BarroMetrics Views: Integrity
My view: integrity is an essential value for a successful trader. For me, ‘integrity’ has 3 meanings (in order of importance):
- Walk your talk
- Keep your word to others and
- Keep your word to yourself.
For us traders, following our plan is the word we must keep to ourselves.
In yesterday’s trading, I had another (costly) opportunity to prove each of those elements. At the end of trading, I found that on of my three accounts that I trade, I had placed an order to sell 1000 lots rather than 100. As a result when I did my recap at 4:15, I was 900 short.
Looking at the price action, I determined that:
- The ES would back off from 1200 close to around 1190 to 1195 area. (I was shorty from 1194)
- I’d bring my stop 1207.75 and work the buy back should the ES get back to 1190 to 1195.
- Unfortunately I had made an early morning appointment earlier in the week, and I was unwilling to break it with only one hour’s notice to the other party.
- So I asked my nephew Kane to work the order for me. Luckily he was smart enough to exit at 1197 on a spike up.
Could he have done better? At this stage, probably not since he still needs to see confirmation to act instead of ‘feeling’ that the market is ready to rally or break. But, he works very hard, and I know he’ll make a great trader. The fact that he was able to execute the plan despite the ‘pressure’ situation in which I had placed him, says wonders.
By the way, this is a trait I look when hiring prop traders… and speaking of which……
….a pity that Kane prefers to be (at least for the moment) the world class circus performer he is; otherwise, I’d offer him a trial at my prop house!
Refer this blog post to a friend or colleague…
