Archive for the 'Book' Category

Trading: Method vs. Emotions

Published by Bret Fisher on May 16, 2010 in Book, Food, Life and Stock Market. 0 Comments Tags: mental, mood, Stocks, zone diet.

I'm striving for this: true calm

From the scripture of Mark Douglas in The Disciplined Trader:

As a result, I sincerely feel that success in trading is 80 percent psychological and 20 percent one’s methodology, be it fundamental or technical. For example, you can have a mediocre knowledge of fundamental and technical information, and if you are in psychological control, you can make money. Conversely, you may have a great system, one that you have tested and has performed well for a long period of time, yet if the psychological control is not there, you will be the loser.

Steps I’ve recently taken to increase my mental control (since we all seem to default to focusing on technique):

Meditation, both “empty your mind” and “visioning”. I took a quick $7 lesson from a local mind+body shop. Still working at implementing it daily.
Monitor/schedule my sleep. A Tim Ferriss trick is to use a timer rather then alarm for sleeping so I am focusing on my sleep deposit/debt. This works better if I don’t have a required wake time for a job (I don’t). Lack of sleep causes me to be more moody and thus more emotional. Goal is eight hours, so I often start “going to bed” at T minus nine hours.
Monitor/schedule my eating. Food is the most powerful drug we take multiple times a day (unless you live in a hospital I guess). Smaller meals more often keeps my blood sugar (the brain’s food) more level and thus my mood (emotional state). I also stay away from sugar and manufactured carbs which spike the blood sugar (but not yet conquered caffeine). The theory and application of this is found in The Zone Diet, which is designed to keep the body/mind “in the zone” of optimum energy by controlling what you eat.
Don’t trade when I’m focused on finances. If I need to pay next months bills with my "planned winnings” then I’ll trade from emotion, rather then if the money has no near-term impact on my lifestyle. Even once trading becomes my only income my plan has me withdrawing once-for-the-next-six-months and eventually to once-for-the-next-year so my lifestyle is unaffected by my day to day market success.
Plan, plan, and more sticking to the plan. How many times will I trade a month? How many times will I practice in a month? How much cash will I use each time? How many trades in a row loss will cause a “real money hold” period? What charts will I use? What stocks will I use? When do I get out of the trade “when it’s not working” and “when it’s working”? What do I consider “it’s not working”… and on and on. The more details I have documented and the more I review it… the more I tend to be less emotional on entry and exit of a trade.

Image used with Creative Commons License from Jeff Power’s on Flickr

Goodbye iTunes Music Store

Published by Bret Fisher on Jan 14, 2008 in Book and Music. Closed Tags: amazon, audible, audiobook, ipod, itunes, mp3, Music.

Ms. iTunes Store, I enjoyed our long 4+ year on-again off-again romance, but I need to end our relationship. No more emaling me about the new hotness you want to sell me, no more fighting to ensure I only use you on 5 computers. I’ve found that for audio, polygamy is OK, and brings me more happiness and less fighting.

Amazon is my new lady. Yes she’s younger, cheaper, and more willing to please me; with such tricks as one-click “Preview all” for albums, $7.99 albums, and my favorite position: the “256kb/s MP3 files” which auto imports into iTunes.

I remember our first date, Ms. iTunes Store, where I was nervous and slow-to-click through your cold-war-era interface. I’d had tried other’s like Ms. MSN Music on the corner of IE and Media Player Ave., but I wanted a more complete relationship. After coming to terms that you were the best relationship at the time, I eventually bought the iPod’s you were sellin’ on the side. Even though the first one wasn’t free the 2nd iPod was better, and I was then fully hooked to your software and hardware.

Then I starting seeing Audible.com on the side for my spoken word addiction, rather then using you as the middle man between us. This provided me more action for the same or less price, and your sister iTunes and your iPod’s never knew the difference. I still needed you for my music habit, but all that work to get your DRM and DRM-less AAC files into MP3 left me looking for another provider.

Now I’ve found your replacement Ms. iTunes Store, and Ms. Amazon is it. Sure I’ll still see you on the side a few times a year for that obscure offering that 70% market share gets you… but baby your prices and your file formats are legacy, and you’d better start playing nice with all the pimps who are growing tired of your conditions and small payouts to them. Remember, it is ultimately those pimps that control you, and not your fantasy of the other way around… and they really dig Ms. Amazon.

Sorry.

Mastery, it's vital to understand

Published by Bret Fisher on Nov 15, 2007 in Book and Life. Closed Tags: Book, improvement, mastery, self-help, success.

Maybe you just get it… but I didn’t. Maybe I just forgot along the way. Before you read any other self-help book, read all 176 short pages of Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment by George Leonard, and then read it again. I find myself going back to my notes again and again to remind myself of what it is to be on the road of mastery in anything I want to do. It always helps when I think of straying off my plan to get better at something. Buy Mastery on Amazon.

Books you need to read

Published by Bret Fisher on Oct 2, 2007 in Book and Life. Closed

Get audible.com, buy the ones below that are on there, and listen. Otherwise read for 15 minutes in morning (when mind is fresh and not drifting off to sleep), or after a Caffeine Nap. If they change you the way they’ve changed me, you’ll be glad you took the time. If you’re in doubt, Google terms like ‘wealthy people read books’, etc.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Don’t get hung up on the real estate concept, but focus on the mindset. This is the book that was recommended to me by a friend 4+ years ago and got me started. When I read it I spent most of my spare time working my job and watching TV, etc.. 4 years later I spend most of my free time planning and working toward leaving the job for good.

Mastery. Once you understand the path to it (I had to read it twice), you tend to be calmer and content with the plateau of ‘work’ in getting good at something. Plus, it allows you to draw similarities between your path to mastery of Google hacking and the path of a Ninja, and that’s always fun.

The Secret. I have the DVD and audio, and have listen/watched them a total of 12+ times, and is still on my iPod. I have many big and exact examples of how the law of attraction has worked for me and mine.

Success is not an Accident. Still implementing this one, but is hard core work if you take it seriously. I expect it to give me laser focus on my life goals and projects by the time I’m through it.

Getting Things Done. Don’t just read this. Take a year to implement it. Trust me. Companies may start to prefer it, CNN boasts about it, and heck even Leo Laporte recommends it. After several methods including paper/Moleskine, Outlook, and Remember The Milk, I have stuck with My Life Organized because it’s digital, runs anywhere and keeps in sync, and I can take it with me on my Windows Mobile phone.

Struggles with change

Published by Bret Fisher on Nov 28, 2006 in Book and Life. 1 Comment

Here I am beyond midnight again just starting my ‘homework’. It continues to amaze me my ability of self defeating procrastination. After hours spent on other things, some important, most not… I sit with a cold cup of Joe realizing I’ll likely hurry through tonight’s homework once again.

You see, I’ve not been one to talk about it too much… what I’ve been focused on for two years. Mostly due to assumptions that others don’t care (hey that’s a good blog title) but also because I want to let the evidence of my actions reflect my work rather than my talk. Here on the most-public-of-all-public-places I’ve also been sensitive that some of the coursework I am studying under is copyrighted and can’t be of much public discussion.

Most, if any of my friends and family do not realize the amount of effort my wife and I have put into changing our life mindset, plans, and goals since 2003. We continue to increase our fever and effort in the simple task of changing our mind’s blueprint and actions to be that of a wealthy or rich person rather than our previous state of mind (the typical middle-classer).

As the books says it’s not been easy; and even just what we’ve done so far is hard enough to describe to someone that we don’t bother. We are doing things with our finances, our discipline, and our lives that no one we know is doing… which makes all this extremely hard. I know that we’re actually following the path of our virtual mentors such as Robert T. Kiyosaki, Dr. Dolf de Roos, Mark Fisher, and of course Mr. Williams; but with not one person to talk to who has done this ‘mindset transformation’ and become truly free, we feel like we’re clearing our own path through the Amazon.

So we have this no quit clause. Which at times has been all that keeps us pursuing our dream: to be independently wealthy within five years so that we won’t have to work for a living wage and become truly free, so that each day can be lived exactly how we choose it to be.

Since I didn’t document any expectations three years ago I’m not sure that I expected this journey to be different then it is. Yet today, as I sit here finishing this post in an attempt to document my emotions (I’m much more a typer then a writer… one of my weaknesses I’m fighting) I realize that I’m not moving fast enough toward the goal. As much as we accomplish weekly, I still feel as if I have never truly challenged myself.