I thought I might start a new type of regular article on my blog which covers some of the blog postings I liked this week. Okey dokey, so here are some posts I liked this week:

The 3500

Caravagio on his “the 3500″ blog has some great little quotes from Nicholas Taleb:

1. Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.
2. Go to parties. You can’t even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.
3. It’s not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.
4. Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act — if you can’t control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behaviour. You will always have the last word.
5. Don’t disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time. We don’t understand their logic. Don’t pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific ‘evidence’.
6. Learn to fail with pride — and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error — by mastering the error part.
7. Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words ‘impossible’, ‘never’, ‘too difficult’ too often, drop him or her from your social network. Never take ‘no’ for an answer (conversely, take most ‘yeses’ as ‘most probably’).
8. Don’t read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if the news matters is if you hear it in cafes, restaurants… or (again) parties.
9. Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet.
10. Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them

I think no. 3 and 6. pretty much sums it all up.

Trader Gav

Trader Gav has a great little article on trading for a living and psychology:

What is the worst psychological problem a trader wannabe can have?

When you are trying to find a solution of your life in the business of trading. How many times you feel unsatified in your day job, dislike the unfavoured working environment, having pathetic financial situations, or even poor social life, you then turn your focus into trading? You wanna make your own decision, be your own boss, hope , (yes, you hope), to make fortune from the buy and sell buttons.

Trying to solve your personal life problem in the trading business is another way to disaster. Not only financial, but disaster of your life.

Think….

Sagely advice

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 5th, 2008 at 10:02 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.