Get to Know Yourself

A minister and a stockbroker are waiting in line at the Pearly
Gates. Saint Peter comes up to the broker and says, “Hello Joe,
you’ve done great work, we’d like to welcome you to heaven. Take
this silken robe and golden staff and enter the gates. As the stockbroker
goes into heaven with his beautiful robe and golden staff, the
minister walks up to the gates, and Saint Peter hands him a cotton
robe and wooden staff and opens the gate, with nary an acknowledgment
to the minister. “Just a minute,” says the minister. “That
man was a stockbroker, he gets a silken robe, a golden staff, and
a wonderful welcome, but I, a loyal pastor for the last 37 years, a
minister who has preached the ways of the Bible, gets somewhat of
a cold shoulder? How can this be?” “Up here, we work by results,”
says Saint Peter. “While you preached, people slept; his clients, they
prayed nonstop.”

This chapter, though important, is one that can be easily said in a few
pages, which makes it my favorite chapter in the book. It’s straight to
the point, and anything else would be sugarcoating it.
In order to become a successful trader you need to have a plan and a
strategy that is catered to your trading style and personal characteristics.
And before you can have that plan, you need to figure out what works and
feels best for you. It is very hard to try and use a strategy if it goes against
some of your basic trading principles. Someone can have the best system
in the world that works amazingly well for him, but if a different person
tried to use it, it might not work at all. A different person may sometimes try to overrule or second guess a system or strategy; he may not take every
signal it produces, thinking he can do better. He may feel like if he held
longer he might make more, or worse he may feel a loser could turn into
winner if he holds on just a little bit longer. It’s because of these things that
if a trader wants to be able to follow a trading and a game plan, they need
to fit his style of trading. As you will see, there are many types of traders
and traits people have and very few are alike. Hey, if everyone thought the
same the markets would not be efficient.