I think this is well said. But imo you overemphasize being "liked." In a junior position that would be true, whether trading or anything else. The more senior the position, the more what you are actually able to accomplish matter.
If you can't get in the door...I dont care if you can communicate through your ass. It is useless and means nothing once you get your foot in the door...till then your resume is Golden.
Its easy to get in the door, EASY. For example, on Thursday I was drinking with the ex-CEO of Dreyfus and Todd Harrison. It wasnt hard to find this party as it was posted online on the Minyanville website. There are also many conventions and other activities posted on many websites where there are plenty of influential people you can freely meet...not to mention the many bars and restaurants around the financial district you can network... In fact, you can meet such money managers as Warren Buffet just by going to the shareholders meeting where he is walking around. However, the challenging part is communication. Now you have Mr. Harrison in front of you, what are you going to say to him and how will you persuade him to give you an opportunity? He has undoubtedly conducted interviews and hired people in his past. It comes down to the traits that I listed. Your charisma, your communication skills and overall likeability...
This simple experiment will disprove the idea that great traders are not emotional - simple take a chainsaw, start it up, then start cutting off the great traders leg. Some kind of display of emotion will manifest itself within 2-3 seconds.
Never thought of it that way. I need to keep that in mind! Yeah... I'm agreeing to what I think but this is a smart post. But I'm not kissing the dude's ass. Seriously... very witty. Reminds of the question about serial killers about meeting a paramedic on a murder case. (I got it off 30 Rock...)
e) is psychological. Even with all 5 of those ducks lined up in a row, what happens when a surprise event or market change happens that takes 20% of your account, you underestimated the liquidity and it's hard to exit your positions? That's when psychology comes into play.
Well, you miss the point. Of course anything can be turned into psychological problem. Money, marriage, kids, pets, work, etc. I am talking apriori, not aposteriori. You want to avoid the aposteriori. My point is that if you are looking for psychological rules to help your trading, I claim you can point to one of the five ducks (I may have missed some) that _caused_ you to start seeking such rules. It is like people tell you in order to reduce disease, you should wash your hands often. You run out of soap or you never had any, so you don't wash hands. You catch a disease. You start praying to God to cure you and you seek help from a shrink and if only you had religion you would not have gotten sick. See?
I am in the camp that believes successful or great traders do experience emotions, but they know how to come out of those emotions or be ware of them while their trading, and more importantly, trading in extreme situations. How a successful trader emotes after or outside of trading is no indication of how they will do so while trading. Someone claiming that great traders, or great performers in any field for that matter, are completely emotionless is just ridiculous as we are all human. A person that is emotionally and self aware, however, can watch themselves and their emotions during a, what you would call, very emotional situation and not be affected by those emotions one bit. Even your chainsaw example could fall into this category if a person is very adept in this practice. Buddhist munks, who are an extremely self aware people due to years of meditation, can burn themselves alive and not even flinch. There is a state of mind that one can enter that enables the person to stay calm and collected no matter what physical, visual, or mental storms are thrown at them. They would be like the eye of a hurricane. Now, I am not saying that all successful traders can burn themselves alive or calmly have their arms cut off, lol, but some do draw on this same frame off mind to trade with, which enables them to calmly see what is actually happening in the market because they are not blinded by the emotions that regular traders feel. This would obviously not apply to most mechanical system traders either but more so to traders, like myself, who are discretionary in nature and are forced to make quick decisions under all market circumstances, in real time.
In this I agree with Ed Seykota: The caracteristics of a succesful and experienced trader are: 1. A lot of money. 2. Experience.