Well, my day has been pretty much depressing, so I am going to sit down, have some wine and proceed to incrementally update this post until it is finished. :)
I have no idea what will come out of me once I start feeling the buzz of truth so you and I are in the same club.
There are so many topics floating around in my head throughout the day. Luckily I was able to share one of them by talking into my phone and uploading it to this blog, but many of them are so powerful that I just want to pull over and fire away on the keyboard. But I just let them sit there rather than half-assidly get them out.
I suppose one of the things that comes into my mind when I think about trading, is that all of life is trading. We are all trading all the time in different ways. Many months ago I met a stranger at a coffee shop. We met on-line and I thought this person might be interesting, but our energies were very out of sync right off the bat. Then, when she told me that she lost a lot of money in the markets and that trading is gambling, I knew we just weren't going to go anywhere... Not because she badmouthed something I loved, but because she was so hurt and so unrelentingly opposed to listening to anything I had to say about it. Hell, I am by no means a religious guy, but if someone wants to tell me about their religion, I am all ears. I love hearing what people think.
As long as it's what they actually think, as if it is their personal insight, rather than something they are relating to me because they think that is what they think. Too many people repeat shit without actually taking the time to think about what is coming out of their mouths.
Anyways, what the fuck am I trying to say here?....
Why do people do what they do. I guess that's the focus I am presenting here, or trying to. More specifically at the moment, why do people want to trade the markets?
Mark Douglas, who wrote a fucking amazing book called "Trading in the zone"
mentions that the prime motivation for a lot of people to get into trading is to be able to exercise complete freedom. I can certainly understand that. He then goes on to mention just how little freedom there is in regards to the ways you must adapt in order to be successful and it is a shock to people. I personally knew from the age of 15 that trading was what I wanted to do for a living. I thought to myself... "People go to college to get the skills to get the good paying jobs... If I can learn to trade, I can bypass that altogether and do something that makes a lot of sense to me and enriches me. Lots of people with the high paying jobs don't even have that." More or less, that's where my mind was at 15 years old.
I am coming to feel like I should choose specific topics to write about for each blog entry and write about just that, but that is not the way my mind works, so, for once in my bloggy endeavors I am just going to keep rambling and giving you what comes purely at the moment I am here at my keyboard.
I was thinking yesterday, that about the kind of work ethic it takes to become profitable at trading... I saw myself typing out an expression basically asking the question "What kind of work ethic do you have at your current job?" Are you doing the bare minimum to get by, or are you putting your all into it? Because I'll tell you right now, if you aren't the kind of person who puts your all into your job, even if its wiping down counters and keeping a restaurant clean, trading is probably not for you. Not because it requires long hours, because depending on the approach you take with it, it might not, but its all about who you are as a person. If our primary goal in getting into trading is because you want to be rich, I think that's the wrong mindset. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with wanting to be rich, but if that is your main goal, it kinda says something about your character in terms of where your true focus is.
For me, at first, I think like everyone else I wanted to trade and I wanted to be fucking rich from it. I have always had kick ass work ethic though, even since my first job as a grocery bagger...
I guess my point is, if trading is an escape from responsibility for you, I think you might be looking into the wrong thing. This shit is hard, and you are responsible for everything that happens.
I remember back when I was 18 years old... I signed up for a network marketing company Called NEWAYS. They had this commitment paper you could sign, and it was a commitment to yourself and your business that you would be making $10,000 per month within 2 years of signing that agreement. Well, I signed it. I had no clue what the commitment truly meant, but I was still approaching it as "If this is a necessary step I must take, then so be it". At 18 years old, 2 years sounds like a long time to wait to make that king of money. It's much easier to buy into the imaginary story you see in your head at that age, its why young people have so much damn drive. They haven't been hurt enough by reality to grow this cynicism about life that they are always seeing in older people. Thats one thing that was always in the back of my mind as a young adult, but never came to the forefront enough for me to realize what it was... That cynicism people carry so often it seems natural in the adult world so a part of you never questions it... It is so important to try and develop a balance between the two.
When I signed that commitment I was dead serious about doing it. They had a set "System" that was proving relatively successful. They had a very specifically written letter/script written up that you mail out to people. The response rate was about 1-3%. I don't recall the exact details, but I believed in the system so much, that I maxed out my credit cards for about $3,000 at the time, to send out as many letters as possible. And these weren't just random addresses, these were screened by a company for people who had purchased something through the mail in the last 90 days or expressed interest in doing so. I sent out as much as I could afford and out of thousands of people, I got only 1 response.
It was a lady, and the first thing she asked me was "How has this been working for you?" and I told her, "You're the first person to respond, this is my first mailing". Well, guess what? That answer wasn't very confidence inspiring, so I never heard from her again. I was determined not to lie about it, or fake my success in order to coax people into joining. I wasn't that kind of person then, and I am still not that kind of person now.
Anyways, I told my main up-line (anyone higher than you in the order of things) about my response percentage and he was kinda surprised I had gotten such a little response... Long story short, nothing ever happened besides me buying some product and spending a shit load of money on a printing and mailing service.
Let me ask you this though: Does that mean it was all a scam? I think the average person would say so simply because they got burned, but me, I knew it was all still a viable business. There were simply problems with my approach and it was really not too different than the business of trading. You see, when I decided to put all my credit on the line, I was making a trade. I was doing what most novice traders do, I was betting my entire stake on an opportunity because I hadn't had anyone around to show me the ropes, and if I did, I was far too independent to want to listen. In fact, I recall now that I called another up-line of mine and he said I shouldn't have put all that money into it at once. In the parallel of trading, I traded all my capital away on one opportunity, instead of risking only a portion of it because I had any kind of risk in mind.
Did I understand the rules? hell yeah: Mail out letters, get a response, sign people up, make money, repeat. Did I understand the principle? Not really. Part of the principle of a business is the one thing most businesses don't spend enough time assessing: Risk. Had I managed things differently, and spent some time talking to the experienced people far above me that where kind enough to make themselves available... things could have turned out differently.
Was this company a scam? Is it total gambling to be a part of a network marketing company? No, its not, and just because I lost 3 grand to it does not give me the right to declare it as such. And you know what? in the last 3 years, I have driven by that companies main headquarters and seen them remodeling, because things are going awesome with them... I still believe in the power of network marketing, and I still believe that company makes and sell kick ass products.
But... BUT, I just remembered why I lost interest. I remember that after everything that happened, I called the man that mailed me personally to recruit me. I told him something along the lines of "I think I am just going to stick with trading, because with trading, my results depend entirely on me and I don't have to spend so much energy trying to get other people doing what they really don't want to do"
So fuck Neways.
By the way, I am not just posting this blog for myself, I am doing it for you. Not that I am awesome or anything, but it does take a lot of time and I imagine someone reading this and enjoying it. SO, it gets rather lonely and pointless feeling if I keep doing this and no one ever says anything. If you have thoughts or questions, that would be great and I would be happy to respond.
-Francisco of the clan McCloud.
Fort Wayne, Erndererner.
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