Recently I received a wonderful peice of advise from an old hand in the market. This guy while not a man of money (actually this is a relative statement, we live in such a pesudo external scorecard world that a couple of million $ is considered short change) has been a successful trader/investor.

He had a good look at my trading journal with all entries and exits earlier, and he said,

“Manish, Slow down a bit”. In life, slowing down pays. Get the trend right, don’t worry about exact buy and sell points. The quant in you saves u from ruin, but it will never allow you to become rich (crazy rich)”.

 

And i kept thinking after he was long gone and realized what he was saying is essentially, dont miss the forest for the tree.

Majority of the money is made in sizing up the entire opportunity and riding the major part of it.

He looked at one of my trades, a rather successful one and he said u got 50% return out of it, but if you had not done your ins and outs, it was a 2 bagger.

Sure, you can take this advise with a pinch of salt as every style has its trade-off (drawdown) but his point was valid.

Slowing down is a wonderful thing, not just in stock market but life in general. Its amazing how different world’s align as I have heard the same thing from other feilds as well.

NNT (Nasim nicholas taleb) advises to do a slow walk rather than cardio BS.

Nisargadatta maharaj in his book “I am that” says, If you want to live longer, slow it down, eat less.

The minimalist way of life also vouch for that, Slow down the buying spree to live a happy life. Because remember the old ZEN saying, when you are walking a donkey, in effect the donkey is walking you too.