Ann: Trading Halt, page-187

I am just calling it the way I see it. You might want to ask a poster who took a dig at me at the most opportune time yesterday avro reminding me of what happened 2 years ago, He seemed to enjoy my bad fortune but this is the capital markets. I don't have any grudges, I lost capital on PLS 4 times I think consecutively. Twice within the last few months!

If you had a shiete load of money tied to this company, should't you try to mitigate risk? I have posted as have a few others, plenty of common sense investing logical proactive ways to make sure that you don't follow the 'deer in the headlight' mindset.

Don't you think it is ridiculous to blame BoD/KB for investor's demise? Riding the gravy train is the easy bit, these are the times when it isn't great that you now understand why picking tops and bottom stubbornly can make you a hero or villain. In any stock forum when there isn't much to comment on the company fundamentals and the bulk of discussion is the future growth etc, while the price trenbd is down, I know this is confirmation bias.

Here are some examples to study - AGO, BCI, FMG, KZ. There are other high profile case studies but in most cases there is nothing wrong with the fundamentals. It is always the DEBT in a falling commodity price. The massive sell off in FMG and the corporate debt it had to negotiate in the past was learning exercise to understand what debt actually is.

My lesson in PLS was to not do some basic research on the debt structure and lazily relying on general commentary about fuzzy phrases like 'lowest cost producer', 'highest grade' and the size of the ore body stretching to infinity.

Let me tell you what hurts more, it isn't entry and immediately going into drawdown BUT to let a very handsome gain slide into a big loss! Here is another thing, a big position which effectively could be your only position or majority of the portfolio ISN'T investing. Think about it. Neither is it trading either.

For the record, the current volatility has not destroyed my portfolio. In fact I am actually up and under the circumstances nothing much to shout about. I took 2 hits on PLS recently, some other mediocre positions which I didn't lose money as momentum trades not in the typical trading sense. I sold and then it rallied, do I look concern? Take the emotions out of it. Just to be clear I don;t trade stocks.

From a trading perspective, I was stalking a short EURNZD and wanted to play right on the tip of the daily upper shadow. No fill, missed it by about 20 pips, in one swing it dropped straight into my take profit level for a good twice the reward. Monday I missed AUDNZD long limit buy and it just took off. Ditto GBPCHF by 7 pippettes. Frustrating week but I did have a mediocre gain on UJ.

This is what an experienced mate told me long ago when I was in the same mindset as plenty here with the so called skin in the game and that is the test of true grit is to be able to survive the bad times without being wiped out. Don't confuse brains with a bull market, he said! I learned that lesson well (costly) but luck was more on my side and I have this written on the wall,

"I WILL NEVER ASSUME A WINDFALL WILL KEEP ON GIVING FOREVER".
"PRUDENT TO COLLECT ON THE WAY UP"
"ALWAYS LEAVE SOME FOR THE NEXT INVESTOR"

Sorry I don't mean to be condescending or patronising. I question all my exposure and the more it gives, the more I question! Good luck.

If you can't sleep at night worrying about your exposure then you have too big an exposure. It is not about being right, just profitable. You are not here for a good time just a profitable time monetised or you get out trying not to lose money.

There you have it, my expensive lessons of the philosophy I picked up along the way. I wish I has a mentor in the early days instead of the market efficiency!