The Great AdapterQ: Sometimes you would just get stuck in queue and the whole
thing would spin forever, and you wouldn’t know if you got out of
position or not, right?
A: Oh, it was horrible.
Q: What do you think made you different, made you success-
ful in this kind of very instinctive, seat-of-the–pants type trading
that most people absolutely fail at miserably because the speed,
the pressure and the ability to quickly make decisions is just over-
whelming?
A: I think it’s the same reason that I’m still around today. I just
got done saying I was pretty undisciplined and could have done
things a lot better back then. But I was still, I think, above the rest
of the guys in the room in terms of self-discipline and patience.
Additionally, I moved to a better software platform.
Q: In other words, you would be selective about your trades and
you would be disciplined about getting out of the trades?
A: Right. Taking winners was part of it. You know there were
plenty of trades where, if held them a little bit longer, I would
have made more. But there are plenty of trades where, if they did
the same thing and I just waited another minute to exit because I
thought it might go in my favor, I would have lost a lot more. So
I came to understand that you can’t pick the top and the bottoms
of your trades. You have to be willing to take money while it’s still
in your favor and cut your losers small. It sounds simple, but most
can’t do that.
Q: Right.
A: Lock in your winners and keep losers small. But that was so
hard for some guys to do. They were just losing, bleeding thousands
and thousands around me. It was really sad to see.