Aug

31

SwanIn my limited experience, risks such as the "Black Swan" type are unusual. Most of the risk we newbie traders assume are not real risks — only mismanagement of risk. One of the most common is "impulse trading" (i.e., trading without an edge or overtrading).

Well, last week I had a lesson on Impulse Trading. I was driving with my family (wife, kid and the nanny) to the border of our state and country — Jaguarão, a city on the border of Uruguay — to do some shopping at the free market shops.  The travel couldn't be by plane (there's no airport there), so we went on a 5+ hour driving trip.

You know, my boy is almost 3 months now — and he is my first son. So I was driving in a long (for me) journey with my boy in the car. There were moments where one, two or three trucks were  blocking  the road, and of course, I wanted to pass them. Another time, I would risk every chance to pass them. But now I had my kid in the car so I only took the completely free-risk shots. There was nothing in  the world that would made me risk my boy's life in brave and daring driving. No way!

Immediately I felt ashamed of the times I took trades that were not "high Sharpe situations". How could I be so risk-idiot? For a person not money-centered (which I believe I am not) trading is the most difficult challenge. Because it's so easy to mismanage risk. "Oh, it's just another losing trade - no big deal". It is a big deal!

If I approach trading with the notion that my wife and kid are in the car, I will become the most aggressive risk manager. And they are: the money that is lost is the money they will not enjoy — and, G_d forbid, money that they will lack.

So, from now on, my wife and kid are in the car on every trade!

Scott Brook reacts:

Black Swans may be rare, but they are game-enders.

That's why you should never go "all in" when playing poker. I get derided all the time for saying this, but I made a lot of money playing poker back in the 80s using this strategy. Of course, that was in the days when you could play stud poker and not this "Texas Hold'em" crock that they play today. In today's MTV fast paced, leverage to the hilt world, you have to go all in to compete. Otherwise, people aren't interested in doing business. They want the big returns and they want them now, "D%mn the torpedo's, full speed ahead!"

You could call me a grinder. I always found a way to grind out a winning night playing poker. Sure I was boring, and yes, I was still subjected to the occasional black swan, but even after the swan wreaked havoc on me, I might have been wounded, but I was still standing and able to play the game.

P.S.: I've also traveled cross country with small children. I found it to be a less than pleasant experience. That's a black swan I would like to avoid for the rest of my days!

J. P. Highland adds:

1. Poker is a great trading boot camp. Folding is the hardest part to master, learning that second rate hands usually finish second.

2. In trading you have two opponents, one is Mr. Market and the other one yourself. The second is a tougher SOB to manage.

Steve Leslie writes:

Tournament poker and cash poker are two distinct animals. They are entirely unrelated and require different skills. WSOP main event is no-limit hold-em which for years was a very small event. Look at the event fields up to 2002 — they were quite small. When Johnny Chan won his first title I think fewer than 50 people were involved. All that changed when Chris Moneymaker won. Also the big game players like Greenstein, Reese, didn't even play tournament poker. TV and the Internet changed all that. Now last year's winner was under 24 and beat Phil Hellmuth's record set back in 1987. Their techniques comsist mainly of bluffing and hyper aggression. Most crash and burn early but there are so many of them like ants that it is impossible to kill them early so some make it to the latter stages. Mr. Brooks and I are anachronisms. Try to find a seven card stud game or draw poker. They don't exist anymore. Nobody knows how to play them. Even Omaha is difficult to find. In the Cincinatti Kid they played five card stud. When I played poker in the 1990s they were closing up card rooms. All that is left today is no-limit hold-em cash and no-limit hold-em tournament. Finally, the skills you can learn from poker are transferrable to trading on many levels. Others have written exhaustively on this. I strongly suggest two books: Zen and the Art of Poker by Phillips, and Zen in the Martial Arts by Hyams. Start there.


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