FRUSTRATION & FAILURE FUTURES

                                             My Week So Far

Well, it all started good enough very early Tuesday morning [Monday being a Holiday and not worth even looking at except for the weekly open figure], but went downhill very fast. If we could somehow trade “frustration & failure” futures, I’d be long about 1000 contracts by now.

I got to my computer screen about 1 A.M. Tuesday morning, and since very little was happening, I went into the kitchen to make some breakfast. Not content with cereal or just toast, I decided to make a real breakfast; veggie omelet with bacon on the side and some honey wheat toast with raspberry jam.

One nanosecond after the bacon hit the frying pan the dog was underneath my feet.

[Yea, OK, I’ll throw a couple of strips on here for you – I got you covered.]

When I’m finished I put my meal on the kitchen table with my laptop and turned around to grab a paper towel from the sink. No paper towels, so I walk around the corner to the pantry and grabbed another roll of paper towels. I’m like 2 seconds removed from the table; I turn the corner and my meal is gone; omelet, bacon, toast nada, zip, zero, and zilch; sitting on the chair licking his chops is the dog.

I walk over and say, putting my thumb and forefinger very close together, “you know, I came this close to majoring in taxidermy in college.”

However, this is what the dog hears;

                         Great! I’ll Have Seconds & Then We Play

Once I’m settled in, nothing is happening in gold. As the hours go by I am growing increasingly frustrated with the price action. By 9:30 – 9:45 A.M. my head is ready to explode; we got maybe 3 to 3 ½ hours to go until the close and all I’ve seen the last 9 hours is “up a buck, down a buck” price action.

I can’t take it anymore; I throw the laptop on my desk and head out with the dog for a very long walk. When I come back about 4 hours later I see what happened about 5 minutes after I left and then into the close.

Am I frustrated? Yup.

Have I failed? Yup.

Will I fail again in the future? Yup.

Do I care? Nope, not as long as there isn’t any actual money lost by my stupidity.

Maybe it was the tides, the astrological alignments, or the trading Gods who for some reason were angry with me. Simply put, I couldn’t take another minute looking at that screen without putting my fist through it.

So, I missed a nice $15 move down [that expanded the weekly range], that the algo caught by the way, from my stupidity.

Now, I’m going to tell you why most people can’t handle being professional traders; it’s because they can’t effectively deal with frustration and failure.

Forget winning, and all that goes with it, for just one second. Any chimp can handle winning trades. How do you handle all the missed opportunities, ill conceived trades, and too early/late liquidations? Do the woulda shoulda’s crawl under your skin and bother you?

For most people they do. If you have never been in a trading pit, you can’t begin to realize how much abuse other traders intentionally throw at you to get you off your game; it’s non-stop throughout the entire day.

In other words, it’s a life of frustration and failure; and that’s with a winning algorithm!! Can you imagine what it’s like for others in the game?

You live your trading life like a duck; water hits you and it runs right off you like nothing ever happened.

Have a great day everyone.

-vegas