The Weekend Trader – The Two Year Itch

It’s often been said that life comes in threes.

But personally, I’ve historically tended to be a “two” kind of guy.

For throughout my life – especially in my various careers – I tend to go through periods where for the first year, I feel new and incredibly vibrant with all sorts of ideas, enthusiasm, and energy. 

Then in the second year, the enthusiasm starts to wane in a way that by the end of the second year, I’m simply “maintaining” again and start to “itch”.  And if you know me by now, I hate “maintaining”.

Those that have followed this public journal over the last few years have certainly witnessed this as you caught me during the middle and latter stretches of a ridiculous two year … well, “zone” is the only word that comes to mind. 

And as I work on further transitioning the blog content to this new platform, scroll through history, and do some personal benchmarking, I’d love to feel that initial enthusiasm as I did in July 2008.  More on this in a bit.

Yet frankly, if you were to chronicle my entire life, you’d find the same thing over and over.   Such was definitely the case right out of college when GTE put me onto an 18-month fast track management development program where I shifted assignments and locations across the country every six months … which probably spoiled me forever.

After that, the development continued over the next 16 years where I rarely held a post for more than two years as the result of further opportunities.

Even as a kid, I had to rearrange the furniture in my room every few years.

And here we are, at the end of – you guessed it – a two year stretch of candid public journaling, which I was ready to discontinue in terms of new content.

Yet as many of you suggested so eloquently in your emails over the last few weeks, perhaps “discontinue” should simply be replaced with “adjust” … as in cut back the frequency, perhaps by reconnecting with The Weekend Trader, which has become somewhat of a standard industry column. Then I found some new paint, which further intrigued me.

So here we are.  Again.

Yet here’s my biggest concern in moving forward. 

In terms of my actual trading, I need to remain forever the student – focusing primarily on those areas where I need improvement - in a world where many consider me the teacher.

I recall exchanging a few notes with Linda Raschke a while back, where we were both venting that it’s difficult at times for us to find those who will appropriately push us performance-wise, since a large part of our exposure is the result of trying to guide others.

At my end, while I’ve had the wonderful priviledge and honor of working with or meeting hundreds of traders over the years, I’ve really only found two traders - DK and ZM (both past or present Jellies) – who through their subtle or not-so-subtle words weren’t afraid to push me harder to do better … and I’ll never be able to overstate the importance of this to me.  And while I “get” the fact that students pushing teachers is so counter-culture it may be an impossible expectation, one of my primary immediate goals will be to find someone who can fulfill that role for me on a daily basis. Applications welcome!

Here’s another way to say what I’m trying to say.

We’re fortunate in this area to host the annual Cape Cod Baseball League (Go Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox!), which is a summer showcase and development league for college players, many of whom will reach the Major League.  And since most games are played in the evenings, many of the teams and players run clinics for the youth during the day.   So these college athletes perform the dual role of both instructing and performing … which personal experience has proven is a difficult mental dance.

At the same time, the players understand that they have so much growth ahead of them, so they look to their coaches and major league counterparts as their teachers.  So they’re really balancing three roles: that of the instructor, performer, and student!

And I would argue that the moment the “student” mindset begins to wane, performance will as well. For in addition to the danger of thinking one has “made it”, good pitchers will adjust to good hitters just as markets will adjust to good traders … and complacency combined with changing times is a recipe for a very limited career.

There is no doubt in my mind that public exposure at this end over the years has at times sub-optimized my trading – especially since I remain a staff of one – which is why I’ve chosen to periodically go “off the grid” … whether it be for a few years as I did in the mid-2000s when no one could find me, or simply for a few weeks.  And yes, I take full responsibility for accepting the “it comes with the territory” trade-off as I could have simply ignored the initial requests to write and teach more than a decade ago.  Of course, I could have also not launched this blog, publicly shared my records, or launched the Jellie effort – but again those were my decisions.

Don’t get me wrong, as I love teaching and writing.  Yet one simply has to remember to properly isolate the instructor, performer, and student mindsets.  And mentally, it takes a great deal of discipline not to get locked into one, or inadvertenly slip into one mode at a critical time when another is clearly called for.

Perhaps as we move forward, perceiving me as a peer student may help (and Lord knows I have my own areas that always require emphasis!), as may viewing all who venture here a united team such that no one – including me – should consider himself/herself a staff of one. After all, we’re not writing or reading this for entertainment or health … we’re all here to continue to grow and prosper!

Over recent weeks, I felt the blog was tiring and resulting in diminishing returns in terms of sparking both myself and others.  Right or wrong, this was my perception.

Or maybe it was simply the two-year itch. 

Yet now, as was the case when I was a child, the furniture has been rearranged.

Can it make a difference?

Hopefully, I’ll know well before another two years.

Check back often as we continue to add sofas and chairs. And note I added a “Weekend Trader” post category to the right for easy later access.  I also plan to continue importing posts from the old journal for indexing purposes.