Adrian Reid recounts becoming overwhelmed by conflicting trading advice and trying many approaches (fundamental analysis, analyst reports, charting, indicators, tip sheets). Motivated by frustration-turned-curiosity, he re-read Market Wizards with annotated notes to identify approaches that fit his skills. He chose systematic trend following, went deep into that method, and reports that activating his first systematic trend-following strategy produced an immediate and marked improvement in his equity curve and confidence.
Chapters
Frustration building is the key point because like, like everyone, you come into the markets and you listen to podcasts and there's so many great episodes. Everyone should listen to all of them. But the problem is there's so many different approaches. It's like, oh, this guy does this, that's cool. I'll go and investigate. Oh, this person does this. Oh, this girl does that. And you know, before you know it, you're massively overwhelmed. You have no idea what works. Everyone has conflicting information and you kind of don't know where to turn. And I was at this point because I had tried fundamental analysis. I'd tried buying, you know, new companies with new and emerging products that were just kind of exploding onto the market. I tried using analyst kind of recommendations, broker reports. I tried looking at charts and drawing trend lines and support and resistance, and I tried indicators and I tried tip sheets. And I like all of this stuff. Yeah. And it was all frustrating for different reasons. And that, that frustration was like a real challenge. Like, it's hard because I was like, I think there's something here because I see lots of people making money, but I wasn't making money. And so that frustration, for me, frustration is a trigger to drive curiosity. And I think that's really important because there's so many frustrating parts of it. Like when you're learning, you've got to learn to make money, you've got to learn different techniques, you've got to figure out what mistakes you're making. But all of that, a lot is a lot of negative feedback in there. And if you let that negative feedback turn to frustration, this game is unwinnable, I believe. But if you let that negative feedback turn into curiosity, which drives you forward to investigate and learn and understand something, then this game is winnable. And I think that's really, really key. So I had all of that frustration and so I got curious like, okay, why are these things not making money? Why am I having trouble with these different techniques? And somewhere on the bookshelf back there. But I read Market Wizards. It's like the modern day podcast. You listen, you read the approach of lots of different traders, but I did it differently. I read it with curiosity. What are these people doing and which of those approaches resonate with me? And I basically went through the book and my original copy has got notes scribbled all over every single page. Love this, don't love that, can't understand this, wouldn't do that, don't have the skills to do that. That, that really kind of fascinates me, et cetera and so I went through that book and I basically just crossed out not not going to do that not going to follow that approach not going to follow that approach that won't work for me I can't do that that this is my approach Systematic trend following was the approach I was just like for me that's just perfect just made sense I started investigating that because that resonated I was fascinated by it I was curious about it and I just went deep on that strategy and when I turned on my first systematic approach to trend trading stocks my equity curve literally turned on a dime now it's not always going to be that way I was a bit lucky like I just I turned it on There was a couple of good trades I didn't have massive drawdown at the beginning but my confidence shifted on the spot my equity shifted on the spot it started moving in the right direction all of a sudden I was a trader.
