Two weeks past and – excepting the couple blips last weekend – nary a note from me regarding trading. The suffocating build-up to and ragged mental aftermath wrought upon me (yes, it was so bad I decided “wrought” was the appropriate verb) by an inexorable succession of events at work culminating with the tax deadline meant very little left over at the end of each day, with which I chose to trade rather than blog about trading.
Sometimes I wonder why I went back to work, and then I remember: a) for institutional training and experience, b) to earn income from an external source so it was unnecessary to tap my trading capital to live off of, and c) to induce a little more balance in life than trading can allow. I was probably saying that in my sleep each night to condition myself against any impetuous employment moves. Every wonder what you’re capable of giving away when talking in your sleep?
“Aluminum” = Code for a winning Pound Sterling trade. “Game”: Forex.
Sounds innocuous really, but looking back on those days, I fought sleep to place trades, dozed after placing the trades but before placing stops, then fought falling back to sleep to place those stops. Now it sounds like falling asleep behind the wheel on the highway late at night while driving alone: the struggle to stay awake is the most exhausting part, and you may sustain a lot of damage if you don’t get where you’re going before you collapse.
At least with trading the probability is (I’m generalizing, I know) close to one-half either way; but still: I don’t endorse sleeptrading. Nothing good can come of it. Ever wonder where that “95% of all traders (allegedly this applies to futures traders, specifically) fail in the first year” statistical bromide comes from? Well, the condition I speak of accounts for about 95% of that 95%. You can figure out the exact number.
Much like driving while asleep, or so I’ve heard: being so overcome with sleep at the wheel that one resorts to hitting oneself in the face to stay awake, which is of no effect for longer than 30 seconds or so, which requires another blow, and then another. Then becoming angry that one is angry in exactly the way one would feel angry if someone else were hitting them repeatedly; and, yet this person has a kind of transcendent reflective distance that enables them to revel that they are angry at themselves in the third person for hitting their own face in the first person.
Once the ineffectuality of self-inflicted physical abuse becomes apparent, real desperation sets in. That’s when there’s nothing left to do but careen into a Wendy’s parking lot off some random exit (at 3am, thankfully) and spin around screaming and jumping up and down and finally throwing oneself with no thought for puncture wounds onto some rather spindly, spiky bushes. It was amateur night in Transylvania when Vlad the Impaler did his thing next to them. So your three wives left you after several hundred years for a couple of carnivorous plants next to a Wendy’s dumpster in Kentucky – how ’bout it, Vlad? You can bet the Chupacabra don’t just tolerate that kind of nonsense from their – albeit mangy – women.
Yes, this is a real Chupacabra. Action Figure.
This has not happened to me – the puncture wounds or being left by three wives for some bushes – this was not paid for by an insert-name-of-not-for-profit-organization-here – my name is not Andrewunknown, and I do not approve this message. Sorry, too much reading of election coverage.
The tax season is now past and with it the frenetic pace of work overshadowing the typical trading rhythm I’ve developed. More on performance in those weeks shortly….
