Fly Fishing the Stock Market: How to Search for, Catch, and Net the Market's Best Trades

CHAPTER 3

Developing Your Technique

And now for the fun part—let's put the fly rod together, attach the reel, thread the line and leader through the guides, tie on a fly, and begin to practice our casting technique. I would say the following to beginning fly fishermen: “Not too fast. Not too slow. Feel the line unfold. Get into the rhythm of it.” The same words apply more or less to beginning traders, too.

When you understand the contents of your toolbox—what each item is for as well as how and when it is used—it is time to establish a practice routine. Professional athletes, be they golfers, tennis players, or football players, study the game, review their performance, and experiment with changes that need to be made to improve. Beginners skip these essential steps. Instead, many of them repeat mistakes until they become habitual, deep-rooted, and hard to correct.

To master the craft of trading, we need to put in the required amount of practice. This takes time. For some, it can take years of trial and error; for others, it can happen in a matter of months with the right tools and assistance to expedite progress.

I am an orthodontist by profession and maintain an active practice. It took me 10 years of graduate education and much practice to reach a degree of proficiency worthy of this specialty. In this profession, problem solving and developing an eye for the abnormal are paramount. No two orthodontic cases are alike; each has unique features, requiring different modes of treatment. ...