my journal 3

[Yamato]

grouping symptoms by gravity and looking for their cause

Back from work.

Here's the updated list, on excel, too:
View attachment telltale_signs_of_stress-anger.xls



My thinking right now is this.

I have a list of about 30 different symptoms (cf. data above), but they can be grouped into these main categories, in a descending order of gravity/level of stress they are signalling:

1) denial of reality (the stress is so strong that I stop seeing reality): I am losing money, but I choose to keep the trade open. I get rejected by a girl, but I pretend she's ugly or a bitch.

2) revenge against reality (getting back at someone/something who/which has not behaved according to my expectations -- by doing so I cause further damage to my situation): revenge trading (doubling up on losing trades), criticism, complaining

3) fighting against reality (maybe to defend myself in part, so this would be OK), usually just when interacting with people, e.g.: raising my voice

4) complaining about reality: this only with people, such as writing on the journal that the neighbor was noisy, or complaining to someone about someone else.

5) physical symptoms of discomfort, of varying gravity:
a) scratching parts of my body - most serious symptom
b) touching my head/hair/nose/eyebrow, resting my head on my chin...etc.

Here we are, back to analyzing the causes I had talked about this morning, in my post written at the office.

Let's take another example: theft by the cleaning lady (I already mentioned it in the previous post anyway).

Why does this anger me so much?

According to what I said this morning, while I recognize and assess correctly injustices, I do not have a major problem/phobia related to injustices, as long as they don't happen to me. Furthermore, when the market goes against me, since it does not qualify as "injustice" and I get very angry, we should be able to say that my anger arises when things do not go in my favor, regardless of how they relate to justice. And this morning, I further assessed this anger as originating from an assumption that, crazy as it may sound, I am blessed by the gods.

Since I was born, being an only child, my father was an asshole as I said, but in his way, he still made me feel special. His message to me was that I was so gifted that anything that I did... I could have done it better. So he basically constantly told me that I sucked, while at the same time making me feel that I was so much better than everyone else. It's something that I feel to this day: I could be so much better, I have to be so much better, but everyone else sucks.

So, whether I was given the feeling of being blessed by the gods, or, more realistically, just by my father... You see, while he was an asshole to me... he certainly gave me the certainty that I was special and special in a better way.

And I don't know if I will ever completely get rid of this conviction, no matter how irrational it is. It doesn't make sense. But I still feel better than people, just by birth. Just because he told me so many times... that I sucked because I was the best and I could do much better than I was doing (in every field).

So, as long as I have this irrational conviction, if:
1) I meet people who make me feel that I am not special, it will frustrate me very much
2) I lose in the markets, and this signals that the markets do not consider me special, it will send me into revenge trading mode, and/or denial

And so on.

I think I am getting closer and closer to the cause of my frustration/anger.

Sometimes, for example when I get angry about garbage thrown in the street, this is not exactly related to myself, so you could object that it doesn't arise from my feeling of being special and its being contradicted. But it is related, too: because I feel so special that I expect people to behave according to my vision of optimal things (cf. being a "control freak").

In other words, this is how I feel:
1) I am special
2) I am right, and the supreme judge of everything
3) I know what is true and what is false, what is good and what is evil
4) eventually everyone will have to abide by my rules

Of course, this is all wrong, and it's what lead to disaster in the markets.

But now I am really stuck up against one problem, that of having been raised with illusions/delusions of grandeur by my parents, that I don't know if I can solve.

I will have to repeat to myself, several times per day, that I am not special, and prove it with facts and reinforce it with exercises.

This is the cause. I think I have identified the cause: this feeling that I am special and that I am the best.

My father in the family, among relatives, has always been the big shot. Everyone kisses up to him, and listens like they're listening to a very wise and important person (of course I am fed up, and I don't do it). "Socially", he was more successful than all of them, so I am not surprised, although I think he's just an asshole and a sick person.

However, at any rate, it's as if he were the king. And I've always felt like the prince. As if I had to live up to expectations, to inherit a kingdom, except of course there was no kingdom, and I didn't inherit anything, and I even get pretty upset when regular people do not treat me like the prince that I feel I am.

Yeah, this pretty much sums it all. Now I have to start being wiser and realize that this feeling of being special only screws me in pretty much every field, because it hides useful information about reality.

 

[Yamato]

http://www.beliebte-vornamen.de/4501-adolf.htm

 

[Yamato]

Risus abundat in ore stultorum

I will start this post with a Latin quote:
"Risus abundat in ore stultorum"

I've heard this before, in Italy, and every once in a while I am reminded of it, by people I meet.

The latest is my colleague, who's always smiling and joking, and he's almost sixty. Nothing wrong with being 60, but I think you should not act like an idiot teenager.

Well, he's my new roommate, the umpteenth animal in a long list. I don't know what animal he is. I would say just a stupid teenager, "teenager animal".

"Risus abundat in ore stultorum" means...
http://translation.babylon.com/english/Risus+abundat+in+ore+stultorum/
http://www.special-dictionary.com/latin/r/risus_abundat_in_ore_stultorum.htm

"Abundant laughs in the mouth of the foolish: too much hilarity means foolishness"

He's exactly this. Always smiling, as if he always thought of something amusing, but the only thing that is amusing is how stupid this guy is. I was instructing him this morning how to click an icon, and how to drag it with the mouse, by keeping the left button clicked... wow, and I totally managed to keep serious and patient throughout this ordeal.

But I am not here to complain, because remember what I said: I must learn to not get angry when things do not go my way.

I am here to relate how great an opportunity this guy is for me. It's a test and training gym for my new resolutions of learning to accept reality.

I am showing infinite patience with:
1) having to get up 40 times per day to help him out
2) having to deal with his incessant joking

As I said, I still retained my ability to discern good from evil, and so I can still allow myself to optimize my world, but what I must not do is get mad when something is not optimized, because this lead to my blowing out of my account: not accepting that a trade didn't go my way and fighting reality.

So what I am doing with this guy is this:

1) if he asks for help, infinite patience (I get paid after all)

2) if he jokes around, I say "yeah..." but I ignore him, and if he asks personal questions, in a joking disrespectful way (in my opinion joking at work is disrespectful), I respectfully reply "wow, that's a pretty personal questions... what I do in my free time... I study languages...". Then if he asks further questions, I reply "I do things..." or something similar, as to politely convey the "mind your own business" message.

What is interesting is to monitor my facial muscles and voice as I interact with this guy. Both parameters are probably giving out signals that I want to kill him, so that's how I know that I am still working under the wrong assumptions and expectations, and have yet to learn to accept reality.

This guy is what he is. I cannot expect him to be as hard-working nor as intelligent as I am. And I should not even get disgusted by his stupidity.

Right now I am at the point, whenever I see him, to imagine a big "IDIOT" sign on his forehead, but I have to get over this as well.

I have to get beyond moral judgments, and just assess reality.

Indeed, I don't talk about down syndrome people as "idiots", although they're probably less intelligent than this guy, so why on earth should I not be able to accept him without insulting or judging him so badly?

Well, maybe the reason is enlightening again. Because I am not worried about innate intelligence, at all, but rather about hard-work.

So what I really mean by "idiot" is "superficial", and "lazy". Which is the worst deficiency by my book.

On the other hand, from previous reasoning, I know that my anger does not all originate from observing laziness in people, but many more deficiencies, such as dishonesty. And also, my anger does not limit itself to people, but also arises from situations, random situations, such as the markets, that do not comply with my expectations.

As I said before, I get angry when things do not go my way, because I feel special, better, and that I deserve to have my way. AND this is the irrational part of my mind that I have to deal with. Indeed, I will not be able to be profitable otherwise, just as much as I won't be able to force a die to show me a six because "I am entitled to it".

---

After all, this concept has been said somewhere else by someone else, long before me. I mean, my continually repeated concept that I have to not get angry when things do not go my way, and that nonetheless I can retain the ability and the hard-work habit to try to change what I can change. In other words, perfectionism, without it being "maladaptive perfectionism" -- like a control freak would be. I've known it all along, but I had to reach this conclusion by myself.

So where has this concept been said? No idea exactly, but one place is in this so-called "serenity prayer":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

But, just as I thought, no one owns this formula (I came up with it after having forgotten that it had been said already), and here's some "precursors" to the "prayer":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer#Precursors

Epictetus wrote: "Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens. Some things are up to us [eph' hêmin] and some things are not up to us. Our opinions are up to us, and our impulses, desires, aversions-in short, whatever is our own doing. Our bodies are not up to us, nor are our possessions, our reputations, or our public offices, or, that is, whatever is not our own doing."[13]

The 8th-century Indian Buddhist scholar Shantideva of the ancient Nalanda University expressed a similar sentiment:[14]

If there’s a remedy when trouble strikes,
What reason is there for dejection?
And if there is no help for it,
What use is there in being glum?

I will just summarize it for myself as "keep optimizing, but don't get angry about what you can't optimize".

 

[Yamato]

as I play and play the chart game, over and over, without the burden of emotions, I am realizing...

http://chartgame.com/play.cgi?3hfh68

... I am realizing that it's not about winning the next trade, nor about beating any records, nor about showing off to anyone, but it is about understanding how the market works. Listening to the market. Observing the candles. And understanding how the market breathes and how you breathe.

For example, I noticed among the other things, that after you go long, if you make a mistake, you carry a long bias into the next trade (on the same market), whereas you should have no bias and be able to listen to what the market is telling you, regardless of what you were saying to yourself about the market until an instant ago.

Only this way you will be able to observe the market, and weigh its statistics. Yeah, because there's also an element of unpredictability which cannot be forgotten. So it's not like you can figure it out once and for all.

Anyway, my main point was how much more clearly you can listen to the market, without being burdened by emotions and by the need of being right, of winning, and of beating yourself and the previous record. In fact, I think overachievers tend to lose more than others at discretionary trading.

---

Another thing I realized is that, just as I will be ready to trade only once I experience a week without any anger/frustration, in the same way I will know that I am ready for trading once I can endure... 30 straight chart games without losing my emotional balance and without showing any of those "stress telltale signs" listed on my excel sheet (cf. previous posts).

 

[Yamato]

Could it be that Roosevelt didn't speak English correctly? Or maybe English changed in the last 70 years?
https://archive.org/details/1943RadioNews

Exact clip here:
https://archive.org/download/1943Ra...R-Fireside-Chat---First-Crack-In-The-Axis.mp3

In every instance, starting at minute 3:30, Roosevelt says ""ih-nish-ey-tiv"

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/initiative?s=t
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/initiative
http://en-de.dict.cc/?s=initiative
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/initiative

whereas the dictionaries clips, all four, say "ih-nish-ee-uh-tiv"

 

[Yamato]

that genius of... the Czech Ambassador to the United Kingdom

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Masaryk

clip downloadable here:
https://archive.org/details/1939RadioNews

Exact clip:
https://archive.org/download/1939Ra...-Ambassador-In-London-On-Poland-Situation.mp3

He sounds extremely wise, concise and it seems written today -- instead he said it before the war started.

http://taylorempireairways.com/2009/09/for-we-are-called/
2. Czech Ambassador on Poland situation 00:50

…One thing is very definitely sure. If the war starts, it will be Hitler who is the guilty party. I do not wish to deny that the unbelievable policy of the Western democracies has helped Hitler to this fortunate or tragic position. History will prove that most efficiently and conclusively.

…If there is even a vestige of the Munich spirit left to initiate these negotiations, they are doomed to be a dismal failure.

The only possible chance of success without bloodshed is for Hitler to climb down from the Trojan Horse on which he has galloped from Munich to Berlin, and then to Vienna, Memel, Prague and so forth, and now toward Warsaw. From now on he must walk, even walk backwards a bit.

Let me be perfectly frank; I believe I have the right to be so. If Hitler attempts another bloodless victory for vulgar gangsterism, and the world—including the United States of America—let him get away with it, I have no illusions about the future of the European civilisation.

– Jan Masaryk to the BBC, 27 August 1939

This quote from the web site is better than nothing, but they're skipping quite a few good lines.

Also, Churchill was quite predictive and a good analyst here:

These two are the best analyses of the situation I've heard so far, or at least the most predictive ones.

 

[Yamato]

victories teach you to win, losses... teach you to lose

As I keep playing the chart game, I keep realizing this, that the next game is always a win-win situation, because, regardless of whether I lose it or win it:

A victory is good in itself, because it reinforces hard work.

A defeat is good in itself, because it teaches me to emotionally endure defeats -- and without emotionally enduring defeats, profitable discretionary trading is not possible.

So I should keep going, without being afraid of neither victories nor defeats.

In the same way, I should view my interaction with humans, seizing learning opportunities from wins and from victories. Most things that apply to trading also apply to regular life, except that in regular life you cannot measure them as precisely as in trading, where you immediately get money or lose money for your performance. In life, instead, the balance of your actions is neither as quickly nor as precisely measured. Being disorderly, for example, doesn't bring immediate losses. Nor being lazy.

Bottom line is this: as odd as it may sound, victories teach you to win, losses teach you to lose. Because you do have to learn to lose, without getting discouraged a bit. Learning to win is not enough: you also have to learn to lose.

I had never realized that losses aren't something to deny, to be afraid of, to hide and to be ashamed of. You have to savor every loss and seize the opportunity to assess how you react to it.


---

My father inculcated in me an obsession with winning, which makes me unable to stand losses, and that in turn, at least in trading, produces blowing out of accounts.

 

[Yamato]

odd fact I can't figure out...

http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=dib&datum=19390907&seite=14&zoom=33



This newspaper, Das interessante Blatt, in 1939 was using Antiqua characters for the crosswords puzzles, but then in 1940 it reverted to Fraktur:
http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=dib&datum=19400626&seite=20&zoom=35



I really can't figure it out because if anything, especially in 1940, they should have gone from Fraktur to Antiqua.

Yeah, because you know, there was a nazi law that said that Fraktur was invented by the jews so everyone from early 1941 had to use Antiqua:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur#Use

From the late 18th century to the late 19th century, Fraktur was progressively replaced by Antiqua as a symbol of the classicist age and emerging cosmopolitanism in most of the countries in Europe that had previously used Fraktur. This move was hotly debated in Germany, where it was known as the Antiqua–Fraktur dispute. The shift affected mostly scientific writing in Germany, whereas most belletristic literature and newspapers continued to be printed in broken fonts. This radically changed on January 3, 1941, when Martin Bormann issued a circular to all public offices which declared Fraktur (and its corollary, the Sütterlin-based handwriting) to be Judenlettern (Jewish letters) and prohibited their further use. German historian Albert Kapr has speculated that the régime had realized that Fraktur would inhibit communication in the territories occupied during World War II.

And indeed on 26 February of 1941, they went back once again to Antiqua:
http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=dib&datum=19410226&seite=23&zoom=33



For the record, they were using Antiqua from as early as 1936:
http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=dib&datum=19360716&seite=16&zoom=33



So, let's recapitulate once and for all, this puzzling crosswords puzzle:

1935 Fraktur (and earlier years)
1936 Antiqua
1940 switching to Fraktur, just before the Nazis made it illegal
1941 switching to Antiqua, one month after Fraktur was made illegal

 

[Yamato]

You know what I am doing today?

I sensed that my German is not improving much any longer. It has slowed down, because I am trying things that are too hard and I gave up trying to understand.

For example, I've been watching documentaries and listening to the radio, but there is still too much that I don't understand for me to follow the whole dialogue.

So I stop trying and just watch... well, I guess the radio is harder, because there is nothing to watch and so... that is why I stop listening to it because I get bored, due to only understanding about half of what they say. I always get what they're talking about but I don't get exactly what they're saying, most of the time. Once every ten times, I understand exactly what they said.

So, since I am not learning much anymore, I need to step it up, but how?

I thought of this. I need to follow a path, something that engrosses me, but it can't be movies or documentaries because I am not up to it yet.

And furthermore it's not like I don't understand spoken German: I get all the words, but I don't have a rich enough vocabulary and that is why I don't understand the dialogue.

So here's the engrossing activity that I am going to approach: reading newspapers.

Since I like history, I will go for the newspapers from the start of the war, on September 3rd, 1939.

This should be quite fascinating.

There is also the good advantage that I can keep practicing my Fraktur, for a whole year and a half, before they switch to Antiqua in early 1941.

Plenty of reading, and besides, the period after 1940 is sad, because of how badly the Germans screwed up their strategy. Sure, they're evil assassins, but I still get sad for not doing a good job, even if it means murdering millions of people.

At any rate, my task is not as simple as going to ANNO, and reading the papers from September 4th, 1939:
http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?datum=19390904&zoom=33

Right, because there's as many as 21 (mostly Austrian) newspapers!

Do you have an idea of how long it will take me to read even just one page of these newspapers?

Probably one week at the beginning. Looking up words on the dictionary endlessly, actually speaking them into the microphone for google translate:
https://translate.google.com/

So, since it will take me at least one day per page, I need to first identify the right newspaper, and then get into it. If possible, I should try to fall in love with that newspaper, so it makes it easier to work on it.

To do so... it's not going to be easy.

I selected another date: April 10th, 1940, when there's some news on the invasion of Norway and Denmark:
http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?datum=19400410&zoom=33

On that day, they only have 8 relevant newspapers (one of them is just local news, Badener Zeitung).

So I am going to try to identify the best newspaper on that date, and then see how good it is on 4th September 1939.

How do I choose a good newspaper?

It can't have too many pictures, like Das interessante Blatt, which doesn't even address politics. It has political pictures and captions all right, but then only entertainment and short stories.

So that one is ruled out, despite the pleasant pictures.

I want reasoning, so the newspapers need to have at least 10 pages, to give journalists the space to write.

I need the newspaper to exist in different dates, so I am going right away to discard those that aren't available on both dates.

So, first I will discard the newspapers with less than 8 pages from the 19400410 edition, and then I will look for those few selected in the other date.

7 newspapers passed the test.

I don't know what else I need to do now.

Probably I should make a selection based on how long they've existed for. But I don't know if I should choose those that existed for a long time or the opposite.

Another selection could be how readable the paper is, in terms of characters and clarity of the copies.

And also if it is physically pleasant to read and appealing, otherwise I'd quickly get bored/tired.

In order of establishment (how many years passed, in 1940, since establishment):
1) Volks-Zeitung, 86 years - small wiki entry, oddly it has a second small entry, with an almost identical title (the first time i see anything like this)

2) Tages-Post, 76 years - small wiki entry, but published in Linz, Hilter's hometown: "Adolf Hitler was born in the border town of Braunau am Inn but moved to Linz in his childhood. Hitler spent most of his youth in the Linz area, from 1898 until 1907, when he left for Vienna." (from wikipedia entry for Linz)

3) Welt Blatt, 67 years - good wiki entry, it says this is a very nazi newspaper

4) Neue Warte am Inn, 60 years - small wiki entry, but published in Hitler's birth town

5) Bregenzer-Vorarlberger Tagblatt, 23 years - good wiki entry.

6) Wiener neueste Nachrichten, 16 years - good wiki entry.

7) Das Kleine Blatt, 14 years - good wiki entry.

I am going to check the wikipedia entries as well, to see how long and in what languages they are. I would prefer to read a famous newspaper, with important journalists, although at this point it is all propaganda since the nazis have taken power.

I looked for the circulation data but could not find it.

Today I feel like staying up late, so I will do more work on this.

Now let's look at how visually appealing these seven newspapers are.

1) Volks-Zeitung, pretty light, I like it all right

2) Tages-Post, it seems the least serious one, most popular one and less related to politics - they even have cartoons as early as page 2 - this might all be a quality for me

3) Welt Blatt - this has the best pictures (after das interessante blatt, which I discarded for other reasons)

4) Neue Warte am Inn - boring format

5) Bregenzer-Vorarlberger Tagblatt - ugly but few ads, many names and analyses, half of it on the foreign countries

6) Wiener neueste Nachrichten, I like the map, I like the organization of pages and titles, I like the pictures, but too much entertainment and poor quality of the copies.

7) Das Kleine Blatt, despite the name this paper seems huge, with movies, radio, sports, local news...

I still cannot make my mind because nowadays I do not read any newspapers so I would not know how to pick anything from the past, given that I don't read them now. It is clear that there are differences among these newspapers:

1) more serious, less serious but more spontaneous

2) more popular with less politics, less popular with more politics

I will test them all with one test. How much they talk about mussolini. The more, the better, because it is to me a sign that they're curious. In fact, the more names the better, but I don't know how to check for names count in a newspaper.

Damn, i had forgotten. The search function still only works for certain years, only up to 1918, so this search is useless.

Ok, now it's going to be simple. I will know which one I like best, by reading all of them. Or rather: I will stop as soon as I find something that suits me...

-------

One thinks this period, 1940, is so distant from us and then you find in just one day in just one newspaper:
http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=nwi&datum=19400410&zoom=33





The same two ads that are today in newspapers: Nivea skin cream and Bayer aspirin.

And this is from 1941, but it could be from today... in fact it's better than anything we're hearing today on the radio:

------------

Wait. I managed, through various parameters, to narrow it down to just 4 titles:
Welt Blatt
Bregenzer-Vorarlberger Tagblatt
Wiener neueste Nachrichten
Das Kleine Blatt

 

[Yamato]

the slightest signs of frustration: breathing, eyebrows and mouth corners

New method of playing the chart game.

I play not with the attitude "let's win a game" but just "let's win or lose a game": every game that is lost in the proper way is even more precious than a won game.

I noticed that when I lose and make the wrong call on the chart, my mouth moves in a smirk, and/or my eyebrow is raised.

Although I no longer have the strong emotions I used to have, I have resolved to also eliminate these small reactions, that are symptoms of an emotional state, that should not be there.

So, I win a game by winning it without rejoicing, or I win a game by losing it without getting frustrated, and I know that because... my mouth and my eyebrows stay still.

A loss without getting frustrated is even more important than a victory, because this ability and attitude will make sure, in life and in trading, that you do not lose your focus and rationality in the face of defeat (or even just an attack, whether physical, financial, moral, etc.). Because, you see, that is the very reason I blew out my account, so many times. By losing control when I incurred a small loss, and going into a permanent state of denial.

So, let's now go to win or lose a game.

Prerequisites:
1) you need to want to win, so you should care about winning (you should not place random trades, otherwise you're not learning any strategy), but not so much that you raise your eyebrow and move your mouth -- not so much that you have an emotional reaction
2) you then, before starting your trade, set a stoploss
3) observe yourself when it gets taken, to see if you have the slightest physical reaction (even just in your breathing), that shows an emotional reaction -- you have to learn to either not have it or suppress it very effectively

I used to be so obsessed with winning that I was unable, on the (free, unlimited, without witnesses) chart game, to even abide by my stoploss as soon as it got taken. I believed so much in my trade, that I could not let go of it. Now imagine what happens in my real trading, when I can't execute a stoploss without flinching in the chart game.

There has to be no wincing, there has to be no flinching, or whatever this is called. There have to be no emotions. Like they show boot camp for soldiers basically. Learn to take the pain, to the point that you don't feel it anymore.

I don't know how clearly I have explained it yet, but I am getting closer.

 

[Yamato]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anschluss#German_troops_march_into_Austria

On the morning of 12 March, the 8th Army of the German Wehrmacht crossed the border to Austria. The troops were greeted by cheering German-Austrians with Nazi salutes, Nazi flags, and flowers.[24] Because of this, the Nazi annexing is also called the Blumenkrieg (war of flowers), but its official name was Unternehmen Otto.[25] For the Wehrmacht, the invasion was the first big test of its machinery. Although the invading forces were badly organized and coordination among the units was poor, it mattered little because no fighting took place.

Starting March 13, a day later, the swastika starts appearing in about one third of all newspapers, in their logos, or as it is called in the "flag":




For some reason, about two weeks later, they were all removed, so it is obviously a decree by the new political power:



Probably one of these two reasons:

1) they did not want any one newspaper to appear as representing the official opinion of the nazi party

2) they wanted the press to appear unbiased, while at the same time, they implemented measures so that all newspapers would be promoting nazi ideas


At any rate, this definitely means that I will be discarding those 33% of newspapers that changed their logo for those 10 days. It shows they have a lower dignity and reputation.

After discarding Bregenzer-Vorarlberger Tagblatt due to that swastika, I am now down to just 3 newspapers to be analyzed:
Welt Blatt
Wiener neueste Nachrichten
Das Kleine Blatt

Let us now do a further study on the number of pages:

welt blatt
12 pages, which go down to 6 during the war years due to lack of paper

wiener neueste nachrichten
24 pages, during the war down to 8 pages... but it is not available after 1941:
http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=wnn
so I will discard this one, because I won't be able to follow it through the years.

Das Kleine Blatt
16 pages before the war, and 10 pages during the war

I AM ALWAYS TALKING ABOUT AVERAGES (not the exact number of pages)

Ok, here's what I'll do then.

I will read the Kleine Blatt as the main newspaper, and from time to time I will compare it with the Welt Blatt.

I just noticed another interesting thing. Fraktur must have been enforced in early 1941 only in public administration, because both these newspapers kept Fraktur until the end of 1943 (nothing available on ANNO database after that date).

This is very good, because I need to practice it, so I can read other documents of that period.

These two newspapers, only survivors from the long list I analyzed, are both from Wien.

I read also that the Welt Blatt was almost the official nazi newspaper in Austria, and here is something that confirms this concept:



"Neuigkeits-Welt-Blatt, the oldest Aryan daily newspaper of Vienna"

I definitely need to read both of these newspapers. Too bad there's nothing from Berlin, but this (Austrian) ANNO database in unbeatable, and there's nothing of the same quality nor quantity among German databases of old newspapers.

One last aspect to remark: the price on the date of 30 July 1943.

10 Rpf (Reichspfennig) for the Welt Blatt, 4 pages.
6 Rpf (Reichspfennig) for the Kleine Blatt, 8 pages.

Sounds interesting, doesn't it. Half as many pages, and almost double the price.

Oh, the ads.

Welt Blatt, 1/3 of a page with ads.
Kleine Blatt, about 1 page of ads.

Not much difference, so where's the catch?

It might be because of this
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuigkeits-Welt-Blatt

Ab März 1938 stellte sich das Blatt unter dem Herausgeber August Theodor Kirsch in den Dienst des NS-Regimes und erhielt dadurch eine Sonderstellung: Alle anderen Wiener Zeitungsverleger mussten ihre Blätter in den Jahren 1938 und 1939 entweder schließen, oder zu vorgegebenen Preisen an nationalsozialistische Verlage abtreten. Kirsch jedoch durfte das Neuigkeits-Welt-Blatt unbehelligt weiterführen.

Most important part translated by google translate:
"All other Viennese newspaper publishers, in the years 1938 and 1939, either had to close their newspapers or transfer them at predetermined prices to Nazi publishers".

Since his newspaper was pro-nazi, August Theodor Kirsch was allowed to act as he wished. I could not find anything more on this publisher. Maybe he had been dead for 200 years. You know how publishers name work -- they keep the same name even if they're dead.

So, ok, after all this screwing around, now comes the toughest part. The part of actually reading these newspapers.

 

[Yamato]

Let's start reading the news on September 2nd, 1939:
http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=nwb&datum=19390902&seite=1&zoom=33



Ouch... "counter-attack"... "active defense of the Reich"... reminds you of anything? Right, 911, and the long tradition of false flag attacks. You pretend you're attacked (when in fact, you attacked yourself) and then you "counter-attack" whoever you wanted to attack in the first place. That's the way these newspapers are describing the attack on Poland, as a "counter-attack", just like Bush and his middle east wars. And what's funny is that, after witnessing Nazism and fighting Nazism, both the US media and the public completely bought bush's lies.

The US has slowly transitioned to totalitarianism, and its people, who in the meanwhile got stupider, thanks to the corrupted mass media, didn't even notice it.

I can imagine that if I told any German in September 1939 that it was unlikely that Germany had been attacked by Poland first, they would have told me that I was a conspiracy theorist, and I would have wound up in a concentration camp within a few days.

---

Anyway, not bad. I've understood that whole paragraph, by only looking up 5 words. Now I can take a long break by doing some kreuzwort or watching a doku. In the meanwhile I also played several more chart games, and managed to not flinch when losing.

 

[Yamato]

minute 18: the French Olympic team members do the nazi salute, little did they know...

...

Ah ah, hilarious, at minute 51:03, Hitler engrossed watching the olympics!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Summer_Olympics_medal_table

 

[Yamato]

if losing hurts you, you can't practice, and then you can't learn

I want to get back to my reasoning on the roots of frustration and how frustration made me blow out my account (by sending me into revenge trading / denial mode), and how I want to eliminate fear, anger, frustration from my life, because they are only harmful.

It would be interesting to learn where anger / frustration stems from and if we are born with anger or if it is taught to us.

But I think for sure one thing was taught to me as a child: the fear of losing. The idea that I am not allowed to lose and that I must always win and always be the best. This is the great damage that my father has done to me.

I am pretty sure that others, too, are affected by this problem. The term "showing off" and "plastic surgery" are witnesses to this, that people care to impress other people.

This in trading has to be unlearned, we have to unlearn this, because the inability to lose, the refusal to lose, blows out our account. Simply explained: you have a small loss, you refuse to accept it by closing the trade, and then you might even speed things up by doubling up on the losing position, and then that small loss you refused becomes a loss that destroys your account.

The inability to lose, the obsession with being right, being a control freak, basically, harms your whole life, but, as i said before, in trading you have an immediate financial feedback which is hard to ignore. Whereas in life, you could always say: I am frustrated because i am surrounded by idiots. The right answer instead is: accept reality and stop fighting it, whether in trading or in life. You cannot keep forcing your ideal world onto the real world. It's a waste of effort and time.

That is why I say that the first thing a trader should be taught, or verified about a trader, is if he is capable of losing (and hasn't been taught that he is not allowed to lose), and if he's not able to lose, then a lot of work is ahead.

That trader doesn't need to be told 1000 times "use the stoploss", because he lacks the bases for using it. He should first be taught that losing is ok, that he can lose as many times as he wants, and that he doesn't have to be ashamed of it, and that each time he mourns a loss, he will waste time and energies, useful for more practice.

Also because when a loss hurts, it keeps you from trying again, and that is the most important limitation and most harmful consequence of being afraid of losing: it keeps you from practicing.

I don't know what the percentage of people is, who are like me, and are hurt by losing. I think it's the majority.

It is easy to verify if you are affected by this problem: body language.

Watch for all the telltale signs I've been listing: head scratching, lip biting, eyebrow raising, sighing, exhaling, turning the corners of your mouth, let alone swearing, yelling and banging your fists on the table (which I don't do).

If we do these things when losing, when things don't go our way, in life or in trading, and that's definitely a large majority of us, then we're not ready to trade discretionary.

Because we are not ready to practice something that causes us frustration, and without practice, we can't learn it.

That is why I can summarize it in just one sentence: if losing hurts you, you can't practice, and then you can't learn.

This is not to say that if you have to learn juggling with knives, you must not care about getting hurt. Because that is a good sign of frustration, as it tells you to avoid something that causes permanent damage. So you should not juggle with knives, and also you should not go in the marines and risk your life, and that pain they teach you to withstand is the totally wrong pain to withstand, because you're risking your life. So by all means do not learn indifference to that kind of frustration / pain.

Furthermore, I don't even mean that you should hang out with rude people, or with people who are disorderly and do everything in the wrong way. But if you do come across these people, you should handle them in the most efficient way, without adding the feelings of frustration, revenge, taking offense to the already problematic interaction. And the same exact thing applies to trading.

Because losing from trading (especially at the free chart game) and being wronged by someone, and meeting a rude cab driver, do not cause you permanent damage, and therefore these signals should not cause us frustration but just knowledge about reality. There is nothing to gain by being emotionally disturbed by these events. There is everything to lose from feeling the urge to force these events to go our way.

This is the great damage that my father has done to me: he inculcated in me the irrational belief that I cannot lose even when such a loss does not cause any damage whatsoever to me. He made me a maladaptive perfectionist, who fights to control what he can't control and/or what he doesn't need to control.

 

[Yamato]

more practice with losing

Just had a great chart game: I lost every single trade I made, but I didn't flinch, didn't turn up my mouth corners, didn't raise my eyebrow, didn't change my breathing, didn't bat an eyelid

http://chartgame.com/play.cgi?3hfh68

Every single call I made was wrong. I am learning that I have the right to lose. That I don't have to be ashamed of losing.

First lesson every trader should learn. To accept when things go wrong.

Mind you, losing is to be avoided. But it is only when you experience plenty of losses that you can learn to not carry that burdensome byproduct of losses consisting of guilt, shame and revenge, that make long term winning impossible. Indeed, after a loss you will not be looking at the next opportunity, but will be looking for a way to avenge your honor (even as far as avenging your honor in the same market that caused you that loss -- that's how irrational I get).

So, all the losses that can come my way are now welcome. Hopefully nothing entailing permanent damage of any type.

In a sense, being obsessed with winning, the way I've been, keeps you from practicing experiences where losses are incurred and by doing so, you become even less used to losses and more unprepared to accept them. In a way, there is no one more unprepared for losses than someone who is obsessed with winning, and in some fields this can be OK, but in fields where losses are unavoidable, this is lethal.

What I am saying is that it is OK for a pilot to be obsessed with perfection and not losing his plane and having every little detail under control, because such is the nature of flying an airplane, where there is little room for randomness. But trading has random events, and losses, so whereas it might even be vital for the pilot to be a control freak, things work differently for a trader. When things go wrong, unlike for the pilot, you don't die. But if you instead behave as if your life depended on that next trade, then you do end up losing your entire account.

"Control freak" attitudes will definitely work in environments where you can have 100% of things under control. For example, math. Or being a librarian.

Traders instead cannot be control freaks. They have to leave room for the concept of losses, and such losses must not come together with that burden of feelings, that might be reasonable for a librarian who lost a book or captain who lost his ship, or... you get my point.

So the first things you have to tell an aspiring trader are: practice with losing. Let me see your face when you lose. Then you can tell them, depending on the emotions shown, whether they're ready or not. Relaxed face throughout trading (or simulated trading) means they're ready (one case in a thousand). Stressed out face means they're not ready.


EMOTIONS ARE A PROBLEM ALSO IN AUTOMATED TRADING

This also applies to automated trading, because I thought I was immune to these problems, but these emotions are so bad that I got screwed even when I was doing automated trading. The systems lost 500 dollars, I went against the systems, doubled up... blew out my account, several times, due to disabling the systems. Even this time, it was a combination of disabling the systems and going short on the BUND, which I've written all about in the past few months.

Even if you told me: here's 50k, just trade them on the systems, I might lose it all again, due to these emotional problems. It can happen very easily. I've disabled the systems plenty of times, and each time it was due to a loss. From there on, I proceeded to blow out the account with discretionary trading (usually by simply keeping the losing trade open, and adding positions to it). So emotions count even in automated trading. And they can make you blow out your account just the same, because your emotional self overpowers the rational one, and ignores all the wisdom and rules, even the clear rule of "don't tamper with the systems".


SELF-DISCIPLINE WON'T STOP YOUR ANGER AND REVENGE - BY THEN IT'S TOO LATE

That's why I said that it is not enough to speak of "self-discipline". If the emotions are there, no self-discipline will be strong enough to stop all emotions and urges coming your way, and overwhelming you like a Tsunami, when the markets test you with repeated ups and downs and losses. There's a moment when you lose it, even in case you ever applied a stoploss (which is not my case), there might be a moment when you get fed up with your stoplosses going off, and disable one. That's why you need so much practice with losing that you won't flinch. You must be sure you behave like a machine. A very intelligent one, but still one without emotions.

You cannot get to the point you feel angry at the market, vengeful, and then block all these negative feelings and urges with mere self-discipline. It never worked with me and not because I am not disciplined, but because the anger takes over.

To be in control, you first have to realize that getting angry doesn't make any sense. So it won't be self-discipline to stop your anger or your doubling up on a losing trade, but it is the anger that doesn't arise in the first place. If the anger does not arise, you won't feel the urge to avenge that loss, and you will close that trade, instead of adding positions to it.

So it is not self-discipline, stupid self-discipline that will save you, but profound existential pondering and changes in your deeply-ingrained daily habits, in every aspect of your life. What will save you is that you will have learned, in every area of your life, that it does not make sense to get angry when things don't go your way.

It doesn't make sense in terms of both the cause of your anger and the effect of your anger:
1) why should you expect things to go your way? Just because you were used to having your way as a spoiled child? See, no sense in this. No sense in expecting things to go your way in the first place.

2) what is the usefulness of getting angry when things don't go your way? You're wasting energies and time. And you might even have the wrong effect on whoever you're dealing with.

---

So what I am advocating seems inhuman...

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/inhuman

lacking qualities of sympathy, pity, warmth, compassion, or the like; cruel; brutal

It doesn't seem brutal or any of these by the dictionary, but it still seems inhuman. It seems that one cannot eliminate anger from his life, or he will also lose all the qualities of being human.

Is it so? I hope to find out soon.

I don't want to kill the human in me, but I want to end this project (of becoming profitable) once and for all, so if I need to lose the ability to get angry, I will try to do so.

Besides, becoming like a machine, "inhuman", doesn't imply cruelty, because machines are not cruel. I don't know. We will see. This is terra incognita, unchartered territory. I never imagined the quest for profitability would take me here. That it would make me try to radically remove my anger from my behavior.

My behavior is very much about intolerance, very similar concept to anger. As I said before, I am very close to Hitler and to the Nazis: organized and intolerant. That is their nature. I am intolerant towards different people, against majorities, whereas they were intolerant towards minorities.

So my own nature would be this:
1) control freak trying to make everything optimal ("maladaptive perfectionist")
2) things/people who are not optimal drive me mad
3) when this happens in trading, I blow out my account

The way I have to become is this:

1) "adaptive perfectionist" who changes what he can change and what is worth changing (instead of "everything")
2) things/people who are not optimal are reality, and I accept them, unless I am able to change them
3) in trading, when things don't go my way, I don't get angry / frustrated / in denial, but instead follow the optimal behavior, just like a machine

 

[Yamato]

"Yeah, I lost. So what?"

While still doing our best to win, we should train ourselves to get used to losing, to not be ashamed about it, to even show it off to others (instead of bragging about our qualities). We should get so used to it, that it becomes irrelevant. So irrelevant that we don't get depressed because of it. Losing should be the rule.

Do you remember that biography of JFK where they listed all his failures and defeats and then at the end they said: "then he became the president of the USA".

I'm going to see if I can find it online. That was a stroke of genius, whoever came up with it.

...

Damn. I could not find it. Anyway, it was a series of defeats that he had withstood, before becoming president. For example, in 1956 he lost his bid for the Democratic nomination for vice president.

 

[Yamato]

"I am unworthy of your love. I am a failure."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Lauriston_Livermore

“My dear Nina: Can’t help it. Things have been bad with me. I am tired of fighting. Can’t carry on any longer. This is the only way out. I am unworthy of your love. I am a failure. I am truly sorry, but this is the only way out for me. Love Laurie”

http://investorplace.com/247trader/...m-the-demise-of-jesse-livermore/#.VB6-uGK_t3k

Well, I’m no Jesse Livermore, but every time I read about him, I am struck by the fact that he always framed his ideas in terms of right and wrong. From his perspective, winning trades proved him right, and losing trades proved him wrong. This is a fatal mistake to make because whether you are right or wrong, either one will elicit a strong emotional response. Being right brings feelings of euphoria, and those feelings can be highly addicting. And in large doses, being wrong can cause despair. Obviously, that’s bad, but what’s worse from a speculator’s perspective is that being wrong also causes cognitive dissonance, which can be paralyzing. Jesse Livermore always said that if he could have just followed his trading rules, he would have never squandered his trading capital. But he couldn’t help himself. He was incapable of following his trading rules during losing streaks. And I believe that this tragic flaw in his trading style existed precisely because he saw himself as being right when he won and wrong when he lost. That is too great of an emotional burden for any of us to bear, especially if we are trading over short-term time frames. Short-term trading requires you to watch the markets constantly, and if your identity is at stake with every price fluctuation, you will suffer gravely.

You see, in trading more than everywhere else in life, we must not identify "losing" with "failing", which has a moral connotation. Well, "losing" also has a negative connotation, so what we should do is learn to take all connotations out of the word/concept of "losing": it should become a neutral word to us, and to our face and body language.

 

[Yamato]

another excellent failure (no negative connotations) at the chart game

http://chartgame.com/play.cgi?3hfh68



Another tremendous victory / failure (no negative connotations attached) at the chart game: I lost -22.28% of the account, but I didn't flinch, didn't get hurt by losing, and didn't hesitate in executing the stoplosses I had set.

Congratulations!

Freedom from shame, from pride... freedom. I finally am grasping the concept that I don't have to always win. Yes! Yes, failure! Finally I am free to lose!

...and freedom to lose means freedom to practice.

You see, if your father has inculcated in you that you're not allowed to lose, that failure is not an option, you will:

1) only try things you're good at, and never try things you're not good at - because failure is not an option.

2) pretend you're good at things you're not good at. For example: you will turn your losses into gains, by the method of martingale, which gives you the illusion you're profitable, always winning, until the fifth time you try it, when the trade doesn't come back, and that method blows out your account. Denial and self-deception are the two consequences of an upbringing according to which you're not allowed to lose. And those are the fruits you reap in trading from this attitude to losing: you lose less frequently all right, but in those rare instances, you lose everything.

Essentially, in practical terms, it works like this:

1) say that i am good and I get 7 wins out of 10 trades.
2) with martingale methods (doubling up on losing trades), I can turn that 70% success rate into a 90% success rate, or even higher. You get all happy because you feel like you're such a good trader...
3) ...then you incur that one trade that doesn't come back (like my recent short on GBL, from 145, when it instead went all the way to 152), and it blows out your account.

Martingale is a lethal illusion for those ashamed of losing, and you don't solve this problem by writing on the blackboard one hundred times:

I will not use martingale methods...
I will not use martingale methods...

Self-control doesn't do it, as I said before.

You must instead fight the problem at the root of your desire to use martingale methods to avoid losing. You must therefore remove your fear of losing.

You must train yourself to love losses, and make yourself understand what a loss means, and why you should not be obsessed with winning and succeeding every time. You should understand that no one says (except maybe your sick father) that everything in life has to go your way. You have to reckon with reality and accept it. And reality is never 100% according to your optimal world and according to your wishes, unless we're talking about math or something like that.

Trading is the furthest thing from math, and furthest thing from a controlled environment, where everything acts as expected.

That is why control freaks will find it particularly difficult, if not impossible, until they cease to be control freaks.

Other exercises I did today:

There was a persistent noise, from a cell phone whose battery was dying.

I felt the urge to get up and turn it off.

Instead I let it go for half an hour with its beeping noise. I didn't scratch my head, and I didn't flinch. I decided that it would not bother me and it did not bother me.

I just created, next to the excel sheet "telltale signs of frustration", another sheet called "sources of frustration", and I'll set out to practice with such sources, until, like in the chart game, I won't flinch at things that used to bother me, because they don't go according to my wishes:



I've just added a couple more:
Beeping noises
People singing at office
People yawning out loud
Child screaming in other room (neighbor)
Losses at the chart game
Stoploss being hit at chart game
Door open at work.
People talking in the hallway (resist the temptation of closing the door)

----

Less than 24 hours later, I am at work, and I have just experienced one of those that used to be "sources of frustration", that I'll have to add to my sheet: someone who's not greeting me properly in the hallway or outright ignoring me. It used to hurt me and drive me mad for days, to the point that I would not say hi to that person ever again, given that he "owed me a greeting". Well, it just happened again, for whatever reason, and I won't investigate it or ruminate as I used to, because I am accepting it not fighting it. For whatever reason, this person didn't greet me, and I won't make a big deal out of it. This is reality. I can decide to ignore the person in the future or whatever is more convenient for me, but right now I decide that I won't dwell on it any longer, because it is useless. It works. The memory of the "offense" is gone. I am not offended, I am not angry and I am not frustrated, and I am not vengeful, and yet it just happened a few minutes ago. Good practice.

 

[Yamato]

Jack Ma, amazing story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/15/technology/15alibaba.html?pagewanted=print&_r=1&

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alibaba_Group

Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE: BABA) is a publicly traded Hangzhou-based group of Internet-based e-commerce businesses, including business-to-business online web portals, online retail and payment services, a shopping search engine and data-centric cloud computing services. In 2012, two of Alibaba’s portals handled 1.1 trillion yuan ($170 billion) in sales, more than competitors eBay and Amazon.com combined.[3] The company primarily operates in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and at closing time, on the date of its historic initial public offering (IPO), 19 September 2014, Alibaba's market value was measured as US$231 billion.[4]

 

[Yamato]

Very interesting... these guys all look European, yet they're between China, North Korea and Japan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primorsky_Krai#Demographics

Demographics in the past[edit]
As a part of Qing Empire, a few Tungusic and Paleosiberian peoples lived here prior to Russian colonization: Udeges, Nanais, Nivkhs, Orochs, Ulchs, Oroks, and Manchus.

Contemporary demographics[edit]
Population: According to the 2010 Census, the population of the krai is 1,956,497,[8] down from 2,071,210 recorded in the 2002 Census,[13] and further down from 2,258,391 recorded in the 1989 Census.[14] Due to its geographical location, the krai boasts a mixture of not only ethnic Russians, but also Koreans, Volga Germans, Buriats, Nanais, and Orochs. The indigenous Udege and their sub-minority, the Taz, are the region's aboriginals.

Ethnic groups
In the 2010 Census, the following ethnic groups were listed:[8]

Russian 92.5%
Ukrainian 2.8%
Korean 1%
Tatar 0.6%
Uzbek 0.5%
Belorussian 0.3%
Armenian 0.3%
Azeri 0.2%
Mordvin 0.1%
Chinese 0.2%
others 1.5%

It's even worse than the Europeans in South Africa. These people have completely colonized the place and removed all the indigenous.

The Russians did the same thing that the Americans did in America, where the indigenous population is now a tiny minority of 1%.

It's funny though, because if you go there, they treat you like ****, some people, because they feel like they own the place and you're a foreigner.