A more reasonable approach is to commit to making the best choice you can at that moment, using the tools and methodology at hand, knowing you can go back and make changes or improvements. This will move you in the right direction as an investor and towards what amounts to an acceptable personal definition of perfection that you can live with. We traders must be content with eagerly seeking the promise of perfection while knowing in the back of our minds that like a greyhound at the racetrack, we’ll never actually catch the rabbit.
I often write about the need for investors to be brutally honest and candid with themselves and about themselves. If you are the type of person whose ultimate goal in life is to become the “perfect investor” and consequently you don’t dare trade the markets for fear of failure and the sting of defeat, then do yourself a favor and look elsewhere for a hobby and turn over your assets to a professional money manager. In my seminars, I acknowledge this paralysis of perfection by offering a humorous list of 64 excuses that one can use for procrastinating and not yet investing in the stock market.
On the other hand, if you are willing to live in the middle space between perfection and failure and be willing to embrace the gray area that is the stock market, you’ll do nicely. Just remind yourself after each trade that you are a ‘recovering perfectionist’.
Trade well; trade with discipline!
-- Gatis Roze
Personal Note: I want to thank my readers for all the kind comments and encouragement. Your responses most definitely motivate me. For those of you who are not yet using the automatic delivery feature, please check it out. It makes it easy to receive fresh content every Friday by various delivery methods of your choice. Check out the options under the heading “Subscribe to this blog” on the right.
