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Strategies & Market Trends : Classic TA Workplace
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To: skinowski who wrote (77512)7/16/2003 10:37:53 PM
From: AllansAlias  Read Replies (5) of 209892
 
Every trader... every single one... has ugly setbacks. I think the good ones take some time off, then dig back in and make some adjustments: are my tools OK? are they suited to the timeframe I am trying to trade? is my mental approach proper?

The worst setback I had was the summer of 2000. I had studied manias enough to know damn well we were in the real thing. Even before things got queer I would marvel at the stuff folks said and how it was so similar to what was said in the late 1920's. Uncanny. (Even now that the cat is long out of the bag, I could post quotes and people would guess it's Blodgett or some other latter day fool rather than John Jacob Raskob or Herbert Hoover.)

During those days I felt like I was living in a private sort of world, because all of the people around me seemed to have no notion that anything was wrong. Sometimes I even wondered if I was wrong.

I was waiting for that first big crack in the damn. I saw April 4, 2000 go by and I just knew this was it. The market rebounded some and I bought a shitload of puts toward the end of April; mostly July's and some August's. The market held all the way to Sep 1 if I recall correctly. In any case, I lost a fair bit of money. I was right, but the execution was all wrong. Not only did I not allow for enough time, but I bought the puts during a volatility explosion, paying too much for premium.

Anyway, it taught me a lot. The most important thing I learned was that I had a great desire to get better.

Cheers

ps: I would be interesting to hear about some of the setbacks others have had and how they dealt with them.
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