covered my teams bets, and kept drinking and playing. Win or lose it was still fun, but I cannot say I was all that thrilled about being the worse one out of 8 players :mad: ...

This horrific performance just kept going and going until a funny thing started to happen, the sun began to go down which made the cans extremely difficult to aim at.

So I sat down on the chair and while drinking my sapphire and tonic, and pondering how I was possibly going to get this f'n washer in the can with the sun down when I could not do it with it up! And then all of a sudden out of nowhere I had what one might say was an epiphany. All I had to do was to play this game much like I play the game of trading! See it had dawned on me that I was striving in vain to hit the box while I totally took the focus off throwing the right way. All I really needed to do was figure out the right range and motion and then not even worry about the box. Focus on throwing the washer with the right fluid motion, with the right range, right rotation, and the right arc and if I did all these things the washer should land in the box almost as if it were an after thought...

Sun was almost all the way down and after two games following the 'epiphany' I found the range, motion, and arc :) I knew next game it was on. So I hustled tommy into tripling the bets from 25 to 75 in hopes that me and my teammate could get back some of our dough, he jumped at what he perceived to be a golden opportunity to win 3 times as much as I had been losing to him all day...

My partner and I won the next 7 games straight before we decided to stop playing :D

Publias
 
Be the coin!!!!

When I was a skier, living in Aspen I came to NYC for a visit. I can't ever fall asleep without reading. My moron friend I was staying with had nothing to read but a book on tennis, which I never played (at that time). The book was "The Inner Game Of Tennis"....your coin story reminded me of it.

I got back to Aspen and found that the Inner Game of Tennis improved my ability to ski more than anything else.

Since then there have been a series of "inner game" books. There is an "Inner Game of Trading"....I can't tell you why I haven't read it:confused:
 
"then one night in an empty room where no curtains ever hung, like a miracle some golden words roll off of someone's tongue, so after years of being nothing they're all looking out at you, and for a while you'll go in style on 16th Avenue" So true about an epiphany; it happens to me more than I care to mention; but I find it only occurs if I put in the time and effort to excel, then all of a sudden 'IT' happens, and you just know tomorrow going forward will be different. Trouble is most traders don't want to put in the time and effort to reach that level, but prefer to be handed their gruel.

Enjoying this thread, stay on the edge with your thoughts.
 
while my moment in hitting targets was not as strong (however, I did read the inner game of tennis when it was first published, and I spent too many hours trying to concentrate on the ball) I too have had the same feeling. I have been playing in the annual beach bacciball contest in Pacific Beach. My friends started it and about 60-80 people show if the weather is good.

For most of the first years the only good tournament result was when I had just the right amount of beer to have a little buzz on. I got to the finals that year and spent the next four years searching for the perfect game buzz. I could get it for a little while but then I would either have too much or too little and then my game went away. ( Hard to account for heat, perspiration, water intake and beer intake).

Last year first round I was not throwing well when I watched a guy with a nice simple style. (kind of like Jeff magert in golf.) simple stance hand on top of the ball striaght back and strait through with a nice balanced finish. Thats what I worked on all day. Just observe the target and straight back straight through. Needless to say in mid august of this summer I will be defending the title my partner and I won last summer and all I will think about is that good simple feel. Unfortnately golf is a little more complicated and takes much more practice. And I will not go into what I think about these momements and trading.
 
Publias!

Loved the washers story! Don't know if you are a golfer or not, but you should check this book out.

"Dave Pelz's Short Game Bible: Master the Finesse Swing and Lower Your Score"

One experiment was fascinating to me. This fellow analyzed the results of pro golfers 2nd shots (shots to the green) He discovered that most missed in a swatch that centered around the hole, but was weighted on the extremes of the circle. Imagine an infinity symbol. Their distance was spot on, but they rarely hit the hole, and instead missed by an avg level to the right or left. Then, when they moved in for chips, this infinity pattern rotated 90 degrees... NOW they had the perfect line, but missed the hole short or long.

Why the difference? on a approach shot, a golfer cares less about distance, and is focused on hitting the ball on a certain line, for a chip shot they are not so much focused on the line, but instead on the distance! The axis of focus was the area LEAST hit by the golfers. SO Pelz makes a suggestion... If you hit 100 shots, and 50 land 5-10 feet left, and 50 land 5-10 feet right of the target. Then YOU SHOULD AIM 5-10 feet left or right of the target!!! Assuming you hit the same shots, your next 100 shots would look like this...50 shots end up 15-20 feet left of the target, and 50 shots land RIGHT ON THE HOLE! It’s stupidly simple, and it works :) This bit blew my mind, because it’s the same process as trading. Accepting that 50 of your shots are going to miss no matter how careful. practiced, or “good” you are is the same process as accepting the randomness of the markets :)

Even if you never play golf, check this book out, like many sports books, it has some fascinating performance insights.

Good Luck and Good Trading!

-Bo Yoder
 
[color=light green]~Microscopic Monetary performance~[/color]

'Attachment, the great fabricator of illusion' -- Simone Wiel --

Attachment to micro-level monetary performance is nothing more than a manifested absurdity! This absurdity defies the very nature of the game, but ironically is in complete and utter accord with the human condition. The wise trader will see the folly in this action. He will transcend profit/loss and detach himself from the micro results. In this way he will obtain true clarity and an impenetrable centeredness within the realm of the present moment (trade).

THIS IS MY TRUTH
Publias
 
PubliasEnigma.

grateful for your contribution..

Each time the heavans open up,
And rains down its wisdom,
I look to the skies,
In the hope of catching but one drop.
To awaken the garden within,

Kind Regards

mbt3
---------------------------------------
stay on the centered line of the unknown between our extremes.
 
Originally posted by mbt3


Each time the heavans open up,
And rains down its wisdom,
I look to the skies,
In the hope of catching but one drop.
To awaken the garden within,
More...

That is absolutey LOVELY!!!

Thankyou, :)
Publias
 
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