Zen and The Art of Trading

Hey, Roberk—tough question, excellent question. I answer it personally by knowing that the people I’ve met, the times I’ve had, etc, vastly outweigh the bad stuff.

There are bad aspects, but you have to remember, you’re still consciously in charge of your life. You can resolve to keep it on a level where it is sane, cheerful, and normal. You can play with your friends, play with those who can afford to lose and laugh about it, keep it on a level where it doesn’t stray into the bad areas of the game (trying to beat somebody out of their welfare check at 3 a.m., or rent money, and etc). But yes, you are right, it brings out the predatory self. However, this is probably a good self to know about and learn about.

Right now in high schools across the land the next generation is playing a LOT of poker, based on all the accounts I’ve been hearing. And you know who is playing the most of it? The geeks. It’s turning into sort of the Geek’s Revenge. For 200 years they’ve been the “put upon” group walking the high school corridors and now they’ve finally found a doorway into coolness. And part of this is finding the predatory aspect of themselves and integrating it.

But as you allude to, the game itself is tough. The markers in the game are the player’s money. This is the first tough thing. The “game chips” we’re using to play this game are YOUR MONEY and I win when I take them away. The second tough thing is that it is a Zero Sum game. You know what that means, of course—that for one player to win, another has to lose—but let’s look at it deeper. It means that for you to protect yourself and KEEP FROM LOSING you have to take my money. You have to do this simply out of self preservation, self-defense, strictly. Tough game.

But as an ad in a recent Cardplayer magazine said it: “At the table it’s every man for himself—until you leave the table.” You CAN confine these feelings to the game, and stay within the game. I once wrote about a friend of mine who won a guitar in a poker game. In the game it was his job to win it, and take it away. After the game he simply handed it back. Moral: you can retain your regular self. (Just keep an eye on it so it doesn’t stray into weird areas.) You are still (and always) consciously in charge of what you do and become.

But it is predatory.
I find there are certain similarities to capitalism. Almost every aspect of capitalism has some of this. For instance, if I’m Mr. Furniture Store I’m taking in sofas from a semi-truck out back on the loading dock for $289 and putting a tag on them that says “Sale--$899” for the sales floor. This is true in all areas and aspects of capitalism, as various individuals across the land attempt to find a niche into that concept known as Making A Living. Now, a lot of our friends around the world don’t like capitalism because it has certain predatory aspects. A much, much better plan would be just to divide up all of society’s money and pass it out to everybody, equally and fairly. Only one problem: this was tried and it didn’t work. Funnily enough, everybody sat on the curb with a bottle of vodka, nobody did any work and the whole society tanked. Meanwhile, capitalism, with it’s shades of natural self-aggression and self-predatory created a large and dazzling machinery of society. Still, some of our friends criticize capitalism. When something bad happens—say, a Tsunami—and money is desperately needed, then they look the other way of course and their memory is selectively dulled and fuzzy. Then the phone rings, guess where?.

Well, I’ve kind of rambled off the subject here. But to answer your question, I’d say, like anything else in life, if it stops being fun, starts being tawdry, you have to adjust or move away from it. Specific instances such as ‘sandbagging’, or 'check-raising', though, as you move up in limits in poker these become just part of the game—like “castling” in chess—and nobody gives them any other emotional weight than this.

Sorry for the disjointed reply.

Best,
Larry Phillips

 

An interesting internal conflict: morality, ethics and the competitive spirit.

In the TV series, "StarTrek: The Next Generation", it is frequently stated that society learned to live without money, and the desire to be more materially wealthy than their neighbors is a relic of the past. Yet, the producers, screenwriters and actors of the Series all actively compete with one another to keep as large of the Series' income pie for themselves. So much for practicing what you preach.

We like to dream of an idealized life, yet usually live the opposite of the ideal.

Perhaps competitive games do not erode our character, because our basic character is predatory. We just like to think that we are different.

Charles

 

Predatory character is an ingrained habit based on fixation of "I"
It is not the nature of the base... otherwise it would be hopeless for change.

 

Perfect example of this happened to me last week..

I started off the day with a loss of 2.5pts.. didnt' feel right.. felt off my game.. so I decided not to trade the rest of the day.. closed my trading platform but kept my chart up..

Well.. about 2 hours later a great trade formed and I decided I couldn't pass it up.. but by the time I got my trading platform back up and logged in.. the trade already took off.. would have netted 5 pts on that sucker too... more than made up for the previous loss

 

Yes, but like Larry said, I still need to get my focus in order to do this in a controlled manner.

 

It sounds to me like one part of this is steeping yourself in the process and gaining a ton of experience, and the other part is tinkering with, and tweaking, the machine, and you are the machine.

Larry Phillips

 

Glad you put it this way..

I remember a conversation I had with my broker. he was telling me how two of his clients struggled for years and them became successful.

And one of them he said basically transformed himself into a machine.. he was just a machine processing orders.. helped him take the emotions out of it and became a 7 figure a year trader...

 

I would suspect that these two traders possessed two qualities:

1. Passion for trading
2. Persistence to keep trying until they found a way to succeed.

Charles

 

Thanks Larry, very good. I'd like to hear about those times- maybe an autobio could be your next book...

 

It's more general-- and less mysterious-- than that. Like meeting the people here, which I never would have otherwise.

Larry Phillips