Coping Gracefully

Joe Ross

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Whether you're a novice or seasoned trader, there are days when you face setback after setback: Adverse events go against you. You make a trading error. You misread the markets. The possible setbacks can be endless, and it hurts a little to watch your account balance take a hit when one of them catches you off guard. But whatever roadblocks get in your way, it is vital that you take them in stride.

How can you gracefully take setbacks in stride? You could be naturally cool and confident. Like a "surfer dude" who just rides the waves with little worry, you can go with the flow. Are there traders who are naturally laid back and easygoing? There may be some, but a person with such an easygoing personality type usually lacks the unwavering discipline needed for long-term financial success. If you are the kind of person who saved up enough money to have a decent trading account, it's unlikely that you are the kind of person who is so laid back that setbacks are completely unimportant. If you are like many traders, you take life seriously. It took effort to build up your assets and you are not willing to just throw your money away on a whim. Indeed, you are probably on the "anal" side in terms of your personality. You are likely to be a professional who was rewarded for working hard and showing self-restraint. And you probably showed self-restraint in more than your work life.

In many ways, if you are a person who naturally shows self-control and discipline, you must learn new ways to behave when trading the markets. You must work around your tendency to show extreme self-control. What can you do? There are many thinking strategies you can use to take setbacks in stride.

The most important strategy is to anticipate everything that can go wrong. Live by Murphy's Law. Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. Now, not everything will go wrong, but if you live under the assumption that things are bound to go wrong, you won't be caught off-guard. You'll be ready to face a setback. A second strategy is to have realistic expectations. The adage, "Life can be unfair at times" is useful to consider. Remind yourself that "hard work does not always pay off," and remember that the markets may not always cooperate with you. In many ways, you must respect the markets more than they will ever respect you. "The markets are always right." If you can accept these premises about trading, you'll be ready to cope gracefully. But if you demand that the markets conform to your preconceptions, you'll constantly feel slighted, beaten, and frustrated. Stay unemotional. Avoid imbuing commonplace trading events with emotional significance. Things go wrong. That's part of the game of trading.
 
When I read Joe's nonsense, I start to understand why Howard feels qualified to teach

I think Howard might have blown up recently, hence his request to shut down his threads.

That certainly seems to be the consensus at ET:

Looks like howard got hit with margin per his own admission. This thread is a good real example how "safe" otm spread writing fails when a blackswan hit.

I dont think anyone should be happy another trader lost money but you do have the admit the timing in this case - just a few weeks back all the veterans were telling him how dangerous this is to no effect, then weeks later we hit the blackswan from tokyo and the result is there for anyone to see.

The thing is if you look at the US indices, the vol/panic wasnt anywhere close to the lehman days, it would be a much bigger loss for him if we repeated that. And i am not sure which broker he used, but if it was IB auto liquidation would kicked in at middle of the night when the nikkei was down 14% and es mini 30+ pts.

This is the first experience for howard i imagine of a mini blackswan, hopefully he will go back and reread some of the posts by atticus and others.


Another advanced technique, very popular amongst the high % win crowd, is the "I'm going to the bar" technique, or the "i'm on the road this week" technique, or the "switch off the monitor and adopt the fetal position" technique. All the while the account is getting decimated.

These "ostrich strategy" techniques work a large % of the time, except when they don't and the damage is total. Actually the "kill the ostrich" technique is basically like shooting a bird in a cage and almost always gives "the market" the last wave of liquidation. By tuesday the ostridges were in trouble, with the final puke late wed and thu early session.


I hope he didn't take a big hit, but this was the kind of thing that people were warning him about.
 
I think Howard might have blown up recently, hence his request to shut down his threads.

That certainly seems to be the consensus at ET:

Looks like howard got hit with margin per his own admission. This thread is a good real example how "safe" otm spread writing fails when a blackswan hit.

I dont think anyone should be happy another trader lost money but you do have the admit the timing in this case - just a few weeks back all the veterans were telling him how dangerous this is to no effect, then weeks later we hit the blackswan from tokyo and the result is there for anyone to see.

The thing is if you look at the US indices, the vol/panic wasnt anywhere close to the lehman days, it would be a much bigger loss for him if we repeated that. And i am not sure which broker he used, but if it was IB auto liquidation would kicked in at middle of the night when the nikkei was down 14% and es mini 30+ pts.

This is the first experience for howard i imagine of a mini blackswan, hopefully he will go back and reread some of the posts by atticus and others.


Another advanced technique, very popular amongst the high % win crowd, is the "I'm going to the bar" technique, or the "i'm on the road this week" technique, or the "switch off the monitor and adopt the fetal position" technique. All the while the account is getting decimated.

These "ostrich strategy" techniques work a large % of the time, except when they don't and the damage is total. Actually the "kill the ostrich" technique is basically like shooting a bird in a cage and almost always gives "the market" the last wave of liquidation. By tuesday the ostridges were in trouble, with the final puke late wed and thu early session.


I hope he didn't take a big hit, but this was the kind of thing that people were warning him about.

All his options were blatently skewed bullish and when you have 35 options below the market in every indice, you get your ass handed to you.
 
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