The Weekend Trader - The Unwritten Chapter

If someone told me that I had to throw away all of my trading books except one, and that one would have to last me the rest of my life, it would be The Tao of Poker by Larry Phillips, which I've referenced many times over the last year.

Not a trading book you say? Then you've missed what trading is all about, for that $9.95 was the best money I've ever spent on any trading product, and has in return made me millions.

And so after not sleeping well last night after a pi$$ poor weekly performance, I rifled through the well-worn highlighted pages once again to try to reset my personal trading heartbeat, and am again leaning on the following realities:

Rule 180: Be prepared for long cold spells. Given the recent 17-month run, I'd almost forgotten it could occur.

Rule 182: Three or four times a year, you are going to have a poker session that is simply and utterly horrendous. Some years, you may have half a dozen of these sessions. Know ahead of time that they will occur, and try to get through them as cheaply as possible. Over the course of a career, I'll define "session" as a trading day, week, or even month, with May's tepid performance -- especially the last two weeks -- falling into that category.

Rule 187: Avoid taking yourself too seriously. I'll likely always have trouble with this one.

And most importantly (which I've referenced in the past) ...

Rule 222: It's possible to drift away from our roots ... after an initial burst of enthusiasm in the early days of your poker career - an intensity and excitement fueled by the newness of the activity - you reached another stage where you seemed to pull back a little and get too comfortable. The truth is, it takes a lot of energy to stay on the cutting edge of anything (not just to get there, but to stay there), and this is true whether we're talking about poker, athletic achievements, business, entertainment, art -- anything. It can be draining to be on top, so eventually we fall back a little. We're comfortable with letting somebody else take the lead for a while. It is sometimes helpful to "return to our roots" - in the sense of reaching back to this best sharpest self. We should try to resurrect once again that time where we were playing at our best. We need to get that edge back, not just lay back in a warm cocoon of complacency.

Yup ... Rule 222 is again screaming at me. And here's why.

While I've only been sharing the public diary for 11 months now, we need to go back to pre-blog days where I'd lost much of my motivation for trading at peak performance for a number of reasons that I've referenced in the past. Then I began the 2008 personal commitment challenge, created the fictitious draw concept, and then a few months later launched a public blow-by-blow diary which was a way for me to personally refresh the "intensity and excitement" that Mr. Phillips so keenly references above.

And it worked -- oh did it work! -- as the performance momentum began slowly but steadily before snowballing as fully chonicled day-by-day in this rare glimpse into a trader's real life. And since that decision was made some 17 months ago on December 31, 2007, the self-driven "intensity and excitement" has earned me $2,048,072 after expenses.

Yet as I mentioned in Thursday post and Friday's video, there now a huge "but" on the horizon (no jokes please as there's only one "t" in the "but" we're talking about here), as the intensity remains absent and waning, as evidenced by the poorest monthly showing in a loooong time. I'm not crisp or sharp, am simply spinning my earnings wheels, and have been sloppier, less focused and more easily distracted than I can remember in the last several years.

Like many, I need to be highly motivated to perform well. It's been that way since I was a child, and at the age of 48 isn't likely going to change. It's just who I am.

And so as I turn the next page on the monthly trading calendar, I need to either find a new spark, lower my goals to simply making an "average" keep (man, I hate that word), or perhaps come to the realization that the Big Bell Ringer in the sky has told me enough is enough, you've climbed your Mount Everest, the blog has served its purpose, and it's time to focus on other parts of life. Perhaps I'm being tested at a level I don't quite understand. (OK, drop the "perhaps".)

Frankly, I don't have an answer. However, while I search for it, I'm going to implement the protective earnings stop I referenced in yesterday's video. Not on total trading capital, but on the cumulative earnings figure from January '08 that I mentioned above. And that stop will be an even $2.0M. For as long as I stay above that water mark for the rest of the year, I will have averaged the $1.0M annual figure for two years which was my initial goal in the first place.

Giving up on making $1.0M this year? Not really. It's simply called protection to avoid an Archie Karas type road to ruin. btw, threre's always been very strong speculation that Edwin Lefevre of the classic "Reminiscences of a Stock Operator" also ultimately lost all that he had gained. And history has shown that the downward momentum spiral can be even swifter than the upside momentum.

As for the blog, I'll continue to think about its future continuation and public viewing. As I've said before, ironically, I tend to be an extremely private person. Most half-decent real traders are. And frankly, sharing every turn of my journey hasn't always been easy, as people can so easily misinterpret the thinking out loud, including the momentary year-end '08 celebration, this year's repeated references to trying to again find and sustain that motivational "spark", and everything in between.

One change I'm implementing immediately is I've ditched the experimental performance scorecard, which simply hasn't done the job for me this year.

To my onlooking friends, I wish I could "make up" a better current chapter of my trading career which would make for better reading. It's certainly more fun to read about the good times (unless you like NASCAR car crashes). Yet it is what it is, and both the current and future chapters of this unusual live non-fiction "book" are both unwritten and unknown by this author.

With apologies to Steve Carrell, if this "book" had a title, it would probably be "Don in Real Life". For you can rest assured that every letter, word, and sentence in these 375 "pages" has been the 100% God's honest truth.

I eagerly await a new chapter, as the last one has clearly run its course.

June 27 Cookout Reminder!