Friday, May 29, 2009

Details Count In Fashion & Trading


In fashion, people pay for seemingly insignificant details that are barely perceptible to less sensitive souls. I've discovered that this is also the case in trading.

One small detail can often make a very big difference to your bottom line. Perhaps one trade setup works better on a shorter term timeframe than a longer term timeframe. Perhaps the longer term timeframe works better with RSI or stochastics rather than MACD. Perhaps trailing your stop daily rather than hourly could enable you to gain substantially more profits.

Having the patience to look into these details can not only be eye-opening, but is also an important characteristic of highly successful people in general. It's a difference that can lead to a competitive advantage - the willingness and the passion to look at a situation from many different perspectives even if sometimes none of those perspectives seem to make any sense right at this moment.

Most people would rather spend their free time relaxing, but going into depth could be very rewarding.

To quote Harry Winston:

"Nothing perfect ever rolled off an assembly line. Perfectly symmetrical, yes, and perfectly attractive. But nothing perfect. Perfect is breathtaking. Perfect is inimitable. Perfect comes from staying awake until 2 am deciding whether to tilt a stone one hundredth of an inch this way or that."

Does the one hundredth of an inch matter that much? Yes, it often does. And with trading, it could prove to be even more important because we have a highly competitive environment here. When it comes down to it, we're basically trading against very highly intelligent A-type personalities. That's why details count.

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