A short YouTube video by Adrian Reid (Enlightened Stock Trading) in which Reid opens with a personal anecdote about being stuck in Bordeaux airport for ~11 hours (up since 5:00am, at airport from 7:00am to 5:47pm). He frames this experience as a lead-in to a trading lesson about discipline and waiting for proper buy signals rather than acting on near-signals. The clip so far contains introduction and scene-setting.
So what can a trader learn by being stuck in an Airport for 12 hours the entire day after getting up at 5 in the morning?
My name is Adrian Reed. This is Enlightened Stock Trading. And me and the family. Hi, family. Have been sitting in Bordeaux airport since when?
7:00Am this morning. It's currently 5:47pm.
Now, that's probably enough to drive most people crazy, but, you know, kids are playing computer games, we found some WI fi, I'm doing some work, Stephanie's doing her social media posts. So it's all good. We've been sitting here for a while, we're loving it, life's good. But there is a very important trading lesson that you can take from, from me sitting in an Airport for 12 hours because my plane was cancelled. We were just about to board and they found technical difficulties on the plane and the entire flight was cancelled. And the only flight this carrier had to Madrid, which is where we're going Next, was at 9:40pm tonight. So we're sitting here waiting for the next plane to go. Hopefully that one won't be cancelled. So what's the trading lesson? Well, what happened this morning was very much like a trade setup. Okay, so the alarm went off in the morning, we got everything organized, we got in the car, we came to the airport, the setup was all in place, we checked in, we got to the gate, we were ready to hit the trigger. We were just about to get on the plane. We were just waiting for the buy signal or the sell signal. If you're going short. We're just waiting for that signal. Everything looked like it was lined up. We were ready to go. And just at the last minute, even though we anticipated that we were going to get that signal to get on the plane or to take the trade, it didn't happen. And you know, a lot of the time I talk to traders who get frustrated with this sort of situation because their response is, oh, maybe I should take it anyway. It almost had a signal and my response is always the same. Did your system give you the signal? Did you actually get the entry trigger? And if you didn't, you can't place the trade. We can't get on the plane because it had technical difficulties and was cancelled. And if you don't get the trigger, the entry trigger, if every single condition of your trading system is not met exactly, you cannot take the trade no matter how much you wanted to, no matter how good the setup looked like. And what's more, now we've had to wait for 12 hours. We're sitting in the airport forever. And you know, as I said, we're entertaining ourselves so it's not the end of the world. But sometimes this happens in the markets as well. I've had periods in the markets where I've scanned for entries every single day for months and not got a single entry trigger because my systems were out of sync with the market that were keeping me in cash. And if you're a system trader, you got to have the discipline to wait, wait for the signal, wait for the setup, wait for every single condition of your system to be met. Because if you don't, you're going to end up placing trades that don't fit your criteria, they haven't been back tested, and that can only lead to trouble. So if you're tempted to place trades and you haven't got a signal, that's a warning sign that you need to sit on your hands, walk away from the computer, or do nothing. This is one of the reasons why systematic trading is so great. Because all you have to do, the day to day process is update your data, run your scans to see if you've got any buy signals, run your scans to see if you've got any sell signals, and then place those trades. But if you don't get any buy signals and you don't get any sell signals, you walk away from the market and you go and get on with your life. Go develop a system, go have fun with your family, go for a run, go do whatever, but do not place trades because you got to wait for the conditions to be satisfied. If you want to learn how to trade systematically, if you want to understand the benefits for you, what that's going to do for your trading, click link below and register for my new free webinar. How to quickly gain the Knowledge to Systematically build wealth and freedom Trading stocks. Arielle says hello. I've taken her through the webinar. She loves it and she's a budding young trader. She's very excited to get into the markets in a bigger way. So click the link below and register for my free web class. How to quickly get the knowledge to build wealth and freedom. Systematically trading stocks and take your trading to the next level. Reduce the amount of time it takes to trade, increase the amount of profits you get, reduce your drawdown, all the good things. Click the link below and I'll see you on the other side. Bye for now.
