Millionaire Tradersthen they’ll have some failure. They’ll modify their plans. They’ll
get punished a couple of times by the market. They’ll get tentative.
Everyone I’ve ever taught went through the same progression. It’s
the people who know how they react to that adversity that tells
you whether or not they’re going to make it. Have you ever seen
anyone who just made it from day one?
Q: Never for long. We’ve seen people literally take$10,000 and
run it to a quarter of a million. But we’ve never seen anybody
hang on to it unless they were able to master the skills. Usually the
same attributes that were responsible for that massive gain – greed
and fearless risk taking, also become the reasons for their downfall
when markets turned against them.
A: Exactly.
Lessons from Chuck Hays
Know If You Are Better at Being a Short or Long TraderJust as few people are ambidextrous, very few traders can trade
equally from both sides of the market. Typically, some traders
are much more comfortable being long while others have a much
stronger preference for being short. There is no right choice in
this matter. The distinction is really a function of your individual
personality and taste. However, as Chuck Hays points out, knowing
your strengths can often be the difference between success and
failure. Just as throwing left handed for a righty can be an extremely
uncomfortable experience, trading long for a short biased trader
can be highly unpleasant—even if the trade is ultimately a good
one. Being a short-biased traders ourselves, during the peak of
internet bubble we remember making four profitable short trades
in Inktomi (INKT) in one day as the stock climbed 16 points from
open to close. The issue wasn’t whether the stock was going up
or down, but how we handled each trade. Because we were much