Acquiring Patience
I was never a patient person. All my life, I had to have it. Now. I always seemed to have too much to do and not enough time to do it, so everything had to be done. Now. It drove my parents and everyone around me crazy.
When I got older, I knew this was an issue. So I prayed to God for patience…. He sent me kids. Funny guy! You would think that would work, and perhaps it did, to a point. Now that the kids are grown and on their own, I sometimes revert back to my impatient ways, especially if I am unaware of it.
When I review my trading log and see where my losers would have ended up, 97% of the time I would have been fine had I simply waited a bit longer to execute my trades. Patience pays, but it was something I had to learn. Repeatedly.
In the stock market world, patience, or lack of it, is the Achilles heel to long term profits. If we cannot develop this skill, it would be best to simply pack up and preserve our capital. There’s no way around it.
The market moves at its own pace. We have to comply to it, not it to us. If that means holding a position longer than we expect, so be it. That puts options traders in an interesting position as time is not on our side, with the way we day trade the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY). For that reason, we need to be quite certain of our direction and strength. Therein lies the challenge, and often times, it’s a matter of patience that makes all the difference.
Patience is like a muscle. The more you flex it, the easier it becomes.
When I recognize my impatience, as evidenced by my trading challenges, I “exercise” it.
Athletes normally go to the gym to exercise their muscles. To exercise my patience, I head out onto the highway.
On our local Interstate 190, the speed limit is 55 mph, including segments of the highway that are quite comfortable to travel at 80 mph. I enjoy driving fast, and my finely tuned German automobile is very smooth and quiet at those speeds — considered to be excessive by American standards but quite normal in Europe, where my car was built.
What I do to “exercise” my patience is simply to pull right back to the ultra-slow speed limit of 55 mph. Of course, at that slow pace, I am the only one, so I only do this when traffic permits so as to not annoy other drivers. I also do this when I am alone, lest I infuriate my passengers.
I will cruise along at this tardy speed of a whopping 55 mph for, say, 10 miles. Excruciatingly painful, but at the end of this slog, I find myself saving only about five minutes in time. That is just enough time to sit through Queen’s “Somebody to Love,” a song I also horribly detest.
There you have it: two torturous tasks to tame your intolerance tendencies… driving slow while listening to music you abhor. I force myself to do this, consciously aware that I need to slow down and let the world catch up. It’s OK to take it easy.
Practice this type of activity that requires a good shot of patience and you will eventually strengthen this attribute, the number one virtue required for success in the stock market.
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