The Value of Infinite Patience.

My post is adapted from an article titled: Lessons From the Felt: The Inestimable Value of Infinite Patience

Please do read the main article mentioned above.

On CNBC TV-18, as well in my daily newsletters, I refer to waiting – Patience – a favorite word for me.

Michelangelo said “genius is infinite patience.”

Jesse Livermore wrote in his Reminiscences: It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight!

Think of a trader who trades ONLY head and shoulder patterns. He defines these patterns as the classic head and shoulder as well as rounding tops and bottoms. (Strange! I do the same). What happens when there are no Head and Shoulder patterns. Nothing. The trader waits for the patterns to emerge. Often, after an initial breakout from the neckline, prices stall. What should the trader do with his existing trade? Well, wait it out. Wait for the market to show its hand. Again, Patience!

Quote from the Article:

Waiting without tiring of waiting is a very hard thing to do. (Until you have mastered it, at which point it becomes effortless.) The mastery takes practice and cultivation and exceptional emotional control. The average untrained individual has no real chance at doing it — not for a sustained period anyway — any more than your typical couch potato could hop up and run ten miles on a whim.

They may look the same on the outside, but on the inside, the difference between “run of the mill” patience and “infinite” patience is Grand Canyon sized. You could even say it’s… well… infinite. One is struggle, the other is release. One is tension, the other is relaxation. One is strife, the other is peace. And so on…

If you are trader: ask yourself – do you trade  as a compulsion? Maybe you should have the patience to wait for the trades that satisfy your setup definition.