Chapter 28
The Happy Monkey
For two years, Rex worked hard to create a nearly perfect trading system. Once he was finally satisfied with his system, he paper traded it for another year until it was making very healthy profits on paper. When he was comfortable with the final adjustments he had made to his system, Rex was finally ready to risk his assets. Six months into his trading, he was receiving the financial rewards of the system that he had worked so diligently on. Two months later, he was second-guessing his system and losing money. What happened?
Rex was a very intelligent man with a lot of education and training in a technical field. He had always taken pride in his intelligence and his professional achievements. While Rex loved doing his market research and learning how to trade, his favorite part of trading was the development of his system. With his aptitude for learning and his advanced schooling, he was well suited for the preparation phase of his trading career. However, he was not prepared to trade every day. Rex thought he wanted to be a trader. But, in reality, he wanted to be a perpetual system developer. After six months of actual profitable trading, Rex was bored.
“I feel like a mindless monkey,” he lamented, “who simply pulls the lever when the signal tells him to pull it. Is this all there is to trading?”
