Weekend Food For Thought – 07 April, 2012
DEFENSIVE TRADING – EPILOGUE
Trading and driving are alike in so many ways. And the way you drive betrays they way you will be trading. Rules of the road are set up for safety reasons just as we set up rules for ourselves when we trade. These rules keep us on the safe side of danger and lower our risk to ensure we reach our objectives without getting hurt. In a worse case scenario, we might encounter a few scrapes or bumps by we still get to our objective without killing ourselves. In life as in driving as in trading …
Break the rules and you’ll be punished
Make a mistake and it will be costly
Take a risk and the consequences can be tragic
Besides the way I drive, my life as a trader also mirrors that of my life as a father, son, teacher, friend and businessman. I live my life as best I can. I do as many good deeds as I can with no expectations and looking for no accolades. I live prudently and frugally and live within my means. I have indulgences but they are controlled and inexcessive. I have a horrible bad habit of smoking which I do my best to keep in check and do so within the confines of the local laws.
We are never perfect but we do our best to bring the best out of ourselves and shield away what we know makes us ugly. In trading, we do what we know and we do it well and we stay away from the obvious risks that we know is likely to hurt us.
I have built a family, a business, a trading and teaching career slowly and surely. I have built a reputation for myself. It was tough. There were very difficult moments. There were many challenges. Through each hurdle, mistakes were made along the way but each mistake was a lesson learnt to make me a 
better man, a sharper professional, an effective teacher and a more astute businessman. I worked hard to achieve these things and I now defend them with my experience. I keep working hard to lessen the mistakes, I continue to learn as I teach, I strive to always do better to improve my teaching skills and I live my life as best I can to maintain my reputation.
My life as a trader is no different. I will defend what I have earned and I will strive to continually improve on my trading skills so that I can defend better. I protect my trades no differently than how I protect my family, business and career. I am focused on keeping what is rightfully mine and I never let anything threaten what I have so lovingly and carefully built. The first line of defense in my home is me and the first line of defense in my trades is the same person with the same mindset.
In life, we make smalls steps to advance ourselves. We practice what we love to do so that we do it well. We make incremental adjustments to our lifestyle to improve our lot in life. We make small sacrifices for the sake of a bigger slice of happiness. We control our short-term greed to ensure a long term growth in our wealth and health.
In trading, we are no different in that we constantly make small steps to improve our trades, we practice to gain more experience, we make adjustments to improve our trading style, we take small losses to keep our confidence so that we can grow our accounts in the long term and grow it exponentially and we do it knowing that this is who we are … in life and in trading.
All in all, the long and short of it, at the end of the day, for all intents and purposes, in trading as in life, it is all about me loving what I do and I do it all with a passion. And that is how I live my life too.
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