On Sunday we had the middle meeting of our Mentor Program and one of the topics that always creeps up is the desire for complexity within trading. There is a belief that the more complex your system the better it will be In part this is due to the illusion of control that such approaches engender. We feel that if we have much greater input into the system then the system somehow will exert a degree of control or rationality over the market. This is analogous to why people pick their lottery numbers rather than letting them be generated randomly. The odds of winning do not change with either method but the first creates the illusion of control.
As chance would have it I came across the following quote which touches on the notion of simplicity.
“Simplicity is the last step in art and the beginning of nature.”
– Bruce Lee.
Simplicity:
(Exits – not cutting losses)
“When you sell for a loss you feel bad. When you sell for a gain you feel good and people like to do things that make them feel good”.
Terrence Odean, Talking Trading.
Caroline Stephen.
I have not read that quote before. Is it through learning of all its complexities that it becomes simply and natural in the end, or the efficiencies of being simplistic that brings us back to the fundamentals/nature?
In trading I believe it is the latter but in martial arts it more the former.