The Empty Gas Tank
“I have more anxiety when I’m low on gas than I do when I’m in a trade.”
I saw someone tweet that once and it lodged directly in my brain and stuck there.
Maybe because it was so unlike me and what my brain felt like in a trade. That was somewhere between greed, fear, exhaustion and feeling more alive than I ever had before. When I was new, being in a trade felt like a drug. I loved it and hated it all at the same time. It was joy and pain and all the things in between.
It was awful. It was an awful way to feel and an awful way to live. A bad trade could ruin my day or week, and a good trade was incredible, but as soon as I was out I’d start scanning for another one. Nothing was ever really enough. What a hamster wheel. I’m so glad to be off of it.
My new strategy is simply the idea that an option will move $.30 in my favor before it expires. That’s the entire idea. That’s the entire strategy. It’s so simple.
Yesterday I took SPY 0.00%↑ puts at open off the opening range. The market was green yesterday, but IWM 0.00%↑ was weak. There was an inconsistency that made me comfortable sticking to my plan even though the trade wasn’t working immediately. I knew my plan, I knew what I was willing to risk, and I had the data of the plan working out time and time again. I don’t know if those things clicked or if I’ve just reached my 10,000 hours, or if I don’t really care anymore… but somehow I felt numb and strangely in flow with the market.
It almost felt like I was watching myself over my shoulder or something… It just didn’t matter. I was following the process.
The only other time or place that’s happened to me is in my painting life. I have painted for so long I’m over all the fear of failure, and I’m also over the thrill of victory. I know that all I have to do is start, follow the process, and I will finish with a painting that is “of my hand” or in my style. It will not be the best painting I’ve ever done, nor will not be the worst work I’ve made. It will simply be another completed piece in a lifelong body of work.
On my podcast Move Me Brightly we talk about artists and the fear of completion… how an artist will work for a lifetime on a piece and never finish it because it’s not perfect. That person will never become an artist. An artist isn’t successful by making one perfect thing (unless you’re Harper Lee and that’s an exception), but by making a body of 85-90% perfect things. There is so much success in simply finishing and for the work being good enough.
Following the process is the art. Making the art is the work. Closing the trade, knowing you followed the process, and being satisfied that it’s 85% good enough is how you build a body of work as a trader. That’s how you grow your account. You’re never going to paint your masterpiece and hit that one trade that makes you a millionaire. You’re going to work day in and day out and follow the process and know that through that process you are enough. Your trading is enough.
You can’t predict the outcome, and the outcome doesn’t even really matter. All that matters is following that process.
As all great artists say - “do it for the process.” Because within the process you find the magic… and at the end of the day being an artist or a trader IS the magic… not one great piece of work.
That’s my soapbox for today… better go fill up my gas tank. It’s getting a little low.
PLB
It feels prudent for me to say that I’m not a financial advisor, I have no real training, and I am not YET a long term profitable trader. None of this is financial advice by any means. They are just thoughts and musings from a girl who’s out there every day in the trenches with you. Read at your own risk.
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