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To: Tom Trader who wrote (44769)	6/4/1998 1:17:00 PM
From: Patrick Slevin	Respond to of 58727

Dealing with emotional distractions is certainly a negative. Telephone interruptions, kids wandering into my office, all these things and more have taught me to drop everything. Put the system on auto-pilot and come back to the intuitive side when thinking is more clear. If your thinking is not clear then your trading will suffer if you rely on it. Sort of a Zen thing, I suppose. Which reminds me of a story! (What doesn't? The Irish love to hear and tell stories.) Last June, it was on the third Friday of the month......I guess you could check a chart to see what happened that day but I don't have to. I remember. At 2:50 ET I was going to put on a killer short----intuitively. Suddenly, the limo driver shows up to take us to the airport an hour early. The disruption took my mind off the trade and I did not take it. When I got to Palm Beach I dropped off my family at the hotel and went over to see a trader I know there. Guess what he said? At about the exact same time, a realtor called him about property he wanted to buy, Bell called him about phone lines he wanted to install, and on and on. He had the presence of mind to slam the phone down on all of 'em, shorted, and the market dropped like a rock in the last hour. I don't remember exactly how much but we're talking double-digit spoo points. I learned something from that, and it wasn't just the fact that I would never use that limo service again, either. Anyway, we are coming up on the time that I plan to get short......see you later.