My favorite books relating to trading are the Market Wizards series by Jack D. Schwager. I always find myself going back to them and picking up little nuggets each time I do. If you haven’t read these books, I highly suggest you get to them.
In one of the books there is an interview with Steven A. Cohen which features a fantastic piece of advise. In response to the question “What do people do wrong?”, Steven dropped this little nugget:
You have to know what you are, and not try to be what you’re not. If you are a day trader, day trade. If you are an investor, then be an investor. It’s like a comedian who gets up on stage and starts singing. What’s he singing for? He’s a comedian.
This may sound like common sense but in the trading world there are so many things going on that it is very easy to lose yourself in the moment. Emotions like fear and greed kick in which cause you to stray from your plan and soon you find your discipline wavering.
To be successful you need to tune out all the noise and stick to your plan. You need to know what your plan is. You need to follow that plan. Stay disciplined.
Below is a cool story that Fast Money’s Eric Bolling once told a reporter about losing $2,000,000 in one day. I love the last line as it does put things in perspective, you can always make the money back.
Had a particularly heavy loss ever caused him to cry? Bolling is momentarily taken aback, and then laughs. “No, no,” he says with all the tough-guy resolve you would expect from a former Pittsburgh Pirates third baseman, albeit one forced by injury to quit after just two years. “Although …” He pauses, then laughs again, this time a little nervously. “The closest I ever came to crying was in 2002, when my son was in preschool.” He strokes his close-cropped goatee. “It was my day to read a story to the class, and I have a big position on natural gas, 500 spreads that happen to be the wrong way. The market was just ripping that morning. And I’m reading The Spider and the Fly, and I’m getting text messages about where the market’s going, and the sweat is beating up on me.
“But I’m still reading, and when they open it up to questions, the kids turn out to love the story. So I end up having to answer 30 questions, while I’m seeing the market going worse and worse. By the time I get to the trading floor, I am down – should I say this? – $2 million. Two million dollars – because I was reading a story!”
He shrugs. “But what can you do? You try to put it aside, and you focus on trading. And to be honest, you make it back. Not all at once, of course. But you take baby steps, and you do.”
Check out the full story here……
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