You probably know that I'm really into yoga and meditation, so it's not
uncommon for one of my teachers to start a session with a story about
some phenomenal feat that a yogi master or monk has pulled off.
This one is utterly remarkable:
In
1585, a monk set out to run a 1,000 day marathon. Specifically he and
his fellow monks ran 40 kilometers a day for 100 days. Yes, you read
that right. 40 kilometers per day! They did this for 5 years.
They are called the Gyoja, or marathon monks and they do the impossible.
For the first 5 years they run 100 days, 40 kilometers each day
The 6th year, they run 100 days, 60 kilometers each day
The 7th year, they run 84 kilometers per day for 100 days and then do another 100 days where they run 40 kilometers each day.
During the 5th year of the 1,000 day marathon, they have to go 7.5 days without food, water or rest.
Since the challenge started in 1585, only 50 men have completed the 1,000 day marathon.
Yuhai Sakai
One of these Tendai Buddhist monks, Yuhai Sakai, completed the marathon challenge - twice.
The
fist time he began in 1973 and finished his Sennichi Kaihogyo (the
1,000 day marathon) in 1980...but he was unsatisfied with the result -
so he began again six months later. In 1987, at age 61, he became only
the third monk in the sect’s history to complete the Kaihogyo twice.
These monks dare to do the impossible. They dare to push themselves to the extreme.
They dare to be great.
I
couldn't help but relate this to trader training. I think many new
traders have an "idea" of being great, but not an "intention" of being
great. And there's a huge difference. It is the "intention" of
completing the 1000 day marathon that propels them to do it.
The monks envisioned completing the journey in their minds and then executed what they had already "experienced."
The "idea" of being great is easy to define and it's very subjective.
The "intention" of being great is much more powerful. For the
marathoning monks, they were required to bring daggers with them and
impale themselves to death if the were unable to finish their trek. So
the options were: succeed, die en route, or commit suicide.
I don't advocate going to such lengths, but I humbly believe that many
aspiring traders end up doing that because they don't have clear
intentions about what they want to achieve BEFORE they set out to learn
to trade. Remember, your subconscious has just a powerful effect on you
as your conscious mind...
Commitment
Just like traders who trade a system, they commit to having a high level
of discipline: they have to begin with a high level of discipline
BEFORE they decide to run a system. The discipline does not assimilate
into their behavior BECAUSE they have a data feed and simulation
software.
If you lack discipline, a system is not going to instill it in you. This
was true for the turtles and it's true today for AQR and Renaissance.
If you lack discipline and commitment, you're done before you start.
If you lack the consciousness, you can kill a great deal of time living
in a fallacy and think you are on a path to success. Intentions equal
results.
The truth is, you're not going to become great unless you have a great
teacher who has endured the marathon of several decades of trading and
several decades of teaching. He can help you set your goals before you
begin your study.
What's the point of studying trading if you don't know what you want the
end result to be. That would be like getting in your car and starting
to drive without having a destination planned. Nothing wrong with that,
but you're not going to achieve greatness that you're capable of by
cruising.
Do you have a clear vision of what you want you want the end result to be, or are you out for a Sunday drive?
[Hint: the end result isn't "I want to be a successful trader."]
As
part of my trading journey, I traveled to learn under Ed Seykota. I'd
fly from Los Angeles to Reno/Tahoe airport, rent a car and drive 45
minutes up Mt. Rose Highway to the north shore of Lake Tahoe and come
back the next day. We met ever other week. I did this for two years.
But I wasn't a new trader or rookie. I had been trading for
approximately 12 years at the time and had upwards of $20MM in assets. I
was already successful.
The point is, you cannot stop learning and you cannot stop pushing
yourself. The markets are going to evolve and you are going to grow as a
person. (That's why you can't run the same system year over year - you
and the markets change -- both need updating.)
Having a great coach or mentor will also help you be accountable. You
can bullsh*t a marketer all you want because they don't have this type
of awareness - they have never traded - so their knowledge isn't
experiential, or "a posteriori" as Kant would say - it's reconstituted,
like FCOJ.
But a true coach, a mentor that actually is invested in your success,
will challenge you to be the greatest you can be, not unlike how Cus
D'Amato get inside Mike Tyson's head, and he will push you further,
knowing when to push and when to back off.
This
is a time of unprecedented opportunity for trading the markets.
Potential interest hikes in the US, collapse of Greece, crude oil
disruptions, China's crash, and toppy markets in US Equities.
Scott and I want to help you make the most of this opportunity.
You and Scott will schedule a call each week. He'll send you the lesson
ahead of time and then teach the lesson 1-on-1 with you on the phone at a
time that works for both of you.
He'll record the call and you can replay it over and over and follow along with you written lesson.
Each lesson is about 25 pages long with lots of charts and proprietary
indicators that Scott developed over his 33 years of trading. He'll ask
you if you understand everything. If you don't, you have to go back. We
have a lot of integrity in our coaching program.
Please register today if you're serious. There is a time constraint with the number of students Scott can personally handle, as he is still trading full-time.
There
are almost 18 lessons when all is said and done, and I'll send you the
the 3 systems towards the end that show the backtesting rules.
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