Get Your Doom and Gloom Here
Rev Shark
"The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side."
-- James Baldwin
One thing many market players never learn to deal with very well is the cyclical nature of their trading results. We all know that the market is going to go up and down and we prepare ourselves to deal with it, but what we don't anticipate so readily are the ups and downs in our own results.
It doesn't much matter how you approach the market. Long, short, value, momentum or whatever your style may be, there are going to be times when your results aren't that good. The most frustrating aspect of this is that there is only a weak correlation between effort and results. Luck plays a big part in what we do and no matter how skilled we are or how hard we work, we are going to have runs when nothing seems to work.
The casual market player tends to deal with difficulties by ignoring them. If things aren't going well he just lets them sit and eventually the cycle turns and he hasn't suffered too badly. Those of us who work as market professionals have a much more difficult time stepping away when the going gets rough. We keep on pushing even when we should step aside and this often compounds the issues and errors that created our problems in the first place.
Most market participants would be surprised to see how bunched together their profits are if they charted their results. The bulk of their gains come in a fairly short amount of time and the remainder of the time is spent spinning our wheels and not making much progress. The problem, of course, is that we can never be certain when that window of profits is going to open. There is a tendency to think that the moment we turn our backs the market is going to become painfully easy and that we will miss out, so we keep on pushing even when we are having a bad time of it.
The way to deal with this is to simply be aware of it and accept the fact that we are going to have days, weeks or even months when we are going to struggle and be unhappy with our results. Being aware of the cyclical nature or our profits and losses makes it easier to step aside and reassess when the going isn't good.
Many market players are struggling. Long-side trades simply aren't working and if you have been trying to generate gains that way, you very likely have not made much progress. That causes frustration and results in more selling -- and that keeps things frustrating.
We seem to have a perfect storm of negatives coming together this morning. The unrest in Israel is heating up and is close to an all-out war, oil is hitting record highs on the news, inflation and interest rate concerns continue as Japan prepares to raise rates for the first time in many years, and we have to wait a few more days before we start seeing earnings reports. It is tremendously gloomy and negative and that is going to eventually lead to some interesting action.
Our job is to make sure we have our capital ready and are mentally and emotionally prepared to move when the time is right. It isn't right yet but I believe we are getting close.