Be a Stoic Investor

Being a stoic investor is about two main things…taking action regardless of how you feel and learning how to take a loss.

I relatively recently read "Best Loser Wins – Why Normal Thinking Never Wins in the Trading Game" by Tom Hougaard. This is a great book with a lot of lessons that I really took to heart. One of the principles or lessons is learning how to take a loss.

If you are trading/investing and making decisions, some of them are going to be wrong. No one is going to be 'right' 100% of the time. That is OK, you don't need to be right all of the time. You simply must win enough on your losers to cover the cost and then some on the winners. This is why position sizing and stop losses are such an intricate part of our money management strategy.

There are many strategies and tactics that are profitable. Profitable over a series, not necessarily profitable each and every day. There are just some 'bad' days. Realizing this allows you to make decisions and continue rather than getting caught up in the losers and either changing your strategy or quitting all together.

The point is to have a strategy, continue to clarify your strategy, continue to implement your strategy, get really good at following your strategy to a "T" and learn how to live in peace with losses that are bound to happen with any strategy.