Van Tharp’s take on personality traits and the their effects on trading success.
True story here.
At a very early point in my trading career a friend wanted to learn to trade. After all the basic things he has learned and watched me trade for a while. He ended up asking to simply copy my trades in real-time. He like to have the phone line stay connected all the time and that I will simply announce the trades. I did not mind doing that because I was shouting my orders to the pits anyway.
A month later, he was so excited that he said he was going to sell his business (an import/export outfit making good money). Another month later, his account was wiped out. During the 2 month periods, he made well over $100K at the peak and lose it all plus most of the initial capital of about $30K.
He took most of the trades I took. He learned how to properly manage the trades. He also know exactly what not to do – taking outsized risk, getting too excited and most important of all having the disaster stop in place all the time. If he followed the game plan exactly he would be up about $90K by the end of the 2 months period. Not bad for a beginner.
After this experience, he stopped trading all together. He found it too exciting and bad for his health.
This problem with personality was something I did not understand fully at the time until after many years of working with many other traders.
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