It's a Game. Have Some Fun!

Hello again, Spirit Animals.

This started as a private entry in my journal, but then midway through it I thought you fine readers might get some benefit out of it as well. So I finished my thoughts here...

Stop being so serious, Sean.

Trading is not life or death. The type of trading I do, on the timeframes in which I do it is not investing. And that's ok. Investing is a different thing. An important thing, sure. But different.

What I'm doing, on my short-term timeframes, is playing a game. When I lose, it's information and it's entertainment. When I win, I'm rewarded and can spend the money on things that bring me joy.

Have some fun.

I need to begin fully accepting that what I do here is play a game. And the better I play it, the more fun I have. Just like playing Uno, or Chess, or Monopoly, or Parcheesi, or Wiffle Ball. When I'm winning at any of those games, it's more fun. But even when I lose, I'm glad I played.

This game that I play in the markets has so many more benefits beyond just PnL. The biggest: I learn about myself, and that learning never stops. And the more I learn about myself, the more I'm able to empathize with others who are playing the same game as me. The more I'm able to understand the struggles, which again -- go way beyond just PnL.

This may sound crazy to some of you who are having a hard time pulling consistent money out of the markets, but many of the people who do make good money struggle too. The fears we have our different, but no less significant. When we start winning the game, we start fearing losing our edge. We start fearing our next drawdown. We start fearing that our winning is enough.

Enough. That's a loaded word.

What is enough? As much as I think that if I just made $XXX,XXX more then I'd finally be happy and would be able to relax, winning traders will tell me that's bullshit. We just move the goalposts further out. We can't help it. It's human nature.

Short-term trading is a game, Sean. The sooner I accept it for what it is and continue finding the joy in that, the better. For far too long I've treated it far too seriously. So seriously, in fact, that I'd been afraid to lose, which prevented me from winning.

Let me type that again: The fear of losing prevents me from winning.

I've proven that to myself over the last 12 months. Once I began to fully embrace losing as just part of the game, as the cost of finding the next winner, as table stakes, then I was able to absorb the idea that trading smaller can still win big. 

And I've won big. 

In my most active trading account, my current unit size is 40 basis points of my account equity. This means any individual loss is barely a bump. Of course, I trade a lot of positions and sometimes many of them go against me at once. But when it hurts the most is after these formerly small positions turned into more meaningfully sized positions because they've profited. In other words, the volatility of open profits increases.

This is a first class problem.

It's a problem of playing the game well.

I don't like giving back open profits and enduring drawdowns. Nobody does. But living in drawdown is the stasis for any trendfollower.

When I look back at my equity curve over the past 12 months, I printed a new equity high on 52 trading days out of 251. That means 80% of the time, I'm in a drawdown.

Some drawdowns are deeper or longer than others, but the simple fact is the majority of days I'm "off the highs." Deal with it. 

That's the game. 

It's just a game. Enjoy it. Share the love of it. Don't be ashamed of it. It's who I am. It's what I do. It's what gets me out of bed in the morning. It's what connects me with others. It's what teaches me about myself. And there's so much more to learn about myself.

Love the game. Love myself. Love others. Profits are a byproduct of how well I can do these three things successfully.