Rafting and Simplicity of Trading
Yesterday I went on rafting in Citarum water stream. The event was great and fun with me bruising in several places. However, the most important part of the event is not rafting, but rather trading. I know it’s kinda silly to correlates trading and some semi-extreme physical activity such as rafting but I do find it amusing enough to write it on this blog.
When we get there, the first thing we do is stretching to minimize the injury that we might sustain from the whole day activities. I find it quite the same like traders that enrich their trading with lots of trading books (especially those books that discuss about trading psychology). In physical activities, it is important to be prepared physically. In mind games such as trading, it’s important to be prepared mentally.
One other thing that I found very similiar to trading is how you should ‘test the water’. More after the jump.
After stretching, the trainer asked us to swam in the high current river. He showed us how to swim defensively or aggressively for our own safety. This training is very important in case our boat sink or we fall out from the boat in the strong stream. This training may as well be the most important part of the whole event because it teaches us how to survive. The same thing also happened in trading. The novices are encouraged to ‘test drive’ before they actually jump in the “trading river”. They are advised to take paper trading seriously to harness their survival skills in term of money management and risk assessments.
And the last but not the least, when we finally sail the river (is the term sail? What’s the rafting term for it?), it’s KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). What’s so complicated about rafting? None. What you need to do is just row the boat to your destinations, don’t fight the current, watch out for rocks or dangerous stream, and enjoy the scene.
That applies perfectly well for trading. We should just keep trading simple. I my self only use moving averages to enter my positions (and some other confirmation signal but that’s for another topic). Moreover, trader must not fight the trend and watch out for ‘pump-and-dump’ stock or very volatile market (if you are a stock trader, but volatility is good for options trader), and the most important of all, enjoy your trading experience.
What about you? Have you ever had the experience that can correlate to trading? Please share ;-)
hmm.. i don’t know much about trading. but i always correlate math with programming… it’s not so much about experience though…
you know, when you’re trying to solve the problems in math, you can solve it in many different ways. They should all have the same result… only one result, e.g. 5. The same thing happens with programming. You can solve it using different algorithms, but it should produce the same result.
that’s why i like both of them :D