Trading & investing are 2 separate entities. Being a trading...

Trading & investing are 2 separate entities. Being a trading site will concentrate on that and leave investing to greater minds.

Trading has one big advantage over investment, being frequency of trade (FOT). Had a mentor years ago that suggested trading was the art of turning ‘low risk’ into ‘acceptable return’, the problem being not many traders understand that.

The garage’s human sometimes fills time waiting for trades to execute by playing speed chess against the computer (have no chess training, never will have). Series of levels from beginner level 6 (monkey could win) to grandmaster level 1 (swear your going one on one with Bobby Fischer with Bob in the zone).

Anyway, we progressed thru the levels (6 to 1), only moving on to next level when dominance established on the current one, got to level 3 and played about 5 games without a victory and started to take it personally, changed strategy.

I have a few good attacking openings but not much else, never been a chess player. I kept this up for early dominance, say I would be up a rook, the software gives you a numeric +- progress commentary, when up say +5 a numeric value of a rook I changed my attack. I would immediately sacrifice my queen in exchange for my opponents and so on with bishops etc., sacrificing my attack to eliminate risk (philosopy being a queen in my hands of less value than in my opponents etc), knowing while doing so I’m a rook up, less pieces on the board gives increased value to that rook (or bishop or whatever). Now at level 3 usually ends in the garage re queening thru advancement of porn and putting the computer to the sword, won last 4 of 5 at level 3 now moved on to level 2 fully aware will never to competitive at level 1 as just don’t have the chess knowledge, expectations also protect.

Strategy at level 3 bit like that old Mark Twain quote, "never argue with an idoit as they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience", with me being the idiot, a win is a win.

Bottom line trading is mathematics not stock selection based on greed, all about probability of outcome over a sequence of events and confidence limits of such, if you have a WL full of high risk speccies with unrealistic expectation your either very good at what you do or you will be stuck at level 5 until liquidity exhausted.

Investing different, not maths something else, Capital accumulation or tax offset.

One of Eck's & the old man's fav chisel songs, Eck also goes into a sort of hibo, just cruises around the garage not doing much for a month or so but does like his winter sunshine, spends most of his mornings on a small side verandah enjoying one of life's simple pleasures, a being of FA, the old bloke currently doing a lap of north island with his BH (mum) of all places.