Last week I did a post entitled “Don’t count your money, until the trading is done” and it was based off of a popular Kenny Rogers song called, The Gambler from way way way back in the day. It’s probably one of my favorite songs of all-time and there is a lot of relevancy to it considering what kind of field I’ve made a profession of.

The more I thought about it since that initial post, the more i realized there is definitely a few more posts worth doing off of this song, and how it speaks truth to becoming a successful trader. 

So then, for today, I want to highlight one of the earlier cadences in the song, that goes:

He said, “Son, I’ve made my life out of readin’ people’s faces,
And knowin’ what their cards were by the way they held their eyes.
So if you don’t mind my sayin’, I can see you’re out of aces.
For a taste of your whiskey I’ll give you some advice.”

What you should focus on here, is this particular gambler, were it for money, or were it for the sake of figuring out this particular gent’s life status, he’s not approaching it with any preset bias.

Maybe this guy he’s speaking to looks filthy rich (I mean, the gambler is having to bum a cigarette off of him and get a swig of whiskey off of him), but it doesn’t matter, his judgement is based on signs/signals that the person is giving off. Then he is coming to his conclusion on the matter. 

Why is that important to trading? Simple….

Far too often traders go off of personal bias – what they THINK the market should do, instead of what it is actually doing. The gentleman on the train, if you bet on him based on clothing or something else, you’d wind up with a guy who has no aces. 

It is so incredibly important not to be trading off of what you think, what the economy is doing, or what some Fed Chairman guys say or some CNBC anchor states. It will cause you to take your eye off the ball and not trade what is right in front of you – what price and volume or a valued indicator is telling you. 

Put the personal biases aside – give them no merit at all – at the end of the day, they will kill your ability to trade, and destroy your accounts in the process. 

And hopefully, you will run into some down-and-out Wall Street trading yuppy, and tell him “Son, I’ve made my life, out of reading company charts, And knowin’ what the risks were, by the way chart was acting’

…And just maybe, that person will share with you a taste of their whiskey too.