Stick To Your Guns
There is an article titled, ‘Stick To Your Guns’, in the recent edition of
Trader Monthly. It has been written by a poker player called Johnny Chan who has been 10 times World Series of Poker champion. The tag line for the article is, ‘Stay the course - [this] might often be a bad mantra for politicians, but it’s often sage wisdom in poker, and in trading’.
Firstly if you have not read Trader Monthly, it really is worth picking up a copy to experience the city trader bling factor. Upon turning the cover you are greeted by adds for a Bentley car, follow by a Breitling watch, a Edmiston yacht, a Koenigsegg sport car, plus features on relevant topics of the day such as the new Cessna ‘affordable’ private jet at a mere $2.5 million (which apparently is very easy to fly). We are talking about the bling of trading magazines.
The odd thing is, despite blogging on trading and making money, the bling materialistic side of life is not something that really appeals to me. I’ve found that you get little pleasure from owning material goods, however as our physics teacher used to say, “Money doesn’t bring happiness, but it does bring a pleasant sort of misery”. Donald Trump sums it up nicely, “Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.” That is were the real rush is; the pursuit of goals in the company of good friends.
So despite all the bling associated with Trader Magazine, the odd thing is, I find myself picking it up to read whenever a copy comes through the door. The appeal is in the lifestyle stories and short biographies on traders, business people and gamblers. Immediately this raises the question as to how closely the personalities of each are intertwined and what can one group learn from the other, which brings us back to Johnny Chan’s article.
In the article Johnny talks through how he played out a poker hand. He starts of with a good hand and decides to start the betting lightly to try and get some action going. Unfortunately his main rival bites and bets heavily before the flop, which causes Johnny to question his strategy in the heat of battle. He then reminds himself that the reason he bet lightly was to give others the confidence to place larger bets. He holds his nerve and then goes on to collect the pot and then win the match on the next hand. The moral of the story is, before you make an investment decision, decide upon your strategy then hold your nerve unless the underlying reasons behind your strategy change.
Yesterday our portfolio tested our nerve after Southwest airlines got hit over concerns about oil prices. In the back of our minds there is a feeling of fear associated with the markets moving to levels that have not been seen for many years, as this raises the question as to whether or not the markets have the confidence to stay bullish. Then we are reminded of our game plan, which is to stay bullish as long as the markets keep setting higher highs; but there in maybe lies the source of the problem. The NYSE and DOW are setting higher highs, but the NASDAQ and Footsie look as if they are starting to move sideways into a consolidation pattern.
Like Johnny during his moment of doubt, we remind ourselves of why we got into our investments and ask ourselves if anything has changed to cause us to re-adjust our strategy. HSBC was bought because the technical set up was good; to date it has held the 920 pence support level and has made one attempt to break out. Typically a stock will test its support once or twice before breaking out, so HSBC is performing as expected. Southwest Airlines was bought because we believe it is undervalued due to fear in the sector. It is currently getting hit due to fear associated with increases in the price of oil, which will hopefully be offset by the recently reported increases in November passenger traffic in Tampa and overall increases in ticket prices; Walgreen was bought because they were oversold due to fear and hit a solid technical buy level. Walgreen is now performing as the fear factor behind the sell off is being replaced with factual company performance figures. Now all we need is a similar spark to ignite HSBC and Southwest. All in all we are still comfortable with our investments, so now we wait and let the market come to us.
As for the new ‘affordable’ Cessna jet, we’ve decided we will need two, and we want to get them fitted with big paint ball guns for dog fights. Maybe we should be neighbourly and invite Larry Ellison?