I was doing some leisure reading after work today since the market is closed and had an epiphany regarding my trading. The book is, About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior, by Colonel David H. Hackworth (US Army, retired) and Julie Sherman. I recently bought it off the cheap books rack at a local college bookstore.
The author is describing the pre-Vietnam, Cold War era US Army. I'm going to quote the whole paragraph, omitting the cuss words.
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Everyone at the top - and it filtered down quick to the junior-officer level - was too busy doing to do any thinking, any real appraising or reevaluating. On one of our secret recons we bumped into four young West German officers. They were not examining future war positions. They were not even on duty. What they were were four totally professional soldiers on leave spending their time going over the ground of previous battles. Studying. Being reflective. Theirs was a serious interest in the business of soldiering, and one seen all too infrequently in the U.S. Army of the day. This was especially so in the infantry, where being labeled, "introspective" or "studious" was close to the kiss of death, those words having become almost synonymous with "Distracted," "lazy," or "antisocial." Instead we had, "Wow, will you look at that Lieutenant Wonderboy? Isn't he moving! Boy, isn't he aggressive! What a can-do guy!" with the admirers themselves moving and grooving at breakneck speed, unable to stop long enough to notice that Lieutenant Wonderboy was actually like a dog chasing its own tail, and never getting anywhere at all.
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My take home lesson from reading this paragraph is that on any given time I do not
have to make a trade. If I do not understand the current state of the markets or if I do understand and my entry point for each of 5 pairs was 20 minutes ago but not now, I can sit back and not make a trade.
To me, this is a very profound idea.
One of my weaknesses is that I want to always be doing something. In the future, if I don't see any opportunities for a good trade right at the moment I will pause and reflect. Maybe I will make a limit order for where I want to enter the trade and see if the market gives me that opportunity. Maybe I will put a whole different set of 12 currencies on the trading station and shake things up. Maybe, just maybe, I will simply analyze some possible future trades and wait for another day, knowing that I am not losing money right at that moment.
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After writing the rest of this post I used the preview post button. I realize that I have missed the point of my own quote of the day. Instead of jumping into the trading station hunting for trades right as soon as I start each trading session, I think I might better serve myself to take some time to just look at the markets and understand what is going on. Do any pairs have strong agreement between daily and 4 hours trends? If so, I'll come back to them later for closer examination. Which reports are being released soon? Maybe I want to stay out of that currency altogether if I don't have a grasp of what impact that report will have. At any rate, I'm sure that it will not hurt my trading to slow down, understand things better and then make a more rational trade.
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Maybe some of the rest of you will use this thread to share quotes that have inspired you and helped your trading.
