Knowing Your Limits as a Trader

Here's a big shout out to Tom Canfield for his recent tweet on finding his limits in trading the volatile TSLA stock.  We get so many boastful tweets and self-promotions, it's refreshing to hear from a real trader who is going through a real growth process.

We talk about many trading strengths, but rarely discuss acceptance.  A top athlete in track and field may not be a top basketball player or a top weight lifter.  A great portfolio manager might make a wildly unsuccessful day trader and vice versa.  So much of success is finding what we're good at and making the most of those strengths.  But that presupposes that we can accept who we are and what we're good at--and what we're not.  

Often, we only know what we're good at by pushing our limits and finding out what works and what doesn't.  I know traders who are freakishly good at trading one kind of market and not others.  They only learn that by pushing, failing, and then coming to a reckoning--and an acceptance of the limits of their strengths.

We cannot make the most of who we are if we are always trying to be someone else.  It's great to push our boundaries, but even greater to fail fast and use the experience to double down on what makes us successful.

Further Reading:

Trading and The Path of Repentance