Monday 26 October 2015

Porsche 904

If there is one day in the year when I might expect this blog to set a record for hits, it should probably be the day the clocks go back. With 25 hours to work with, the day is 4% longer than most, but nonetheless it was a pleasing surprise to see the previous record of 793 blown away this weekend with a score of 904.

For those who like this kind of thing, the counter will be at 1,111,111 some time this week, at least for a few minutes.

Moving on to things that are actually interesting, and Trader Feed had another excellent post, including these words:
One of the takeaways that he emphasized is that we never find success by discovering an edge and sticking to it religiously through life. Rather, edges in markets continually evolve and, like all entrepreneurs, traders succeed by adapting to their evolving marketplaces. The question of finding one's success as a trader (or remaking one's success) begins with a more fundamental question: In what respects am I a genius? What am I truly good at? How can I leverage those strengths in the current market environment? It's our strengths that will fuel strong performance, not our copying of others. Perhaps the trader who feels stupid is like the fish judging itself on tree climbing. No amount of efforts to improve climbing will help the fish; only the decision to get in the water and swim.
That brings us to the second--and perhaps more provocative--implication of the multiple geniuses view. If all of us are geniuses in some respect, all of us are also idiots in some fashion. We have our blind spots, our weaknesses, our flaws. If it's our strengths that fuel our success, it's our weaknesses that can derail us. Indeed, sometimes it's excessive reliance on our strengths that makes us idiots!
Perhaps most of us are too modest to consider that we are geniuses in any respect, but most of us have strengths and all of us have weaknesses. While many traders work in teams, and have the opportunity to learn from others, the same can't be said of sports betting traders. It's a very lonely activity. A few years ago, a few communal trading rooms sprang up, but I'm not sure that any are still going. As I mentioned here, people don't like to be told they are wrong, and while coaching people in an office setting has its own challenges, I'd suggest it's a lot easier to get through to someone there than it is to get through to someone set in their ways and thinking independently. I use the term 'thinking' loosely.

No comments: