Excellence, which we investors can learn from and leverage in our businesses, is all around us. I encourage you to use this energy. This is how you can motivate yourself to become better as a trader and investor.
As I watched the World Cup matches in Qatar, two key ingredients regularly trickled to the surface. The announcers keep pointing this out. The top football stars – regardless of their teams – combine two essential characteristics. The excellence of their footballing skills is an obvious requirement, but that alone is not enough. The top stars, who are the most important players to coaches, have an emotional stability that smaller players lack.
A case in point was Brazil national team coach Tite, who said in a penalty shootout with Croatia that he would save his best player, Neymar da Silva Santos, to take the fifth and final penalty, because “Neymar is the player with the greatest quality and mental readiness to fire such a high pressure shot.”
As an investor, I’m sure we’ve all experienced situations where the markets shuffle our emotional cards pretty well — a situation that calls for stability, not panic. Top sports stars and top traders are characterized by the fact that they are more resilient in stressful situations. They have been there before and know how to deal with it and adapt to the moment. They have an unwavering belief and belief in their abilities, their steadiness and their ability to remain calm and composed. Their positivity often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or, as they say in football, they create that “magic moment”.
Contrast that with some of the smaller players, who are fiery personalities who are easily provoked and all too often discouraged by setbacks. My experience is that impulsive anger and frustration will knock you down and lead to poorer results – whether on the soccer field or in your trading room.
In terms of soccer stars, I’m struck by the dichotomies between their passionate, all-consuming personalities on the field and their everyday, real-life personalities. It’s as if they’ve developed a powerful personal avatar that enters the field with the skills and emotional attributes needed to play at the highest level. As they exit the stadium, a transformation occurs. This separation of personalities – on the street and on the field – is often misunderstood by those who observe these differences. Some stars have been labeled aloof or haughty, or accused of embracing the dark side.
The Wall Street Journal (12/13/2022) accused Argentine Lionel Messi of evolving from a silent genius into a snarling avenger who embraces that dark side. Not every soccer star’s hot sauce is like Messi, but the transformations apply to most stars.
I’ve written a number of blogs about my trading vest over the years. It essentially gives me the investment personality I need when I’m in the stock market. Not unlike the “game face” put on by most professional athletes. The bottom line is that we can get by with our private lives and get along just fine. But that’s the opposite of our investing life.
Your personal life may be an ensemble comedy, but when you don your trade vest, you’re best committed and fully embracing your personal investment avatar.
Act well; Trade with Discipline!
Gatis RozeMBA, CMT
Gatis Roze, MBA, CMT, is a seasoned full-time stock market investor trading his own account since 1989, unencumbered by client distractions. He holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, is past President of the Technical Securities Analysts Association (TSAA) and a Chartered Market Technician (CMT). After several successful entrepreneurial ventures, Gatis retired in his early 40s to focus on investing in the financial markets. With continued success as a stock trader, he began teaching investing at the post-college level in 2000 and continues to do so to this day.
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