The thing about trading is that is goes against my universal maxim. The things we are rewarded most for come from times of intense intellectual, physical or emotional burden. So if it’s easy in any of those forms it’s likely to reward us with little or satisfy us only for a moment. Trading however, may call every bit of those but still doesn’t necessarily reward you (right away). On the same token, you might suffer none of that and be rewarded heavenly…luck! It’s the discipline that you build during that process that eventually helps change that. In the short term it’s impossible to distinguish luck from skill.

In trading, you’re always probing for the weakness in the chemistry of the idea and the linkages that make up your view.

One must constantly surveil what is going right and what could derail the trade. Having a view, expressing it through a position, and getting it wrong is ok. That’s the natural progression; the important part is allowing yourself to get things wrong and still be in the game.

We all make decisions under incomplete information though rarely on conflicting information. That’s why I have a love hate relationship with Chess. All of the information is laid out on the table. There are no unknowns other than what next move the opponent will take. Which is the same in poker yet the information necessary to win is largely withheld – only a few key facts show themselves in stages. Many parents teach their kids Chess but they should also teach them Poker.

Delicate balance between being tough minded but open to change. Essentially you are trying to comprehend and reverse engineer the schematic that is global markets which is infinitely complex. As a trader you can never truly believe you are right above all others. Constantly exposing yourself to criticism that the analysis may be wrong. You have to be strong enough to back your judgement otherwise you’d be churning. It’s a delicate mix that will kill you either way; too much humility or too much arrogance

You have to respond to fresh inputs constantly and figure out if they are relevant and how much so. The key is to realize that relevancy changes and shape shifts, and then how potent was it in your original calculus. Information sensitivity has an incredible rate of decay. Markets, like people, become fatigued from hearing the same thing.