Trading lessons about life
Let’s say your goal is to make $500 a day with day trading. And let’s say you made $1500 one week - so you were disappointed that you didn’t meet your goal. Maybe you made $300 each day of the week and so you can at least be content to have had no down days.
Now let’s say that the next week on Monday you lost $10,000. The rest of the week you fought hard and ended the week up $1000. You would probably be more happy with the $1000 than with the previous $1500, because you had lost so much to start. It would be a reilef - it could have been a lot worse.
Now let’s say that you started the third week strong and by Friday you were up $10,000. It feels great because you are practically achieving your monthly goals in one week. But Friday was a bad day and you lost $8000 and you feel horrible. So you end the week up $2000, but you are very disappointed. It would have been so much better if you had taken the day off and headed out of town for the weekend.
In summary, you can see that you would be most happy with $1000, somewhat disappointed with $1500, and most disappointed of all with $2000.
(Unless you are an ATS, then you will feel nothing.)
The same is true with many things in life. Take your yearly salary as an example.
If you make $50,000 and all your friends and relatives make $75,000 - you will feel bad because you compare yourself to them and you may think you are worth less. If the neighbors and everyone on the block make $25,000 and you make $40,000 - you might feel better and make $10,000 less a year.
This reminds me of the talk about how to trade precisely the right stocks at all possible times. We often judge value based on comparisons. A common mistake in trading is to buy a stock simply because it is cheaper than it was last month.
Even romantic “love” can follow along these lines. For example, maybe one of the reasons a woman loves a man is because he is very handsome in comparison to other men she has dated. Perhaps he has qualities that make him more valuable in comparison to other men who may return interest in her. If her status or qualities suddenly changed (e.g. she became famous, successful and rich), he then may be much less attractive in comparison to other men she could be with.
It all comes down to making sure that you value the things that you value for the right reasons. The way to figure that out is to first ask yourself what you value and then ask yourself why.
