Don Miller's Video, The Chinese Bamboo Tree, & My Turning Point

I have the habit of playing Don Miller's weekend videos as I study my charts. A moment ago, I was doing just that, except that I was really focusing on making out the price patterns on yen futures during pre-US market open, and then I heard my name mentioned. D, who was playing online poker, turned to look at me, with his usual now-what-have-you-done-this-time expression written all over his face.

Anyway, here's Don's video for this weekend: VIDEO - The Weekend Trader

God works in mysterious ways indeed. I was telling Lord Tedders how I felt like I've hit the wall, and I've been fretting over not being able to find my centre. I looked everywhere for an answer, without really knowing what the question was in the first place. I thought maybe I needed to see more of how others trade. I would visit a forum, and I would get right out by the first page of a thread. I revisited my books, and would feel like throwing up whenever I come across a trading "receipe" with step-by-step instructions on how and where to get in and out, and the indicators to use.

I got so sick of reading the technical stuff, I went looking for what I call "pleasure reads". The first thing that came to mind was a "bamboo tree" that Don mentioned a couple of days back. Got curious, and went to check out his posting on the "Chinese Bamboo Tree".

I can't describe the impact this posting has on me. Words getting in the way.

All I can say is that it gave me my questions and the answers to them.

Earlier, I talked about going back to my older postings to find out what I had done differently last year. The assumption was that what I did back then was the best that I could have done. But here's exactly where I get all confused, over and over: if it was so good, why did it feel so wrong the whole time?

After reading the bamboo tree story, it hit me that I had grossly under-estimated the magnitude of my predicament. I hadn't a seed to plant. While others have theirs and are simply always either looking for more fertile grounds to plant it, or looking to change it for another, I've never had a seed to start with- never thought about it, never understood it. I have nothing to put my faith in. I haven't a systematic way of going about trading - sure I make plans and I have an idea where I would buy and sell, but I never know exactly where I would get out. I basically have been exiting as and when I feel I'm no longer comfortable staying in the trade. Trading has always been all about my FEELINGS. And my feelings is about the last thing that I'll put my faith in.

To cut a very long story short, I realized that the way I had traded last year was the worst way to trade. I've fooled myself into believing that a net postive year means that I must have been doing things right. But in trading, as in many other things in life, early successes have proven time and again to impede further growth, at best. The absolute worst that comes from small victories in the beginning is the laying of a path for very painful, if not fatal, falls in the journey ahead.

What I can say about my result last year is that it's consistent with the outcome of almost everything else that I've undertaken. I have very competitive blood. I must win. And I'll do whatever it takes to win. Sometimes, all I need to do is to believe that I WILL win, and I would. So far, so good.

But I'm cursed with an extremely short attention span. How that affects my ability to continually perform needs no elaboration.

The method with which I had used to achieve a certain ratio of winning to losing trades is not even a strategy within a systematic business plan. I hadn't the patience to come up with the latter before I got started. My approach was purely tactical. There is no blueprint, no roadmaps, not even the simplest of plans. My "plan" was simply to "GET IN".

Without something that I could, and was willing to trust, almost every trade has been placed at my discretion, and getting out has of course always been at my discretion and based totally on my very fallible emotions.

I personally know a few discretionary traders that are doing very well, consistently. These folks have little emotions when it comes to trading. It could have taken them years to get there. Maybe some are just blessed with extraordinarily tough minds. In any case, I'm certainly not one of them. I might NEVER become anything like them.

If I want to start getting on the track that I've never been on in the first place, I have to totally change the way I trade. It can no longer be discretionary. It's going to feel ALL wrong I have no doubt about that. I'll start asking myself again why I'm even doing this. I'll start thinking about all the floor traders who had made it by scalping, or by any other ways they can't explain in words coz so much of it is about trader's instinct.

But I'm determined to see this through. I will trade only in a way that I can actually describe in plain English.

For weeks now I have been comtemplating deploying a very simple trading plan, which I've never gotten down to executing. Short-sightedness is the main obstacle.

But I've made up my mind to either do it, or stop trading entirely. Monday on, I will trade a very different way. It's a way that no longer has its focus on achieving consistently winning days. High winning rates is going to be totally irrelevant. Thanks to Don - whose complaint about having no losing days finally made sense to me earlier TODAY - I now realize that I had gotten my focus all wrong. The questions I have been asking were all wrong, and had gotten me no where near to where my heart really wants to go.

Don mentioned both in his comment and his video that I had brought up the word "strong" in my comment. So I have had "strong", "Bamboo Tree", "Faith" ringing in my head the whole day. And I had to end the para before this with a "heart" in it....

I get your message, my Mighty One up there.