When Opportunity Meets Preparedness…

Hello Traders!

Today, a story from my high school days. Now, there IS a moral to this story, one that relates to your trading success and mine… so stay tuned:

In my Senior year of high school one of the math teachers also happened to be the football coach. The jocks at that school gravitated to “Coach’s” class.

I wasn’t on the team.

As a high school senior at sixteen, I wasn’t on any athletic team sponsored by the school. So I wasn’t necessarily ‘in’ with the ‘in’ crowd in this particular math class… though I WAS an athlete. Most of you that follow my blog know that I’m a martial arts instructor by trade.

“Coach” had a curious punishment he liked to inflict whenever someone showed up late: he would make that knucklehead (his word, not mine) do 10 pushups for every minute he came late.

He even made one of the more particularly attractive and popular cheerleaders do pushups when she came late, though she tried to negotiate to do only half the required amount. ‘Coach’ wouldn’t let anybody slide. She cajoled and even try to flirt a bit but ‘Coach’ wasn’t gonna have it. She ended up cranking out fifteen pushups and he let her stop there, because technically she wasn’t FULLY two whole minutes late.

So the day came when I walked in ten minutes late. Every jock in the room was saying “whoaaaa…” “Awww, MAN! You’re in a WORLD of hurt!” “Frankenberg, you shouldn’t have even come. You shoulda SKIPPED this class today”.

‘Coach’ looked up from his desk and dismissed my 125 pound, 5’6″ frame. “Aww, that’s all right Frankenberg. Just give me ten and sit down.”

I was affronted by ‘Coach’s” dismissive attitude. After all, he didn’t even let the cheerleader slide. “Well how many do I GOTTA do? I mean, what’s it supposed to be?”

Because I was not on the football team, or the basketball team, or the baseball team… heck, ANY team… I wasn’t even on his radar as any kind of respectable athlete.

“Well. It’s uh… SUPPOSED to be 100 pushups, but uh…” Coach trailed off as his gaze started at my feet and moved up my slim frame, looking for any sign of oversized muscle. “Well. Let’s just see. Go ahead Frankenberg, let ‘er rip. See how many you can do.”

It was one of those old west saloon moments where all you could hear was the non-sound of people holding their breath in anticipation. As I took a spot with my knuckles on the floor, I asked for someone to lay in front of me to hold out their fist. One of Coach’s team members obliged. I told him, “Don’t count unless my chin touches your fist.”

At first there was a lot of jeers and snickers. Once I passed thirty and showed no sign of slowing a player said, “Dabroski, he’s doing more than YOU can!”

As I passed fifty there were whistles and gasps of amazement. What started out as doubtful whispers became excited cheering as I knocked out the seventies. The whole room counted down last twenty pushups. One of the players came and picked my spent body off the floor some time after one hundred. Everyone was slapping me on the back and telling me how amazing that was to them. The cheerleader had big wide eyes, that’s the part I remember best.

My status in that classroom… in Coach’s eyes, the players… heh, even the cheerleader… were forever changed in less than two minutes. I transferred into a different math class shortly thereafter, but ‘Coach’ always gave me the chins-up nod he reserved for the boys on his team whenever I passed him in the hall.

SO, I told you there would be a moral to this story… one that has to do with trading… and there IS.

The moral is: “Luck” is what happens when Opportunity meets Preparedness.

See, anyone who has ever attempted 100 pushups knows that it’s not going to happen just because you will it so, if you have never trained your body for that kind of performance. You just don’t get mad or happy or determined enough to do 100 pushups and knock ’em out… you HAVE to have put in some work ahead of time.

Fact is, 100 pushups is just another one of several Black Belt requirements at my martial arts studio. ‘Coach’ had no way of knowing, but I was no stranger to pushups and other calisthenics. I had gradually, over time  made steady progress from only being able to do three or four solid pushups to crankin’ em out like a sewing machine. It wasn’t a matter of making a determined decision right then… it was a matter of training beforehand.

One might say that my episode in “Coach’s Class” was a fortunate accident, one that allowed a wiry little fella fifteen minutes of fame and paved the way for some small social advantage… and that it was a freak occurence. 

But I say that opportunities like this abound all the time. The difference between the opportunity being a stumbling block, an ‘opportunity’ for embarassment only… or a stepping stone… lay in the preparation ahead of time.

Too often, traders put too much faith in themselves and not enough in a system… a system of rules that fences in their natural tendency to fear when they should hope and hope when they should fear.

More often however, they put all their faith in a system and not enough in how THEY will OPERATE the system… training for that moment when they will be called upon to make a decision for better or worse. To seize an opportunity when it counts. To lock in a profit at the best possible moment. Or to stop the bleeeeeding before it gets too bad.

Training BEFORE the event is the true arena in which the battle is won… long before fighters ever glove up, long before players don their jerseys and kiss their sweethearts and put on their “game face”. No, the battle is won in the preparation done ahead of time.

Then, when Opportunity meets Preparedness, the lonely champion may shine. He may suffer defeat but it will be an honorable defeat by a very small margin. Or he may know victory, and will at that time have no doubt as to whether it was ‘luck’… or earned.

Let me encourage you who are in the trenches, battling it out with the bulls and the bears, to take some time and actually write out your trading plan, both long term and for each individual trade. Let me encourage you to write down what you wish to reasonably accomplish and write out as well what you intend to give in exchange for this success.

I’ll see you at the top.

Happy Trading!

Kurt

P.S. This letter was inspired by one of my Subscribers that wrote in and told me that he had gotten to 100 pushups using my program. I thought you might like to see some videos he found. I’m not advocating doing pushups to the crowd that reads this blog… but the PRINCIPLE is a good one.

How to do 100 Pushups Video

53 Years Young… 100 pushups!

Special Breathing Exercises for Higher Numbers