I am in the world only for the purpose of composing.
Amateurs go broke taking large losses, professionals go broke taking small profits.
The desire to maximize the number of winning trades (or minimize the number of losing trades) works against the trader. The success rate of trades is the least important performance statistic and may even be inversely related to performance.
It's much easier to learn what you should do in trading than to do it. Good systems tend to violate normal human tendencies.
People want to buy cheap and sell dear; this by itself makes them countertrend. But the notion of cheapness or dearness must be anchored to something. People tend to view the prices they’re used to as normal and prices removed from these levels as aberrant. This perpective leads people to trade counter to an emerging trend on the assumption that prices will eventually return to “normal”. Therein lies the path to disaster.
In many ways, large profits are even more insidious than large losses in terms of emotional destabilization. I think it's important not to be emotionally attached to large profits. I've certainly made some of my worst trades after long periods of winning. When you're on a big winning streak, there's a temptation to think that you're doing something special, which will allow you to continue to propel yourself upward. You start to think that you can afford to make shoddy decisions. You can imagine what happens next. As a general rule, losses make you strong and profits make you weak.
I haven't seen much correlation between good trading and intelligence. Some outstanding traders are quite intelligent, but a few aren't. Many outstanding intelligent people are horrible traders. Average intelligence is enough. Beyond that, emotional makeup is more important.
There is no better example of the weakness of our dominant medicine than its clearly ineffective War On Cancer. By the same token, there is no better example of the superiority of complementary, alternative medicine than its management of this dread disease. We are equally concerned about whether mainstream medicine's demand for proof works to maintain it at its current level of ineptitude.
I believe there are few whose view of life has not been affected by the stern or kindly influences of their early childhood, which threw them in upon themselves in timidity and reserve, or drew them out in genial confidence and sympathy with their fellow creatures.
A lot of people think that telling people you're gay is something someone might say just to get attention.
You're actually inside the surfboard. . . you're inside the landscape around you and the ocean is surging, you get totally inside the moment and it's so intense that time disappears, you disappear.