Trading Psychology  |  APR 2006

What It Takes To Survive by Adrienne Toghraie

Stocks & Commodities V. 24:4 (26-31): What It Takes To Survive by Adrienne Toghraie As a trader, you need to be a winner and you also need to be a survivor. Here’s why. No matter how good a trader is, he will experience a shattering loss some time in his career. There is almost no way to avoid such an event because no system is completely infallible and the markets are like heat-seeking missiles that sense vulnerability and do not give up until they hit their target. The professional trader must, therefore, learn not only how to be a winner but how to be a survivor as well. Traders can learn a lot about the art of survival from the human response to a great natural disaster. Hurricane Katrina, the deadly category 5 hurricane that bore down on the southeastern region of the US in late August 2005, was responsible for the deaths of more than 1,000 people. One of the cities hit, New Orleans, LA, sits in a bowl-shaped region below sea level, protected by a system of levees that were designed to withstand a less powerful hurricane than Katrina. An emergency plan for the evacuation of the city was in place, but in the end, for one reason or another, was neither consulted nor followed. When the call to evacuate finally came, a significant portion of the population did not leave, leading to a level of unprecedented calamity. Why?

by Adrienne Laris Toghraie