Heartbreak, Love, and Trading…
So yes, your humble writer (and not-so-humble trader) experienced his first full relationship cycle since having moved to NYC in search of trading nirvana. And it’s got my creative juices flowing like you wouldn’t believe. I’ve been writing so much (if you didn’t already realize I like to write for ‘myself’ which some people find overly colloquial) that I realized this entire experience, not just this silly break-up but the actual journey from a small coastal city in the most conservative chunk of Southern California, to NYC, with a temporary stop in Secaucus while I learn about my new environment, is the start of the second of three parts to my life…and being on the fringes of NYC, just one stop away from Penn Station on the NJ Transit allows me to become an observer, studying, examining, learning, about all that NY City has to offer. Memorizing the subway systems, and the multitude of references to each neighborhood, such as Soho, Chelsea, Meat Packing (can’t we change this already?), FIDI, Tribeca, The Village, midtown Central Park area, etc..etc…
So with this, I bring to you the social side of your Investment Capitalist…
The first romance in any new chapter of ones life, especially when there’s geographical displacement involved, is the one most remembered. I find it funny that my Pandora station, which she introduced me to, is now, as I write this, playing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #5, played in an E flat major, which carries a deep, constant low E flowing while a gentle piano plays a melody of “goodbye”, as if it’s the score to a movie unfolding before my eyes, trying to suggest a bitter-sweetness to the scene, memories that will remain beautiful, as this is just how I wish to remember her.
There’s always uncertainty when one must make an important decision. How could we know which decision is right until doing a postmortem? As in discretionary trading, one must continually do postmortems of good and bad decisions to glean all the information necessary to improve the next go around. In the case of ‘Love’, I realized the greatest thing about a break-up is the heartbreak, because that is the beauty of life, feeling emotions unique to man…
Love is nothing more than a chemical binding and unification of two persons emotional energy, in a way only mother nature and God could manifest in partnership…so that when that perfect bonding of amorous chemicals in our brains and bodies is disrupted, we are destined to feel things that take us to our core, strip us of all of our layers, and allow us to rebuild…
…Such that when that love is once again obtained, the peak becomes obtainable once again…as goes the cycle of trading too…because a good trader must love his profession like he loves his women…with passion and fire every step of the way…and must realize that the dedicated trader cannot and should not attempt to court both at the same time!
So here are a few paragraphs out of my “personal” journal, which I publish here because of all the lessons which can be learned by substituting the “breakup of two people” with the “breakup between a trader and his bad habits”. Habits which have become bad but were at one time a fountain of profitable trades”. Sorry…I know…colloquial….
Heart broken in New York City, 2009…
This is a first, and I certainly hope not the last for me. I think I should be grateful, thank God, for allowing me to experience the precursor to getting one’s heart broken, which is the pure bliss only brought about by the touch of a woman. Not any woman, but an incredible girl, that takes your heart on a journey, gives you magical powers of walking on water, floating on a cloud, functioning on a totally different wavelength than others…
…These are the privileges of being in love, and only with a broken heart can the slate be wiped clean in preparation for the next go around with this gift to mankind: being “in love”. Without thirst, we wouldn’t know water…without hunger, we wouldn’t have an appetite to satiate…without Mozart, we wouldn’t know the inspirational powers of music. To me, the female is my Mozart…and she was my muse, inspiring me to reach higher, fly farther…
Music, life…both most harmonious when in her presence, near her, wherever she may be, feeling her gentle touch, when she rests her head on my heart, as if God chiseled this marble slab to custom fit her body into my arm, my life, in and around her, where I always feel welcome, always feel secure, until the very end, when only a woman’s wrath can do its duty by spitting out those morsels of a mans pride that may still remain…
…Until that moment, one has not experienced the full cycle of God’s precious gift. Love comes in unexpected ways, when you least expect it, and perhaps when you least deserve it. You shouldn’t be looking for love, for love finds you. A woman should put the fire of life into a man’s spine, the foundation of his success, the nurture for his soul. A woman that inspires the man to give up his aspirations, his dreams, his goals, that is the apple to which we are most drawn but should run away from…
…The irony, destined to test my free will, is I can’t determine whether the apple is edible or poisonous, until the poison is in my heart…general malaise…melancholy…my heart has a built-in anti venom: it’s so easily broken, thus triggering chemicals in my brain that neutralize all my feelings except the pain felt deep inside…I think my brain is using this opportunity to exploit my weakness to make me stronger, so this doesn’t happen again. But this is where I find myself lost for words…
I love being in love. I loved loving you and can’t wait to find you again. Too bad it was so short, because you took my heart in New York City…My first love, the first bite from the apple, and lucky me, there was no poison this time, for this I will always remember you…I aspire to find someone that can take my mind off of your face, your chocolate eyes, satin skin, generous heart, and warm affection…Not to forget you, but to feel the highs only a woman’s touch can achieve, and if these lows are the price I pay, then so be it, because experiencing your love was worth every tear that may drop, while I wait to see you again in the next life, when we’re sparrows singing melodies to accompany this crazy dance we call love…
…I told you everything because I got scared…I was childish, immature, and wanted to destroy a good thing because I briefly fell for you, and things like my trading were just excuses, my silly defenses. I behaved like an ass because I got cold feet (i.e scared, gutless)…your positive traits far exceeded any negative ones and I therefore didn’t care that you didn’t fit the mold of the girls before you, who rarely come even close to your wits, intelligence…you are incredibly thoughtful, a wonderful joy to be around… your joy was infectious, and this lonely trader from California was hook, line and sinker, totally yours…
…If you would have realized it instead of asking for it, and tripping up in my defenses that went up spontaneously, without my knowledge and permission…But the cherry on the cake was your understanding of financial markets…You were changing the mold. I was so taken by your depth in the arts and the poetry you whispered in my ear…I mean, wow. You had me.
When she sells something, she makes a convincing pitch. Then when she gets what she wants, she throws it back…All the times when I wanted to leave and was persuaded to spend the night, go to work in the morning from her place…When she looks in the mirror, she knows every time was at her behest and cajoling and manipulation. Although I enjoyed it obviously, it was never my first choice for professional reasons. But my personal side wanted only to stay with her, all day and all night, sharing those incredible emotional highs which are more narcotic than any drug known to man.
I didn’t ask for her keys, she gave them to me. I gave them back with a little piece of my heart…without her having to ask for them…I tried to memorialize the things she said on the last day, which made me realize the state of mind she was in…what a refreshing and relaxing realization it was…as if reason won over for a moment of clarity, putting the heart in its place!
She was an amazing and wonderful girl, and perhaps I’m more than a little regretful I broke up with her a third time that finally worked…the first two times she made such a convincing pitch to keep me, a proposition which I had exactly a zero percent chance of declining…but she does have amazing sales skills, skills I could not achieve even after 20 years of study…
…Even though I miss her dearly, I want to be with her, I want to play with her and cuddle, sometimes, you only realize what you have after you let it go…and if it was meant to be, it will come back to you…but I do fall in love hard and fast…and the next love is right around the corner, I’m sure…but in the meantime, my other “woman”, my other “love” is calling and feels neglected…for my mistress will always be my trading…
…I will occasionally write poetry about you, knowing you will remember one thing most, and that’s the way I looked at you when we were holding each other tight, and you saw my eyes, looked deep into my soul, and felt secure…whether I send you the letters, who knows…the anxiety has lifted, from where it came…too much caffeine for the day…caffeine and cigarettes, both being stimulants….no more of either for me…..with you they came, and with you they are gone… all the bad habits…
…[teddy] bear, it was too much, too fast, and now we both have agreed to back off…which is all I wanted from the outset, but you had to take us through an emotional roller coaster before finally acquiescing…I’m sure to never repeat the same mistakes, but the mistake of falling in love too fast, like a false breakout, I am sure I will repeat, over and over, and over…but so what? The sooner the better right? Not if my trading has anything to do with it!
But alas, one can only become an educated speculator through failure, through realizing a bad habit after the fact, when the fog of love/war has been lifted, and all you have are your memories…Pejie joon will be on her mind every time she has ice cream…every time she hears Bob Marley…or ‘Under the Bridge’by RH Chili Peppers…Deep Dish…every time she eats Toblerone, Nutella…regardless of the path we traveled to give you the strength to let me go…do the ends justify the means? This route we ended up taking, included deep pleasure, pain, education, understanding, maturity, and finally…peace.
With that, I wish her more than all the best…she will most certainly be missed so I have to take extreme measures of hiding reminders, including the teddy bear so full of ‘delicousness’, the scarf, and all of her personal details have been permanently erased from all forms of media, except I cannot erase my fond memories of her, which I hope to preserve for as long as I live…I cannot erase her phone number from my brain, time will take care of that, although it has been deleted from my “phone system”, which she never got over but now understands…Much like how I must forget prior strategies in the market as their edge gets arb’ed out…and not rush to return to them until the edge is once again attainable…
The 2 months you gave me filled me with the joy of many years…and for that, I am truly sorry for having lied to you at all for any reason during those months…It was an amateur mistake made because I was in an unfamiliar and alien environment, homesick, feeling vulnerable and insecure, starting a new chapter in my life. My homesickness and vulnerability aside, it still doesn’t justify my momentary lapse of reason that led to two petty, childish distortions which robbed me of my inalienable right to cherish you. It painted the wrong picture of my morals and beliefs, a tainted view that I cannot reconcile. Maybe I should have found a more opportune moment to tell you…
-Begin trading journal entry:
The lessons to trading…
We are always enamored by the last trade that made us money, much like we are with the most recent girl that made us fly. We try to cling to the past and immediate present, while not having any patience for even the near term future to arrive, a future influenced by our observations during that period of patient analysis. We mustn’t always be in a relationship, much like we shouldn’t always be in a trade!
Anyone that thinks getting up from their seat risks missing the next great trade, is like the man that clings onto his emotions as if afraid to let go of something that doesn’t work anymore, like a strategy, or a relationship. Are you really so afraid to embrace present events? The next losing trade, if you process it as knowledge, may have missed its mark, but will make you a better artist, and the sooner you recognize it as a bad trade, the sooner you can look forward to searching for the next one. But unlike the love of your life, which will find you, you must seek out the next strategy which gives you an enormous edge.
And as that edge dissipates, as all good things must come to an end, so too does the degree of passion, and when the edge/passion is gone, the trade/relationship is over. Although I didn’t lose my passion for this girl, in fact it was probably still peaking, I do see the benefit of going out while still on the ascent, from a depth of feelings perspective: the hearbreak is much deeper, and more pure, and innocent, and childish, and certainly less harmful, than the proverbeal “blow up” where you can’t live to trade another day…
Now, when President-elect Barack Obama says “it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better”, does the following paragraph from the FT.com have anything to do with it getting much, much worse?
At worst [the nationalisation] could lead to fresh worries about how the Irish economy survives this crisis and how they can service their increasing debt burden,” said Jim Reid, a credit strategist at Deutsche Bank. “This is further evidence of the blurring between government and credit risk.”
It costs €257,000 to insure €10m ($13m) of Ireland’s debt against default for five years, and €146,000 for an equivalent contract written on Austria, says CMA, the credit data group. The cost of protecting Greek debt against default rose to an all-time high of €260,000. The same contract for UK retailer Tesco would cost €122,000. Credit derivatives written on German debt – traditionally viewed as one of the world’s safest assets – were trading yesterday at a record of €54,000 to protect €10m of debt over five years.
“All of these EU countries need money for their stabilisation measures and one of the biggest risks is that they don’t get enough,” said Peter Schaffrik, a rate strategist at Dresdner Kleinwort. “If not enough people show up to the bond auctions the question is, will they be able to get funds? If they don’t then we have a problem.”
