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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bull_derrick who wrote (22916)	3/14/2005 10:07:56 AM
From: kodiak_bull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23153

BD, As to the golf analogy, let me change mine to accommodate yours: Speculation [Golf] involves these steps: 1. Capital analysis [acquiring, checking and maintaining golf clubs etc.] 2. Capital allocation [checking for golf balls, tees, greens tool] 3. Selection of instrument and entry [Driving off the tee; some prefer to drive with an old persimmon wood driver that Grandpa swore by/at, others prefer to use the driver that Golf Magazine reviewed most recently, others go to expensive golf seminars to learn the proper swing, others work back and forth on what they do and how they do (an iterative process) to see what really worked in the past and how it might be tweaked given current conditions] 4. Position management [all adjustments and shots coming after the tee shot, including hazard management, wind assessment, etc.] 5. Stop loss management [putting--where the really good and really poor scoring seems to occur] 6. Exit rules [deciding whether to quit after hitting 3 balls and throwing one 5-iron in the pond on the 8th fairway, whether the thunderstorm looks "playable", whether you should let the guys drinking beer behind you (who have already driven into your group once) play through, whether tennis or croquet might be a more appropriate game). Selecting the driver and waggling and banging it off the tee appear to be 80-90% of the game of golf to those who know little about the game simply because it can be 95% of the distance on par 3s, 70% of the distance on some short par 4s and 60% of the distance on the four par 5s that courses have, and for those who have trouble getting off the tee, it can be 50%, but for real golfers driving is maybe 15% of the game of golf, if we are looking at scoring. I have heard it said that a poor golfer (high 90s) can take 12-16 strokes off his score by managing the each hole's last eighty yards to a ten yard circle around the cup. Go from a 95 game to an 82 game, and do it by half the principles of Pitch 'n Putt! Since in trading we are looking at scoring, and looking at effective traders, I think the emphasis on entry (driving) is way overdone. Drive for show but put for dough can be, to a speculator, Cool entry stuff for show, but everything else makes the dough (waiting, position sizing, ego management, capital allocation, risk management, etc.) Kb