(Originally posted Thursday,July 22,2004 @ 18:38) Rapidly approaching the end of July and I’m starting to get itchy. Time to begin setting up the charts again for my resumption of trading in September. It will take a little while to set up my chart books and get a feel for what’s happening after such a long lay-off. When I took off my cotton shorts (no pun intended) at the end of March I expected to just take the month of April off. As things turned out we enjoyed a record month of dryness, sunshine and lack of rain. I used the month to perform a number of tasks on the boat that normally would wait until July.
Then deciding to fly to Toronto to visit my family turned into a tour of my old cottage country up in Muskoka. Well, the trip turned into another month so there went May. June came and went and I guess for the most part I was still returning to normal emotionally. It is not easy to see your parents enter the serious years of old age.
The impact of watching them decline gives me great pause. Having Dad send me a photo of him being honoured at the D-Day celebrations June 6th hammers home the reality of his life. I never knew he’d been a member of the famed Black Watch Regiment during the invasion of Normandy. He kept everything about his service from his sons. I also learned that landing was the very first time Canadian soldiers went into battle under our own flag instead of the British Union Jack. He looked very handsome at the ceremony in his blazer and flannels, his medals on his chest. Thank God he made it out of Europe alive.
So now it’s time to start re-kindling my interest after a good long break. From the looks of my July charts I could have stayed short that cotton and just banked the profits. It’s been a beautiful move to the downside. I’ve only caught a couple of those in my entire trading career. Coffee went the opposite way. I jokingly said to myself the night before the flight on May 14th, I should go long the July Coffee, put in a $100. stop and see what happens. Would have paid for the trip nicely. Oh well. It’s never that easy is it! 🙂
When this heat wave breaks I’ll spend some time setting up the Sept. through Dec. charts. This will be the winter where I believe I can really start to help some folks trade more profitably. I’ll have to master this internet thing to where readers can visit my blog, meet my friends and make some money. Should be fun.
I ran into an acquaintance the other day who was into big-time stock day-trading in the late 90’s from his own PC. He’s burned out but did manage to grab enough net profit to buy himself a condo. Pretty damn good considering the odds. He finally quit after starting to listen to me during our visits over coffee. He was burning out.
He hadn’t learned the BIG lesson yet. By quitting he’s begun to come to grips with the ‘real’ issues for finding long-term trading success. What is it that makes YOU happy. What are YOUR core beliefs and just WHY do you think you can be successful at this game. I’m delighted he’s backing away for awhile. He’ll answer those questions for himself and my money says when he does, he’ll avoid giving all that profit back.