Good morning,

Thanks for being patient with me as I have dealt with a fatal blow this last week. A very close friend drank herself to death in the prime of her life. She was 36, and exhibited the most classic signs. lying about being in recovery, etc... We had a small gathering to celebrate her life, and to talk about what happened.

 

How does this affect my trading. It seems that one of the most distinct problems I have in my trading, is overtrading, trading into the afternoon, and generally all of the degenerate patterns.  I like to always have a possible trade going. I have a hard time studying in the middle of the day because I am still watching this mornings hot stock, with my finger on the trigger. I have a very tight risk to reward ratio. I am terrible with timing my entries. I have a hard time scaling into a position, as I always think that I am buying at just the moment before it is going to rip, which is almost never true, even though I draw tons of channels and pennant flags. I just drew another pennant flag on $FTFT. So what lessons will I learn from my patterns, from the loss of a friend, and from going sailing every Wednesday night in a one dollar boat.

Wednesday night sailboat racing is a thing all over the world. for me it started about 10 years ago when some friends and I wanted to get into sailing, but we had no idea how to, or where to start. We went to the local yacht club looking for a small project boat, something inexpensive we could start to fix up and sail. They put us on track for a one dollar boat. It took us about 2 years to fix that boat and sail it In the meantime we kept going back to the clubhouse and joining in as crew for the Wednesday night races. We literally knew nothing about fixing boats, or sailing, let alone racing. fortunately when you start on a boat, your position is rail meat. Self moving balast. Weight movement from side to side on a boat adds resistance to the force of the wind, as the wind speed increases, the heel of a boat increases, and to counter that boats have massive underwater keels and or rail meat. So we sat and watched, and eventually after crewing on the same boat week in and week out, got to touch some lines, and play on helm coming in and out of the harbor.

 

There is alot more to this story, but I am going to fast forward ten years to yesterday. It was a gorgeous day in New Orleans. I had gotten up at 6am, did my morning routine, studied, made my days picks, and got ready to trade once the bell rang, or sometime there after. Now in sailboat racing, your entry, or start is of the upmost importance. And in sailing, just like in trading the start isn't a static thing. All 50 boats are jockying around in the start box for 10 minutes before the 2 class division starts. when the committee boat toots the start horn, you want to not only be right at the start line, but you also want to have clear air, or no other boats blocking your wind. and since 25 boats are all vying for that perfect spot, it is a challenge to achieve that spot. However, patience, and practice, and being aggressive pay off. So last night, as the horn tooted we powered up our sails and crossed the start line, in the #1 position, clear air, race ready. 20 boats were stacked up around us, there is maybe 10 feet between us and the next 20 ton boat. and we were off. So remember when I told you that we wanted a project boat, and got our boat for $1. well, that means that we didn't get the latest, greatest, most expensive race boat out there. We got an old classic, a nimble boat, that when sailed hard and well can really do good against the other boats. In PHRF rated racing, boats of various sizes and abilities can race and handicaps are assigned to even out the score. My boat has a massive handicap, as it is the smallest and slowest boat in the fleet. The start is the most important point for me and my crew. If we don't hit that number one position, we will never see the rest of the boats in our division, because they are all by design faster. When we nail the start, we get to race, head to head with some seriously good sailors. Previous olympic sailors. 

Where am I going with all of this. So we keep showing up, and we keep doing better at our starts, and we keep finishing last, or near last. Boat for Boat. Once you factor in our handicap though, we finished all 4 of the 5 races this series in third and overall we took 2nd in the series. Runner up to the latest and greatest in our one dollar boat. We keep taking singles, not risking it all for a homerun. Were patient, and aggressive, and we keep showing up. Its kind of like cutting your losses. If we were to just say fuck it, we always come in close to last, what are we doing out here, it would be akin to blowing up our account. We keep showing up to the race course to learn what we can, and we keep cutting our losses quickly so we can show up to the trading room floor so we can learn more. everyday!!!!!