The More I Trade

The more I trade the smarter I get - it only makes sense - practice makes perfect or at least adequate - perfection is not something I believe that I will ever achieve - but I won't stop trying.

My problem as I find out from reading many other blogs is the same as most people - laziness coupled with an intense dislike for hard work - well that's not exactly true - I don't mind hard work as long as it is either interesting or profitable and preferably both. This past summer I grew tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers in a little garden I hacked out in my back yard. I had never grown any of these things before in my life although my father used to so I knew it was possible. I made a huge number of mistakes but I still harvested a ton of all the above and it was all tasty and nutritious. Next year I will remember my mistakes and I will be harvesting even more tasty and nutritious vegetables from my little garden. The best part of course was that I had so much I got to share it with my golfing mates and that was grand. Everybody will take home grown tomatoes for free.

Now the laziness part is easy - had I bothered to study the problem first before starting my little garden I probably wouldn't have made half as many mistakes - but true to my nature I just jumped right in - bought some sets, threw them in the ground applied water and waited for payday. On the other hand had I not been lazy and had I studied the reams of documentation available I would probably have not had a garden in the first place because I would have learned how freaking difficult it was to do. It wasn't - but the documentation makes it seem that way.

Same thing with trading stocks for a living.

One thing I seldom talk about on this site is risk - other sites are laden with "risk this" "risk that" "I made xR on the trade" - but you won't find much talk like that here. Most of the time I don't bother with stops because I had them in the past like a good doobie and a couple of stocks dropped right through the mothers and kept on going South - they don't tell you about that in the books - what they say is - oh, you should have had "market stops" - well that is a bunch of crap too because most stocks after a steep and rapid decline actually rebound a bit and guess what - a market stop dumps you out at the very bottom and you don't get any of that rebound back. So I use mostly mental stops and if I have to go away from my monitor for very long I set a hard stop and hope for the best. Point being they only protect you from the known and you should only fear the unknown - I hope you get the idea.

I think it is up to everyone to determine their own appetite for risk and that can't be taught like a good set-up. It can only be suggested and then only mildly. I still think you should go into a trade with two targets in mind - how much you want to make and how much you can stand to lose and then you should adhere to those two targets as if they meant something.