Friday Notes - Pursuit of Excellence

6:54PM Update - Duhhh ... I forgot to wish all the Dads out there a Happy Father's Day!!  Plus, a reminder to check out Thursday's post, which was posted late into the night.

While I promise this will be among the last posts on recent graduation events at this end, I can't help but AGAIN see trading parallels in the attached video clip of the Dennis-Yarmouth senior student gathering (held the day before the official graduation ceremony).

And when I see life's trading parallels, regardless of "who" it's about, I post away.

Now for a moment, I ask that you view the attached completely forgetting the "who", and instead focus on the "what" ... which is the only reason I'm posting this in a trading journal.

Trading lessons?  Listen to principal Ken Jenks as he describes (1) what it took for the top two students to accomplish what they did (hint: count how many times he references "hard work"!), and (2) how the top five students all remained extremely close as friends as their "competitive friendship" and healthy "peer pressure" inspired and pushed each other to attain their own personal best. 

Jellies, please pay attention to that last comment!

And so it is with this intensely performance-driven & zero-sum business called trading.

As Ken said, "Excellence is not about natural talent ... that gives you an edge.  But in the end, excellence is ALWAYS about hard word.  It's a simple formula, yet it's incredibly difficult to put into action.  Excellence is no accident ... it's not a lucky occurrence."

Hard work and pushing each other to attain our personal best.

Words we should all live by.

Including this trader and author.

Note that the video was recorded via aiming the camera at the TV as it was played locally, so the quality isn't as great as normal ... but the substance remains.