20年專業機構交易員: 我寧願錯而賺錢

sec2100

This is going to be a rant. If you don't like rants, flee now. Also, I am sure it's TLDR

Its been a recurrent theme on this forum lately. Arguments go in circles and eventually devolve into a few boys trading insults. Nobody cares about the truth, it's about being right. For fuck sake, this is not a political debate.We should only care about making money. That is what differentiates a trader from the sales people, trading advice sellers, consultants, talking heads and so on. The buck stops with us. A few interesting examples to discuss are right below.

Part 1. "You are all idiots"

Trading is a business of making mistakes and learning from these mistakes. Accept what just happened ("oops, that was expensive"), draw the right conclusions and move one. If you have missed the bitcoin rally, don't go around trying to explain to other how they are wrong and will be losing all of it shortly. Bitcoin rally is the reality, there is little you can do about it (well, maybe you can find Satoshi Nakamoto, stick a soldering iron up his arse and force him to dump his million coins to cause a massive down spiral in price). If you still have a strong bearish view and have the appropriate risk tolerance, figure out a way to short it. If you have changed your mind, buy it.

There is huge value in figuring out why your view was, apparently, wrong at least up to this point. Ideally, that's what this forum is all about - yes, let's discuss this. But there is no value in going around insulting others just to make yourself feel better about your mistake. Case in point is yours truly. Last December I made a decision to sell about half of my personal equity holdings because I was expecting a selloff. Wanted to have my power dry, Trump looked scary etc. Well, I was wrong. Can the market sell-off 60% from these levels? Yes, probably. Does it change the fact that I was wrong about this rally? Nope, not at all. It's a fact. I did some post-mortem on my thought process and hopefully will avoid making the same error again. I certainly do not go around insulting people that have been long over this year and you don't see me making a prophecy for annihilation of the equity market come tomorrow.

Part 2. "I know better"

Trading is also a business where being wrong for free is a wonderful thing. If you make a statement or express an idea and someone shoots it down, it's worth listening no matter how it makes you feel. Ego sinks hedge funds and blows up portfolios.

I will repeat it again, it's better to be wrong and rich (it appears that Bill Ackman thinks otherwise, sadly). There are people here who know a lot about specific subjects. It's worth listening to them, the world of finance is vast and nobody knows everything. Shit, I've been in the business professionally for 20 years, worked in a few top institutions and yet I find blind spots in my knowledge set all the time.

PS. I was not sure if this belongs in Trading, Forum or Psychology, but I think the problem is general enough to talk about it here

作者:sle





原文連結:https://www.elitetrader.com/et/t ... d-the-right.315947/

sec2100

The point I am trying to make is that making money is hard enough as is. Once you add the cognitive biases (take any, from ambiguity bias to zero-sum bias) it gets even harder.