I sold my interest in the all three firms to my partner in late 1979. He was more in a rush than I was to "make it big". As a New Yorker I was never adverse to cutting a corner here and there yet I did not believe that we could do business with organized crime and emerge unscathed. He was of a different opinion until doing 14 months behind bars at Club Fed convinced him I was correct. He was the only one to do time and he was also probably the only one that was technically innocent. Organized crime only considers giving up one of their own dishonorable so when it all hit the fan everyone pointed at him.
It was really a no brainer. The nicknames alone told me all I needed to know. Some time later when I ran the names by a friend of mine who was an attorney with a Federal Organized Crime Strike Force he was amazed that any of them knew what a security was.
You are certainly not alone. Understanding the concept of having a positive expectation over a large enough sample of trades and that individule trades really don't matter as long as you follow your rules is something most 5th graders can absorb intelectually pretty quickly. Yet absorbing that concept in an effective way emotionally can (and has)confounded mathamatical geniuses that have done post doc work at MIT and Cal Tech. When we start out most of us think we are rational adults that have a good handle on our ego. If you still believe that 90 days later you are either a better man than I Gunga Din or you are living in a dream world. Ego is a tough opponent with lots of tricks up his/her sleeve.
The mkt brought me to my knees and forced me to accept my own nothingness From which, I now see the mkt..., and opportunities it presents â clearly RN
There is still some fog, so it is not quite as clear as I would like but I work on it every day. It is an amazing process to be take down a peg at a time by a force that is clearly there but unseeable.
SN Came up with another way of looking at this thread ============================= Reading some of your other posts, I assume you a person of extensive business acumen I also assume that took a lot of tenaciousness (and rightfully so) ============================== We both know it takes ample tenaciousness in the trading business But, (another one of them damn buts).., as youâre finding out â it also takes meeknessâ¦. And meekness must always be able & willing to trump tenaciousness â as well as, at times throttle it And thatâs one way I would describe trading â a trader's constant balancing act - between being tenaciousâ¦, and being meek =========================== Talk about diametrically opposed traits â in meekness lies a trader's true strength Just a thought I had today Sir RN
Science is an alternative to the personal problems you attest to. Behavioral Finance addresses the process that guides one to excellence. (See "BF or BS" on the BF home page). There you find out the pragmatic manner in which to dismiss persistence and tenacity. I used to do a weekly assignment at EOP. 1. Topic assigned on Wednesday. 2. Documentation delivered on Friday before 5. 3. Handoffs on Monday at 11. Providing weekend homework was a fun thing. In trading there is no old data. Nor is there any new data. All trading data is relative present data. BF suggests using the trading approach a person has. When the person gets an CW type emotional response, the person does _______ _________ of his approach. Thus, any positive feedback loop system eliminates the CW emotional response. Your post explains why you are where you are. You get stimuli, and you think you need to change you. Try accepting the stimuli as a feedback that tells you to fix the trading approach instead. Being persistent and tenacious while doing the same approach over and over with current information was defined by Einstein as insanity, if a different result was expected.
I think a combination of daring and humility more aptly describe the ingrediants that mix well with tenacious.