It’s a Miserable Life – Trading and Depression By now you all have heard of FOMO; Fear of Missing Out. Let me talk to you about FOMO’s cousin, AMO; Another Missed Opportunity. In my previous post, “Back to the Futures – Trading and Accountability”, I spoke about how the nearly 20 years I spent on the trading floor were among the best years and at the same time the most miserable years of my life. I explained how I was always “mad at a nickel for not being a quarter”, like the day I made nearly half-a-million dollars and was pissed. I want to take a moment to expand a bit on my “mad at a nickel” experience and talk about “Another Missed Opportunity” and how this added greatly to the misery of my trading life. When I started trading in the Eurodollar pit at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (the Merc) in 1994, there was a trader named Phil who stood on the second step of the trading pit, a coveted spot near the brokers who controlled the order flow. Phil was a small guy who stood sandwiched all day between two much larger traders. Phil lived on a steady diet of cigarettes and cherry lifesavers. Phil hardly ever made a trade. His presence in the pit pissed me off because Phil occupied valuable real estate on the second step, right up against the order filling brokers. Order flow was the lifeblood of the trading pit. Orders flowed into the trading pit through the order-filling brokers who stood on the top step. The real estate immediately in front of the order fillers was prime territory and was occupied by the traders who had the longest tenure in the pit and/or the traders who traded the biggest size and took the largest positions. Phil had tenure and nothing else. He rarely traded and did so only if it was an absolute lollypop of a trade with minimal risk. The many years Phil stood in the pit allowed him to migrate up against the order flow where good trades would land on his cards solely by the virtue of his proximity to the order fillers. Phil waited for trades with solid edges to come into the pit and then he tried to get a piece of them. But more often than not, Phil let trade after trade go by. And whenever one of those trades he let go by proved to be a winner, he would mutter, “Another missed opportunity”. All day long I had to watch this. My position size and presence in the pit was growing, but I was stuck in the lower tiers of the trading pit. Pit etiquette dictated that I had to wait for space to open up, either through retirement or the busting-out of one of the top step traders, before I could make a play for a top-step spot. I detested that such risk-averse traders like Phil, who barely traded 25 contracts at a time, had such coveted space while I was regularly trading 100 and 200 Eurodollar contracts at a time and stuck on the lowest step. Phil wasn’t the only risk-averse trader who undeservedly occupied that space, but he was probably the one who got under my skin the most. Maybe it was the way he would say in his Eeyore tone, “Another missed opportunity”. While I had no respect for Phil and traders like him, his “another missed opportunity” phrase rang true and describes a very real source of depression among traders. Every one of us can think about an opportunity outside of trading where we should have acted upon an idea, a tip, or on some investment that would have made us a great deal of money. Or we can remember an investment we actually owned that we should have held onto but sold it too soon. One very recent example of this for me was the summer home by the beach my wife and I sold southwest Michigan. My wife and I bought this cottage in 2004 and used it for our personal use and occasionally rented it out during the summer months. But the cottage was a hassle. It was a lot of work keeping it up and it needed constant repairs because of how old it was. We bought the cottage by the beach in 2004 for $440k. After the housing crash in 2008, the real estate in this area of Michigan took a long time to recover. Prices rebounded a bit and we finally put the cottage on the market in 2018 for $525k. But we priced it too high and then chased the market down. The cottage sat on the market for months. And then Covid hit, and we panicked. We lowered the priced once again, this time to $399k. We sold the cottage for $379k in September of 2020, just before the housing market rocketed higher. Had we waited 12 months, we could have sold that cottage for over $600k. We left over $200k on the table! I want to scream every time I think about it. As an added bonus, I am always remined of that bad trade because we have since bought the house next door to that cottage. That, my friends, is a very real example of Another Missed Opportunity. That missed opportunity feeling; the gnawing, aggravating feeling that wells up and makes us want to slam our keyboard on the desk the way a batter slams his helmet in the dugout after a strike out, it is very real. And as a trader for nearly 20 years on the trading floor, I had the pleasure of experiencing that feeling over and over and over and over and over again, often many times in the same day. A trade that I let go by. A trade that I got out of too soon. A losing trade I held too long. I’ve experienced it all, and I’m sure you have too. I think back on all those years from the trading floor and am amazed at just how frequently I was in foul mood during and after work. Those feelings of anger, frustration, and even depression occupied my psyche far more frequently than I would like to admit. But without even realizing it at the time, I was regularly engaging in a mental (and spiritual) exercise to combat these overwhelming feelings of frustration and anger that come from Another Missed Opportunity. Much of my writing is generated from a rear-view mirror look at my success in an attempt to identify those habits, actions and attitudes that best served me over the years, even though I did not even know that those things were the powerful force that they were. I have identified the acronym GEMSS - Gratitude, Exercise, Meditation and prayer, Self-awareness and Systems as the attitudes and actions that, among other things, preserved my mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional health during the most tumultuous years of my life – the years I spent on the trading floor. In researching my second book, “Your Path to Success is Paved with GEMSS”, I have done substantial research about gratitude, the “G” in GEMSS. I was not aware at the time just how powerful of a force expressing gratitude was and is. None-the-less, doing so was a part of my daily routine. I am a big believer in having a morning routine. Starting each day with structure and a routine sets the tone for my day. I fully understand that there are those for whom such a thing does not serve them as well as it serves me. What sets you up for a great day may not be the same thing that sets me up for a great day. During my years as a trader and even up to and including today, one thing that I make a practice of is a morning prayer and devotional time. Even though I used to leave my home at 5:45am each weekday morning to catch the 6:05am train to downtown Chicago, I was relatively consistent about rising at 4:45am to be able to spend time in prayer. A defining part my prayer and devotional time was and is time I spend expressing gratitude for the blessings in my life. But I don’t limit expressing gratitude to just my morning devotional time. I am quite intentional about going for walks, especially at a time when I can watch a sunrise or a sunset. My wife and I are blessed to now own another home in southwest Michigan that is steps from the beach where we can see the sunset into Lake Michigan each evening. Few things evoke gratitude within me more than a sunrise or a sunset. When I sense that feeling of gratitude welling up, I intentionally engage with it and either out loud or internally speak a prayer of thanksgiving and gratitude for the blessings of my life. I just let gratitude overtake my heart and mind in those moments. It wasn’t until just a couple of years ago that I came to learn about the numerous scientific studies that demonstrate the incredible power of gratitude. Multiple studies have been conducted at well-respected universities and science labs around the world doing positive psychology research. One such study conducted at Harvard University concluded that, “…gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships” (Harvard Health Publishing, Giving Thanks Makes You Happy, August 14, 2021). Without being aware of it, expressing gratitude on a regular and consistent basis was helping me cope with the insanely high levels of stress of the trading floor and the feelings that things like AMO had on my psyche as a person. The onset of computerize trading in 2004 brought about another huge wave of emotional terror into the lives of traders from the floor of the Merc who were already suffering from things like AMO. The prospect of losing our livelihoods as traders on the trading floor and having to essentially start over in some other realm away from the trading floor - or to try to trade in front of a computer screen - created enormous inner turmoil in all the guys I knew from the floor. And as the years have ticked away, the number of deaths from 2004 to present of traders that I have personally known from the Merc is staggering. Cancer, suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, and freak accidents have taken the lives of at least 15 traders I knew from the trading floor. These are not old men. These guys were in their 30s, 40s and 50s when they died. These are guy I knew well; guys I talked to virtually every day on the trading floor. And now they are gone. It is impossible to know just big of a role the ongoing stressors from the trading floor, and the subsequent years of stress after leaving the floor, have played in my fellow traders’ deaths. For all those reading this, especially traders, I implore you to take inventory of your stress. Be cognizant of how the stresses of trading and things like AMO are impacting your daily life. I implore you to find outlets to relieve your stress, like intentionally engaging in daily expressions of gratitude. Daily take time to write in a journal the things you are grateful for – not the things you want, not the things you hope will happen. This is not a hope journal. This is a journal that you use to write out the things you are grateful for that day, that week, that month, or over your entire life. Whether you express your gratitude to God, as I do, or just write out a gratitude letter each day or a few times each week expressing gratitude for the good things in your life … and even the bad things that can lead to good things. The practice will be invaluable. It may even quite literally save your life. If you found this article helpful, would you share that with me? More importantly, would you let me know in the days ahead how engaging in some intentional and consistent form of expressing gratitude has helped you? I hope you encounter for yourself the peace and quieting power of expressed gratitude.
%% ITS that time of the year=Thanksgiving Time Month\ follows Columbus Day, which some [anti free speech absolutists] removed from many calendars. I had to write Columbus Day in again on some of my calendars I also like to always find some that did worse than me \ especially on the downside\LOL Dave Ramsey = doing fine now but went bankrupt in real estate, down from being an overleveraged millionaire. I did some math on some real estate i cut a loss on; good thing for me as much as i studied trends i knew an experienced REALATOR would trump me on advice on that one \so to speak. I was actually bit better off cutting a loss on it[opportunity costs]; especially since that REALTOR friend actually advised against me buying that lake front property in the first place.[WE were buying for resale profit, mainly] Most liquid[ETFs etc...] markets are able to scaled out better than RE; as good as real estate trends. Sorry you had to work by such a whiner as Phil; thanks for sharing
Great post. Thank you. I practice gratitude and meditation daily and I for one can attest to the overwhelming sensation of wellbeing.
I've forced gratitude out of my life...its as though I genuinely just don't care about anything anymore. I have been writing incessantly lately, but not a single line of appreciation. Thanks for the reminder.
You may want to reevaluate your take on "Phil". Sounds like that he was actually the content and successful one long-term, he probably does not roam ET to drum up upcoming book sales, he probably does not need to sell books at all. And I am not sure why it is surprising that many in this industry succumb to alcohol, drugs, suicidal tendencies and other poor choices in life. The percentage of gamblers and addicts in trading is probably higher than in any other industry. It's not the prayer or thanksgiving activity itself that provides contentment and happiness. It depends all on whom we pray to and and whom we give thanks to and put our faith and trust. If prayer and meditation is merely used to self-reflect and to become better beings by our own measure and standards then we still declare ourselves savior and lord over ourselves. Never heard how such philosophy leads to a more purpose driven and meaningful life. I don't know who you pray to and it's not my business just saying that as long as we pray and live a life that evolves around our own egotistical nature we are not any better off than animals that are born, grow, eat, drink, sleep, fuck, and die.
One way to deal with the stress of "Another Missed Opportunity" or "FOMO" is look at the situation with the attitude of BIC - "Best I Could". Hindsight is always 20/20 but when you were there, you could only make the best decision with all the information that was available to you at the time. The hardest part of trading is dealing with incomplete information, information that you had at the time that could turn out to be complete information or not but you have no way of learning until after the fact unless you engaged in insider trading. So if you know you did absolutely the best you could with all the information that you had at the time then that's what you should be happy with and just enjoy the fruit of your labour because you never know, it could very well be worse. Yes you sold the cottage at a loss of $61,000 but that was the best you could do with the situation and information that you had at the time. Nobody could've predicted that the housing market would rebound back up and it could be worse. What if you held onto the cottage and didn't sell and the price deteriorates further and you discovered a huge defect or some natural disaster struck that would require you to put in a major repair that would result in a loss lot higher than $61K? You would never know that at the time of selling the cottage. The same as your trading, I feel with that trader Phil, he might have been shell-shocked with some large losses that he's incurred in the past due to an unforeseeable Black Swan event that totally altered his risk tolerance. He might have started off just like you but has slowly changed his risk tolerance after incurring some huge losses in his trading career. He's been there for over 20 years so he's definitely experienced lot more events. My dad has always told me that for longer you do something, the more careful you will become in doing it. But then again we are not just anybody. We are traders. Dealing with risk and profiting from it is what we do. If there is no risk, then there is no profit for us. So having said that, I still feel he should've known the probability of overall success/loss in trading in that pit and adjusted accordingly instead of assigning too high of a probability to Black Swan events. But still you never know, for every single AMO, it could very have been a STO - Should've Stayed Out. One just never knows.
%% %% WE have to say amen to that. AS far as trading + depression , a lot of it's seasonal; trading + depression, both of them tend to be seasonal . Certain exceptions apply. Less sunlight in winter or less sunlight in rainstorm leads to depression for some. It still sounds like to me Phil is a big whiner of lost opportunity But as noted more market study helps anyone. But MK, i noticed , has good hit rate, so thank God i know how to cut a loss when+ if appropriate/LOL. OH happy day, Oh it was a happy day.19 million video views is a good one, by Mr Hawkins. I like the 36,000 lower volume video better; Oh Happy day/watch + pray by Harris+ female choir. YoutubeVideo by Lionel Harris One of the funniest, + most accurate statements \ but[ depressing or bankrupting if you are on the wrong side of it]= ''WHY does the market ALWAYS turn around when i get out/ an elite new trader asked??'' An older elite wise trader said ''quit trading so big'' Try a scale out also.
We should all be grateful simply for the chance to exist. I know that as the truth but shit idk man...it's easy to forget when you are in constant anguish. It's embarrassing to admit but it's the truth.