Not Playing With Fire

Thank you everyone for sending in your kind words during our time of loss.

I may have missed some of the emails this week due to not being able to clean the inbox on time. Sorry if I have not replied to your messages.

This week I am still bounded with duties that will occupy the normal business hours that varies from day to day. My schedule will allow me time to do some work in the wee hours and in the late afternoon. I will coordinate with my programmer to complete the several real-time assistant signals for both Emini and forex.

I will try to post some morning commentaries whenever possible. You can expect more articles to be published soon.

Throwing myself at work, even at a slower pace, is going to help me going through this transitional phase.

One thing I will not do is trading, at least for a while.

I have this kind of experience before when my SO faced life or death situation in the hospital several years ago. Even though I can carry myself through the situation which lasted for a month, making all the right decisions for her (she was unconscious), the aftermath was that my mind was so overwhelmed by emotion that even prolonged meditation everyday can only recover my mind to normal daily activities. Once trading was threw into the mix, I had noticeable delay in decision making.

I have learned the performance issue was caused by my brain being flooded with emotion triggering hormones. The delay of the brain’s ability to react is similar to a computer’s CPU overheated. Depending on the level of overload, it takes days for the brain to get back to normal sensitivity. Many things can help speed up the process like doing exercise and meditation. Being able to have good sleep also helps. Forcing oneself to activities requiring high concentration, however, can worsen the problem.

I think it is good to share the experience I gained here even though it is very personal – knowing when to stop trading is as powerful as any money management techniques can offer you.

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