Just to check out whether you golfing traders â trade like you golf and vice versa Iâve just come back from whacking 150 golf balls senseless at my local driving range, and I was thinking how close the âmind gameâ challenges are in my trading and my golf game. For example, 1. At the driving range I probably hit 80% of my drives pretty much flush, but when on that first tee with your mates and a few others watching the initial drive, turns into a life & death experienceâ¦.This to me is like the emotional gulf between Sim trading and live trading. 2. Good rounds that turn into bad rounds usually result from either: a) me scoring great at first then start thinking about scores rather than just the next swing or course management decision b) a really crap hole where you score 7, 8 etc and then you let it ruin the rest of your roundâ¦. To me that translates in trading into â a) donât think $$$$ just think of the next signal & next exit period â b) a loser (bad hole) is just going to happen â get over it - probability says it will happen 3. My best round ever was when I was so laid back with some mates â cracking jokes all the way around â it was almost like the golf was a distraction⦠I think this is the zone that applies to trading and golf â where you are acting on auto pilot 4. When you start golf its 90% technique (finding a swing) and 10% mental (getting motivated to practice). Once you find a swing you're comfortable with it switches to 90% mental / 10% technque. That sums up finding a system to trade with then getting some emotional control. 5. Once you have a swing you can have golf lessons - but I've found that you must know your own swing and be able to fix problems my sheer persistence rather than rely on the golf pro. It needs to be your swing and you need to live with it. Again some people try to get signal services or just adopt somebody elses system without any real thought. 6. The more you practice the luckier you get in golf â¦.. and probably in trading too !! Obviously there are no financial implications in my golfing life, so thatâs where any parallels clearly stop. But I get nervous watching some of the tour players putt from 6-10 feet for par on the last hole to win the US Open or Masters etc. I get even more nervous for the lowly tour guys just trying to keep their cards.
I get waaay more frustrated playing golf. A bad shot just really drives me nuts because I usually know what I'm doing wrong while in my backswing (other times I'm just mentally not focused). I know what the shot is going to look like before I see the ball flying away... With trading I can stop a bad trade right away (cancel my order or just go flat whenever I want) but, I can't stop while in my backswing... I think I'm a better trader than golfer for that reason. BTW I'm an 8 handicap but for the amout I play it should be lower.
I thik there are a lot of similarities between trading and golf. Perhaps the most obvious is the risk/reward calculus. In golf, as in trading, the important number typically is not your best hole or shot but your worst. The emphasis is on keeping the ball in play and out of the woods, as in trading where the key to a long career is to avoid the big blowup trade. Compare that to tennis,another individual sport. Not every point is important at all in tennis. If you're serving and up 40-0, you can hit the ball over the fence twice and still win the game easily. In fact, a key to high level tennis is understanding which points and games are crucial and which are not.
I think golf is a lot like trading - I always do better at both when I focus on the process and not the outcome.
I think trading is more like baseball. Batting more than 500 is unrealistic, but if you can bat 350 (35%) and drive in some runs when you finally connect or get a rally going ... you can do well. When you make an out, just try not to hit into a double or triple play. In golf, to put a good game together, I would say you have to bat more like 85%, and be able to recover nicely from the bad shots.
I disagree...it isn't too hard to bat above 50%, hell, Cramer did like 51% in his lightning round and people made fun of him...
When my wife turned a par opportunity into a double bogey yesterday she was pretty frustrated. I told her "on the the next trade baby." She understood. So yeah, golf and trading are related imo.
There are a lot of similarites between the 2. As with any sport, the more you play the better you become. People say golf is a mental game but being able to hit the crap out of the ball and control it sure plays a big part. I trade far better than I play golf.