Trading Psychology: Painful versus Hurtful

I learned the following idea from Jeff Davis, who is a wise man and a veteran trader.

When you’re trading, it’s important to distinguish between things that are hurtful and things that are painful. For example, if you don’t take a trade that goes in your favor, that’s hurtful but not painful. If you’re in a trade and get stopped out at breakeven, only to watch it go in your favor, that’s hurtful but not painful.

Painful is when you actually take a loss, there is real harm done (even when it’s a planned, controlled loss). Missed profits are not painful. You don’t want to equate missed profits with actual losses in your mind. You have to be very careful about this. Your mind will play all sorts of tricks on you, so you have to stay right on top of it.

So the next time you get tricked out of a position (or “juked” out as my buddy Smash likes to say), quickly ask yourself, was that truly painful or merely hurtful?

The Politically Correct Beatrix Potter

I’ve been reading all of Beatrix Potter’s many “tales” with my daughter, and was surprised to see in one of the books from our local library that the original text had been changed and an illustration had been excluded!

In The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, the original text, which I remember well, reads: “When old Mr. Bunny had driven the cat into the greenhouse, he locked the door. Then he came back to the basket and took out his son Benjamin by the ears, and whipped him with the little switch.”

In the 1991 Ottenheimer Publishers edition from our local library, the text reads [my emphasis]: “When old Mr. Bunny had driven the cat into the green-house, he locked the door. Then he came back to the basket and took out his son Benjamin by the ears, and spanked him with the little switch.”

The politically correct editors of 1991 had no trouble with Benjamin being pulled out by his ears, but they did change “whipped” to “spanked.” They also dropped the accompanying illustration of Mr. Bunny whipping Peter Rabbit, while in the background Benjamin Bunny is holding his backside and crying:

Then he took out his nephew Peter

Movies Watched -- Maudie (2017)

115 minute running time so at least 20 minutes too long. Stars Sally Hawkins, whom I first saw in The Shape of Water … she’s a pro actress, probably will win (or has won) an Oscar somewhere along the line … she plays a simpleton woman who paints folk art in the wilds of Nova Scotia, and eventually finds some fame (though not fortune) … but life was hard, and she had crippling arthritis … it’s sad and mostly unsentimental. She has an abusive, even more of a simpleton husband played by Ethan Hawke. It’s the story of this odd couple over the decades … I wasn’t super thrilled. Yellow rating.

(Mick LaSalle hated it.)

Ask the Boss

Multiple Time Frame Analysis

If you want to trade stocks successfully, you have to have a deep understanding of this image. Price patterns are identical regardless of time frame. Be clear about the time frame that you’re trading, and then zoom in and out in time to understand how those patterns relate.

Thanks, Ben-wa

Movies Watched -- Frantz (2017)

In German and French. 114 minute running time so at least 20 minutes too long. A romance-mystery of sorts … kind of interesting (set in post-WWI Germany and France) … exploring times when the truth brings more pain than lies … ultimately unsatisfying. Yellow rating.

Life goes on….

Rearranging Everything Under the Sun

The great Tal Wilkenfeld (who normally doesn’t sing) and a crew of percussive hipsters:

Tal Wilkenfeld - Under the Sun Recorded Live: 3/4/2016 - Paste Studios - New York, NY More Tal Wilkenfeld in the Paste Cloud: http://www.pastemagazine.com/search?t=Tal Wilkenfeld&m=Video Visit Paste Magazine: http://www.pastemagazine.com

Movies Watched -- Louder than Bombs (2016)

103 minutes plus 6 minutes of credits, but felt interminable. Impossible to watch without ffwd. About a woman who’s a photojournalist; [spoiler] she commits suicide by head-on collision, leaving behind husband and two young sons.

Completely disjointed, with lots of flashbacks and dreams, etc. The main story is set three years after the crash. The marriage was troubled. The kids are troubled. Dad is a sort of typically weak Baby Boomer type. The high point happened when Rachel Brosnahan (who played Rachel Posner in House of Cards), a former girlfriend of the older boy, flashes her tits, which I believe she also did in HoC.

Heavy on heartstring piano music … these are issues of educated, upper-middle class white people awkwardly dealing with a tragedy, who really gives a shit? You just want to take all the characters in the movie and shake some sense into them.

Red rating, avoid.

No one cares about Truth, n'est-ce pas?

Movies Watched -- Oslo, August 31st (2012)

In Norwegian. 95 minutes but felt much longer because it’s a talk talk talk movie.

Still on a Joachim Trier kick after enjoying Thelma and not thinking much of Reprise. This movie starred the same kid as in Reprise … this time he’s playing a recovering drug addict from a good Oslo family … there’s a class element to these movies that interests me, but that’s about it. Everyone in Oslo is gorgeous, well, the women are anyway.

It’s another case where the story in the end … it’s just … who cares? Art House stuff. Kid had it all and pissed it away, boo hoo. Loss, guilt, regret, yeah yeah yeah. Not sure why the women all fell in love with him.

There was one scene that I liked where he’s listening in on various inane conversations at the surrounding tables at a cafe, and all his thoughts that life is pointless are confirmed. (One reason I loved living in China was that, even though my Chinese is excellent, I was able to tune out all surrounding conversations.)

Yellow rating if you’re interested in the dangers of drugs or beautiful Scandinavian women.

Look at this tooth, I’m not completely perfect

Movies Watched -- Reprise (2006)

In Norwegian, 107 minute running time but felt much longer.

After enjoying Thelma, I thought I’d watch all the movies Joachim Trier made, and I think this was his first. It’s about a group of young men in Oslo, two of whom have literary ambitions (pretensions), and one of the two has a mental health crisis … it’s about friendship and growing up and growing apart, I guess. I wasn’t super thrilled with it.

They’re rich kids sort of, no visible means of support but comfortable and jet off to Paris for the weekend. They mention the east side versus the west side of Oslo (poor vs. rich kids), but don’t go into any detail. The girlfriend (Kari) is from the east side.

What the hell kind of novel could a 20-year-old kid write? Angst? What angst? It wasn’t badly made, but I didn’t find the story all that interesting. The boring portrait of privileged artists as young men in Norway .. yellow rating.

Blogger Jason Kottke with Scandinavian babe

Movies Watched -- After the Storm (2017)

In Japanese. 117 minute running time so at least 20 to 30 minutes too long. Depressing. Japan a place where the population is shrinking, so it touches on the issue of aging parents, which is sort of interesting… anyway, there’s a deadbeat guy, looks like a Japanese George Clooney, former novelist now working at a sleazy detective agency … he has a gambling problem just like his father did … has a pretty ex-wife and young son whom he neglects, though he doesn’t want to, but he’s just a bum, he can’t help himself.

There’s a touching scene where mother and daughter-in-law commiserate over the rotten guys they ended up marrying, but like I said, it’s just sad, not enlightening. One review I read called it a “sad-bastard movie,” which made me laugh. Avoid, red rating.

The look of a failed marriage