When I was a young man, there was a goofy comedy film called "The Gumball Rally" about a group of cross-country lead-footed auto racers. In an opening sequence, the character racing in his Alfa Romeo sports car jumps into the driver's seat, quickly rips the rear view mirror from its mounts and loudly proclaims "first rule of Italian road racing...what's behind you doesn't matter!"
Now unless you want your investing to be equally comedic and goofy, this proclamation does not apply to you. The opposite, however, does apply. In our book Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery, we titled the tenth stage "Revisit, Retune, Refine" and the chapter opens with a famous quote:
"The only way you get a real education in the market is to invest cash, track your trade and study your mistakes."
These prophetic words of the great Jesse Livermore are particularly relevant today.
During difficult quarantined times such as these, it's important to remember that you are playing the long game. It's long term investing that counts. Academic research tells us that the human mind tends to give more importance and weight to a single bad event than to a half-dozen successes. Remember to factor in the reality that 90% of the time, news is over-exaggerated and the markets response is likewise over-exaggerated. Clearly, what's behind you does matter. In fact, it's the very basis of your evolution from an average investor into a consistently successful investor.
Being sequestered right now is the ideal time to review your investment decision making, evaluate your execution, revisit your methodology and reflect on your "Investor Self" with brutal self-honesty. In our book, we describe this process as the Four R's of investing.
- Reshape your learning curve
- Realign your thinking
- Reprogram your discipline
- Refine your trading skills
The payoff for you is huge. These four steps can keep you action-oriented and help motivate you to move forward confidently with an improved skill set that will pay dividends for all the years ahead. To that end, here are links to three previous blogs that might speak to you today.
The Albert Einstein Approach to Stock Market Investing
How the Markets Have Changed Me Over the Past 25 Years: Part I
The 10 Key Investing Lessons From Two Decades Of Teaching (1999 - 2019)
Trade well; trade with discipline!
- Gatis Roze, MBA, CMT
- Author, "Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery" (Wiley, 2016)
- Presenter of the best-selling "Tensile Trading" DVD seminar
- Presenter of the "How to Master Your Asset Allocation Profile DVD" seminar
- Developer of the Tensile Trading ChartPack for StockCharts members
Trade well; trade with discipline!
Gatis Roze, MBA, CMT
- Author, "Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery" (Wiley, 2016)
- Developer of the "Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack for StockCharts members
- Presenter of the best-selling "Tensile Trading" DVD seminar
- Presenter of the "How to Master Your Asset Allocation Profile DVD" seminar
