You got that right, the psychological grind is miserable. The thing is constantly moving - or worse still, not moving - and you have to watch constantly, just in case it actually yields a little information, or gives up a tiny hint on some odd tick or other.


The only way to overcome this, I guess, is to be very systematic and, in doing so, to ignore a large percentage of what is going on. In other words, you're just like a robot reacting to one narrow thing, and that one thing isn't very subjective to measure.


But so far as this picking up quarters on a railroad track, I totally disagree with you. If you are properly margined, all the random stuff should cancel out, and I think a lot of profits arise from the fact that people price in more fear of the random stuff than they need to.


As I alluded to in the previous paragraph, you just have to be like a robot that is blind to all that random stuff, and doesn't get thrown off the scent, no matter if the trail gaps up 50 points in 1 tick and then resumes again. THAT HAVING BEEN SAID, WHEN A WINDFALL PROFIT COMES YOUR WAY AND YET YOUR NORMAL, UNDERLYING REASON FOR BEING IN THAT POSITION, JUST WHEN THE RANDOMNESS HIT, STILL SEEMS, VALID, GET OUT!


The reason is, random events throw the whole dance out of whack, and change the rules completely. But I will concede that learning how to adjust to this, or not, is the main thing that thins out your competition. If these random events didn't throw everybody off each others' trails constantly, the market would be perfectly orderly and efficient.


eLROY