May

1

If there's one overriding principle of successful market navigation, it is that survival is the most important thing of all. The market will always be there, and if you have an edge, there will be a chance to rise to your rightful place in the firmament — if you survive.

Because survival is so important, I am always on the lookout for survival lessons from other fields. One of the reasons I always read Bo Keeley's writings is that he has had at least 81 near-death experiences, and by dint of proper planning and response, survived them all.

One of the best things about the Patrick O'Brian series is that in each of his critical battles, the hero, Jack Aubrey, goes through innumerable steps to survive and minimize the deaths of his crew, often changing tactics midstream, so that what would have led to certain death instead led to a long, beloved life.

I have 100 books on survival, at least one of which is on my desk at all times. I have books on survival at sea, survival in the mountains, survival on the battlefield. The problem is that others know infinitely more about the principles of survival in such fields than I do. However, I recently had some direct experiences related to survival that gave me confidence that I might have something to add in the continuing search for lessons.

For almost three months, I have been visited off and on by a racking cough and runny nose. The symptoms were the same as the flu. I have always been very resilient to colds and flu, and I expected each day that the symptoms would disappear and that I would go on my merry way. But on Sunday, April 22nd, after a game of tennis and family activities, I suddenly found that I could not walk without agonizing chest pain. I was about to have dinner at a restaurant with a trusted companion and before the first course arrived I asked her to pay the check so we could leave. She said she would call paramedics and I told her not to. I begged her to listen to me and do nothing. I stepped outside for some air, and within 30 seconds, two fire trucks and an ambulance had screeched to a stop on Park Avenue. Despite my efforts to elude them, they wrestled me in and administered tests. I rejected their advice to come with them to the nearest emergency room, and signed a release form stating that I knew I might lose my life in the next minute.

I went home and slept. In the morning, I could not muster the energy to walk 10 yards to my trading screens to see where things were opening. Those concerned called an assortment of relatives to persuade me of the error of my ways, and there was much talk about possible heart problems — which I refuted with elegant logical and philosophical proofs and reminders that I had played sport every day for the last 50 years. Furthermore, I refused to be transported by ambulance to the indignities and travails of an E.R.

But one thing led to another, and a triumvirate of magnificently determined women tricked and manipulated me into an E.R., where a battery of tests quickly revealed that I had pneumonia and that one of my lungs had stopped working. My brother who was working behind and in the trenches the whole time, subsequently sent an article indicating that my particular condition was associated with at least a 25% mortality risk within the next 30 days, and I submitted, albeit not without further complaints, to the ministrations of doctors.

Here is what I learned about survival from my experience:

1) The worst person to make a decision when survival is at issue is the person whose life is in danger. He may be concerned about discommoding others — or the Grim Reaper may have dulled his senses. If I had not been hurried into treatment against my wishes … I won't finish that sentence.

All market traders should have a designated person to take over decision-making in their positions when survival is in question.

2) For three months, I had been subjected to extremely non-random changes in my health. This had to be a 1-in-1,000 shot. When my symptoms didn't respond to the usual remedies, I should have seen a doctor.

When a market starts reacting in a completely non-random fashion, especially when it's against you, you should throw away the databases and get down to fundamental principles. Any persistent rise such as what we've been witnessing in the stock market for the past month, or the non-random episodes that happen so frequently in the commodities and foreign exchange markets — anything that refuses to give you even one chance of a dignified exit — should be treated with the most serious consideration, as survival may be involved.

3) I was admitted as a cardiac patient. If I had gone to a cardiologist's office or a dignified heart center, I am certain that I could have talked my way out. Instead, I was put into a hellacious, poorly ventilated, noisy, crowded emergency room where I received 20 tests in an hour or two and quickly learned that the problem was my lung, not my heart.

The lesson for market people is that during a survival episode, simple routine tests or systems of the kind that brought you into the trade are no longer sufficient. What is required is a wide-ranging approach that may have nothing to do with the original system.

4) A friend of mine told me 20 years ago that the only way to get good medical attention these days is to be on the board of directors of a hospital. I don't believe that the statistics on survival for poor and rich bear this humorous platitude out, but I do think that the only way to convalesce in quiet, or to die with dignity, is to be a friend of a key board member.

Because I have some important friends, I was whisked from the E.R. into a fancy section of the hospital where it was possible to breathe and to accommodate all my well-wishers and caregivers (although I was pegged mistakenly as a diabetic and the TV monitor was programmed to show me Diabetic Channel only). Somehow the name "Soros" kept being wafted about. The powers that be may have believed that my potential contributions to mankind would be of a Palindrome-like magnitude. It was rather amusing since Soros, I believe, would have been very pleased to have me shuffle off the mortal coil at any time during the last 10 years. But such is the power of reputation.

5) One of the items listed in the Patient's Bill of Rights posted in every hospital is that you won't be discharged from the hospital until an advocate for you has pleaded your case. Apparently, the tangled web of the third-party payment system so frequently impairs the profitability of some patients that these appeals have been made a basic right.

It would be great if they had a similar system in place in the market. Cases like Amaranth Advisers and Long-Term Capital Management make clear that it is not entirely likely that you will be accorded the dignity of such checks and balances before you are discharged from your positions. At least you should understand this in advance and try to set down the terms of timing, execution and procedures by which such discharge would be made.

Another key aspect of the Patient's Bill of Rights is the protection of privacy. Apparently somewhere along the way somebody in charge realized that patients are human beings and they like to be accorded the respect in their persons that they try to maintain in their homes.

Any market trades that are not kept private are an invitation to the ruination of your financial health. The levels of your stops are too tempting to those on the other side; the wolf point at which you must pull the cord, once disclosed, may almost certainly be expected to become a target.
 
6) Most deaths occur between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. My nurses tell me that this time is known as "the wolf hours." While many people think night nursing is a breeze, somehow everything seems to happen in those three hours. I dreamed every night that the Grim Reaper was standing by my bedside trying to entice me down into Hades, and I woke with a start each time and asked my night nurse to minister to me.

The key times to worry about your demise in a market position are approximately those same hours - the closing hours in Asia and the opening hours in Europe, the time when the final tumultuous gyrations of the e-minis seek to send you and your positions to Davy Jones' locker.

A Friend continues:


How to steer between the Scylla of wreckage and the Charybdis of certain death:

For many years, I have harbored the goal of making a citizen's arrest. People do things wrong so often, especially violating rights to life liberty and property. I felt, as Jay Gaynor said, it was every citizen's duty to take the law into his own hand and act as a policeman would in arresting the malefactors. He won the mayorship of New York on this platform.

I made that citizen's arrest, ending up paying one-eighth the cost of the policeman's heart attack, lost every decision, paid the other side's legal fees, and was out a big ace before that one was over.

I've also wanted to experience the heroic feeling of liberty in Beethoven's Fidelio prisoner chorus upon seeing the first light of day after being in prison darkness for years. I wanted to combine this with the escape that Churchill made from the Boers by walking out of the Transvaal prison in top hat and coat in complete nonchalance and then descending into the rails.

I was more successful in this pursuit today as I dressed in my normal clothing, got out my tennis racket, and strolled out of the confined prison I was in, with windows that didn't open for seven days straight, and a feeling of fetidness waiting in the wings to engulf me at every stage. All the while the doctors tried to track down someone who would take responsibility for discharging me, even though I refused their last three X-rays and blood tests. I was much more successful in this second pursuit and I made my escape to the Central Park air at 1 pm yesterday.

At taking that first breath of fresh air, I felt utter happiness, the feeling of life's rekindling itself. It was exactly the counterpart of Beethoven's prisoner's song.

I feel the same exhilaration after exiting a losing position that I feel after coming into the fresh air. I believe they are both life-enhancing acts, and should be taken much more often and earlier. However, this must be contrasted with the terrible wrongness of the morphine drip, the one thing they were sure was working,

After making my escape, I voluntarily came back to the prison, feeling like Willie Sutton, who found it so difficult on the outside because of the kinds of people he met inside and knowing that a posse of concerned parties who had done much good would be discommoded by his absence. I didn't want the extra X-rays and blood tests for a simple reason. The change in my health that might have come from any intervention resulting from the tests had an expected value of zero, whereas the costs of the pain and discomfort of the tests was quite tangible. It was impossible for me to explain the concept of the value of information to the doctors who so earnestly wanted more and more facts to base their further treatments on. Ultimately, there was an impasse and I was discharged properly and walked out a free man.


Dean Parisian writes:

Sometimes women just know best. Don't fight the tape and don't' fight the E.R. help. Fighting can seriously affect one's livelihood. Ah, hope and wishful thinking can be a wonderful thing. They can make things happen! 

Vincent Andres adds:

Yes, survival is the first point. The rest will always be there.

Resting is very important for a durable recovery. Time to fully recuperate is not lost time. I hope you'll find the time for that. Hear the wise women!

A prescription suggestion: Two weeks of cool trout or salmon fly-fishing in Ireland. Remember The Quiet Man. The place where they made the movie is really lovely. 

Jim Sogi extends:

It is good to consider one's death every day. Nothing else is more certain statistically. Would you be happy with your life if you died today? It is not morbidity; it is a celebration of what is important in life. Were you 10 times happier when your bank account grew to 10 times what it was? Were you happier to be hugged by a child? Hearing recently of a close friend's near death from appendicitis, skiing the life and death gnarly in Alaska, feeling my own mortality face to face, seeing my aging parents, makes the important choices in life loom large. Health has to be the first priority, then family. That is where the greatest wealth is, not in the bank.

David Humbert remarks:

You have learned the awful truth that hospitals are dangerous places, and to be avoided unless absolutely necessary. As a general rule, your constitutional well-being is a reasonable proxy for how you are recovering from a medical event. In other words, if you are feeling well, you are probably improving internally. Expect weariness, remember that your body's immediate response to injury of any type (surgery, infection, etc.) is to cannibalize skeletal muscle in order to obtain the protein building blocks necessary to repair tissue. This leads to an obligatory weakness that can only be overcome when the body shifts from its catabolic (breakdown) stage to its anabolic (building) stage. That occurs at a variable time but probably sometime 10-14 days after the original insult. 

Kevin Humbert adds:

“All market traders should have a designated person to take over decision-making in their positions when survival is in question.”

There is a designated person who often takes over when survival is in question, the Margin Clerk. Heed the warning! 

George Zachar comments:

In New York State, you cannot be discharged over your own objection, without the hospital jumping through onerous legal hoops.

After my father had his gall bladder removed, NYU tried to discharge him 48 hours later. He was in his late 70s, weak, and obviously needed longer to recoup. Nonetheless, the staff hectored him to sign the release, and it wasn't until I said "you will literally have to carry him out over my body, and I'm not bluffing" that they relented.

Once they saw he was going into a different insurance category as a result of my statement, the staff demeanor flipped from bean counting to healing, and all went well.


Comments

Name

Email

Website

Speak your mind

Archives

Resources & Links

Search