Stress, Pain, and Frustration - My Life as a Futures Trader
While making a little money helps a bit, the stress, pain and frustration inherent in trading futures is significant.
The fact is the market is dominated by the commercials. They have invested significant time and money researching how to let the traders take as little as possible. Part of that strategy is designed to create frustration and excess confusion.
In addition, since we must trade in the context of uncertainty, the quality of a trade is dependent on its “statistical” expected value, not the actual return realized. We however do have the ability to judge the trade, in the certainty of hindsight, primarily based on how much money was made.
In hindsight, just about every trade is bad. Either it is a loser, or even if you made money, probably, a fair amount was left on the table.
And if that were not enough, the technology infrastructure that we depend on is not very robust.
While I have found that it is very important to have very good systems running on properly sized equipment and bandwidth, shit seems to happen every once in a while none the less. I have found that it is very easy for a technical problem to take me out of the zone, and very difficult to find it once lost.
I was watching a show about the 10 greatest natural wonders on the earth. One of them was Mt. Everest. They showed some clips of climbers. To me it was ridiculous. Freezing, not enough oxygen, crevasses everywhere, ice on all the paths, and then there were the dangerous parts. All I could think was why would anyone do that.
I guess for the same reason that people trade futures.
Managing the stress, pain, and frustrations are probably one of the most important skills for the trader to acquire. If I ever do, I’ll be sure to post how it is done. <gg>
As much as I dislike the Banksters and MM’s (Market Manipulators) I have come to understand that they don’t cause me to loose money, I do.
While I think there are good reasons to trade, I don’t think that making money is one of them. There can be no doubt that there are much easier ways to make a living.
But if you like to be challenged, stay with it. |
