Thursday, November 11, 2010
11/11/2010 It's been a while..........
Notes to self...........
when I was in highschool I had a very smart friend who wasn't scared to tell you just how smart he really was. This guy was just a little arrogant because he pulled straight A's. We both by chance had a class together.. it was physics. A great class to test your brain right? He challenged me to do better than him with one caveat.... we had to only spend the same amount of time studying together and no more. He was in the neighborhood so we just went to one or the others house and did ALL of our studying together for all classes, even ones we didn't share. It was a great challenge and granted he did study more than I normally would have but that was OK... it was just one semester that I wasn't out as much with the car and girls!
There were 500 points possible in the class. I got 495 and he got 494. He never let me live that down. I remember using my desire to not lose or even stronger.. to not let him win because he kinda pissed me off to keep me going. It worked very well. It was also the only semester I got straight A's as well.
Later in college it was BioChem that got me pissed off. We had this professor that was a real pain in the ass and he liked to randonmly call on the 300 people by chair number to answer questions. the first semester wasn't very good for me. I think it was borderline D but close to C. Not good. I got nailed for questions as well. Over Christmas break I channelled that anger toward him asking me questions (really no more than anyone else) that I could not answer and publicly embarrasing me (really no more than anyone else again as even my "smart" friends were flunking. It turns out that this class was the great sort class for med students. If you don't get a B then you were encouraged to not proceed into pre-med or medical school! I didn't know that going into the class of course!) I turned that anger into the motivation to be able to answer every single question he could possibly ask and not miss one! Well I was able to do that and I didn't miss a single question the last semester. I got an A for that semester and barely a B in the class.
It seem that I like to raise to challenges by and staying motivated by focusing my "anger" toward a goal and then using that "anger" to keep me on track. In light of all of this I have decided to focus my engergy (not going to use "anger" anymore because it really isn't that I'm angry, I think it's more that I love the challenge) toward successful trading of a system by reminding myself of a few choice comments from a guy I took a seminar from 6 years ago..... He kinda really pissed me off back then and so I am going to let that collect energy and then focus that toward following a solid plan. I will be backtesting that plan today and tomorrow and for as long as it takes using the unoptimized yellow dot entry and no more than 2 or 3 exits, yellow dot being one of them, and emergency stop being another. There is a video by George in the trading authority room that I need to watch before I put this into action. I hope to be able to get over here this weekend (old house with internet) to do that. Lately I have been sidetracked by trying to write code to test things, writing code to autotrade, and a rather large move into a new house that is still not quite done. I am going to stop diverting my efforts of writing code or other backtesting until the first system is done and running well. then I can spend time following my folly! Until than head to the grindstone!
As you already know... this email was more for me than you!
Trader X
when I was in highschool I had a very smart friend who wasn't scared to tell you just how smart he really was. This guy was just a little arrogant because he pulled straight A's. We both by chance had a class together.. it was physics. A great class to test your brain right? He challenged me to do better than him with one caveat.... we had to only spend the same amount of time studying together and no more. He was in the neighborhood so we just went to one or the others house and did ALL of our studying together for all classes, even ones we didn't share. It was a great challenge and granted he did study more than I normally would have but that was OK... it was just one semester that I wasn't out as much with the car and girls!
There were 500 points possible in the class. I got 495 and he got 494. He never let me live that down. I remember using my desire to not lose or even stronger.. to not let him win because he kinda pissed me off to keep me going. It worked very well. It was also the only semester I got straight A's as well.
Later in college it was BioChem that got me pissed off. We had this professor that was a real pain in the ass and he liked to randonmly call on the 300 people by chair number to answer questions. the first semester wasn't very good for me. I think it was borderline D but close to C. Not good. I got nailed for questions as well. Over Christmas break I channelled that anger toward him asking me questions (really no more than anyone else) that I could not answer and publicly embarrasing me (really no more than anyone else again as even my "smart" friends were flunking. It turns out that this class was the great sort class for med students. If you don't get a B then you were encouraged to not proceed into pre-med or medical school! I didn't know that going into the class of course!) I turned that anger into the motivation to be able to answer every single question he could possibly ask and not miss one! Well I was able to do that and I didn't miss a single question the last semester. I got an A for that semester and barely a B in the class.
It seem that I like to raise to challenges by and staying motivated by focusing my "anger" toward a goal and then using that "anger" to keep me on track. In light of all of this I have decided to focus my engergy (not going to use "anger" anymore because it really isn't that I'm angry, I think it's more that I love the challenge) toward successful trading of a system by reminding myself of a few choice comments from a guy I took a seminar from 6 years ago..... He kinda really pissed me off back then and so I am going to let that collect energy and then focus that toward following a solid plan. I will be backtesting that plan today and tomorrow and for as long as it takes using the unoptimized yellow dot entry and no more than 2 or 3 exits, yellow dot being one of them, and emergency stop being another. There is a video by George in the trading authority room that I need to watch before I put this into action. I hope to be able to get over here this weekend (old house with internet) to do that. Lately I have been sidetracked by trying to write code to test things, writing code to autotrade, and a rather large move into a new house that is still not quite done. I am going to stop diverting my efforts of writing code or other backtesting until the first system is done and running well. then I can spend time following my folly! Until than head to the grindstone!
As you already know... this email was more for me than you!
Trader X
