Posted on

Larry Smith: Why you will fail to have a great career

This is an interesting TedTalk that gathered quite a number of comments from the viewers. It is about the excuses people made to avoid following their passions.

It is a funny talk. Mr. Smith delivered a great talk and it is very much to the point.

To follow your passion – you may not even know what your passion is. And when you do, you may not have the courage to pursuit your dreams. And most important of all, you may fail and it is something you have to learn to accept and move on.

To my younger readers – you may not know for sure trading is where your passion is. You may have chosen the wrong instrument to start with. Until you experiment enough you may never know. Most of us may not have what it takes to be great traders. But there is always room for decent traders to make a living. If trading is something you truly love to do, you can make it work too.

Posted on

Angela Lee Duckworth: The Key To Success? Grit

A very short TedTalk from Angela Lee Duckworth on how students of various kinds can come out ahead in their classes by having grit.

This presentation is telling us one important thing – the science is there proving grit is more important than IQ or even talent in many cases if the only thing that matters is to be able to achieve certain level of proficiency, like passing a grade or graduating a class. As oppose to the thinking of the helicopter parents where no failure is allowed, it is actually better to fail and retry so that the mind can grow and improve over time.

It is interesting to learn from the talk that once a group of students realized that our brains actually grow from our experience, their ability to carry on with their learning improves.

Trading skill is definitely one of those skills that require grit more than talent. One just have to realize that it is doable to make it possible. It takes willingness to step out of our comfort zone to try, to fail and to learn from our failures and mistakes so that we grow as a trader. The perseverance will pay off.

[DTBpromo]

Posted on

David Brooks: The Social Animal

This TedTalk by David Brooks looks into the ways human think and how that is inseparable from our emotions and feelings.

It is an important realization for traders, no matter discretionary ones or mechanical ones, to understand that they are as good as their emotional boundaries. In another words, that means you can learn all you wanted to learn from others with all kinds of trading techniques but when it comes to the time of making your trading decisions, it will still be dictated by your emotions although you may not be aware of that.

This video confirms why it is important to define your trading plan clearly so that you have exact rules of engagement to follow. It is no difference to the safety rules you often see in dangerous work zone like construction sites. They are there to protect you from yourself.

[DTBpromo]