The Need to Win

It fascinates me a little how many people in trading or investing set goals for themselves, often monetary targets that are aimed for on a specific timeline.  It’s mostly because this is so at odds with my own view of trading and the markets; at least on a broader scale, I don’t have any specific number in mind when I trade, and have found the more that I do look to specific numbers, the worse my results tend to be.  I think it was in Market Wizards that someone told an anecdote about how one trader was aiming to buy a fur coat for his wife with the profits from some trade that he hadn’t yet closed, and how in the end, he lost the profits he did have and then some.  It reminds me a little of this quotation from Thomas Merton’s selected translations from the writings of Zhuang Zi, The Way of Chuang Tzu, which happens to be one of my favourite books:

The Need to Win

When an archer is shooting for nothing
He has all his skill.
If he shoots for a brass buckle
He is already nervous.
If he shoots for a prize of gold
He goes blind
Or sees two targets–
He is out of his mind!

His skill has not changed.  But the prize
Divides him.  He cares.
He thinks more of winning
Than of shooting–
And the need to win
Drains him of power.

[xix. 4]