Reprogram for Success
Mind Machines & Money
Reprogram for Success
It was six weeks into the year , and I was already up $ 200,000 . Another morning in February 1990 , I had arrived on the options floor of the Pacific Exchange and tried to get a spot next to the high-volume brokers in the options pit where I could trade Micron , the memory chip manufacturer , and Microsoft at the same time . It looked like it was going to be a banner year .
Fast forward to May . The profits for the year were still at $ 200,000 . I would make $ 6,000 , lose $ 3,000 , make $ 5,000 , lose $ 15,000 , back and forth . I was getting pretty frustrated with the markets and my performance . The previous Friday ( expiration ), I had lost $ 20,000 and just watched it happen . I had spent a restless Sunday night tossing and turning , anticipating the frustration of working hard only to regain lost ground . In my half- asleep , half-awake state , I heard a voice tell me quite clearly , " You are only a $ 200,000-a-year trader . That is all you are worth ."
It was true . I held the belief that I wasn ' t as competent or as worthy as the other market makers against whom I was competing . Although I had honed a system of trading the implied volatility of stock options , I somehow didn ' t believe that what I was doing was as good as my competition . I believed my trading wasn ' t worth more than $ 200,000 a year . That realisation in the middle of the night changed everything .