In these matters, the only certainty is that nothing is certain…Pliny the Elder (23AD-79AD)
We need to feel in control, to declutter physical and mental space into a neat little place for everything. We want to know the future, what’s coming next, what the markets will do, where we will be and who we will be. Obligingly, there is no shortage of people willing to tell you or sell you predictions. We enable politicos, professors, seminar givers, economists and market gurus to thrive by buying into scenarios that appease our existential angst and assure us that everything is going to be OK– if we just do as they say.
Friday’s brutal, premeditated, deranged active shooter, midnight massacre in Aurora, Colorado is a glaring example of how the wilderness can appear in an instant. In his book “Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies And Why,” Laurence Gonzales describes the wilderness as a metaphor for all of life’s challenges and gives powerful examples of how survivors have universal lessons to teach us. We each have our own personal wilderness that can and may appear at any time.
Our hearts bleed for the loved ones of those people who walked excitedly into the movie theater and were carried out in body bags. They did not make it through the wilderness. Palpable empathic suffering brings us to the reality that the nature of life is fleeting and uncertain. We don’t know what we don’t know and we can’t know what we don’t know.
Each trading day, we are in the realm of risk and uncertainly. It’s time to drive a stake into the heart of the myth that markets hate uncertainty. Markets, price discovery, profits and life exist, thrive and are driven by uncertainty. Everything can vanish in the blink of an eye. So take nothing for granted because tomorrow is promised to no one.
How do you survive the wilderness of life and markets?
Take personal responsibility for every thought, feeling and action (You are responsible for your trade so stop blaming others and start looking in the mirror when things do not go as planned).
Analyze, plan and execute ruthlessly (Plan your trade, trade your plan, rinse and repeat)
Feel every feeling but move as quickly as possibly through denial, anger, bargaining and depression into acceptance (A bad trade does not make you a bad trader or a horrible person. Get over yourself and move on).
Celebrate your successes but don’t get overconfident (Pride goeth before a fall and the markets and life will humble you if you don’t have the good sense to do it yourself).
Make fear your prey, not your predator (Put your fear in front of you and keep it in plain sight. Hunt it down and kill it; get it before it gets you).
Take correct, corrective and decisive action (Cut losses quickly let winning positions run and when in doubt stay out).
Look at everything that happens as a gift that leads to new learning– a laying down of novel brain synaptic pathways. (Be a lifelong learner and happy birthday to my 91 year old neighbor Trader George and 88 year old Richard Russell. Keep going!).
Experience it all–the terror and the beauty– and know that this is the perfect moment and you are always in it.
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next…Ursula K. Le Guin
Janice Dorn, M.D., Ph.D.
