OASIS 2006 After-thoughts

After attending OASIS 2006, it seems that money-making opportunities are plenty. What amazes me is that there are so many starkingly contrasting individuals, and yet every single one of them makes money in their own unique ways.

With so many breakout sessions, it is difficult to summarise everyone of them. However, there is something common to all the sessions that i have taken away and that is:

1. There is no single way to trade that suits everyone. One needs to be able to find his/her niche. Every system/strategy/method has to be tailored for each individual to work best for him/her. One man's meat is the other's poison.



2. Discipline is the key to success. Be it discipline in following your own rules, discipline in cutting losses, discipline in researching, it is the #1 thing in trading that differentiates a winner from a loser.



3. Building a system that eliminates emotion and thinking from trading. For those who have serve NS, it is like an SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) which tells you exactly what to do in all the different scenarios. Every possible variations the market can have should be captured inside. You don't tell the market where to go, the market will tell you where she is going. You just have to act accordingly.



4. To excel, one needs to keep doing the same thing over and over again. Specialise in one or two things and be really good at it. Backtest, paper trade, trade small, keep doing the same thing until you are good at it. Then try variants of the strategy and keep doing it (i.e. butterflies, brokenwing flies, uneven flies, modified flies, doubleflies, dragonflies and what have you). Practice makes perfect.



5. Most of the top traders i know are all humble people. Humility is of paramount importance. It is the one thing that makes one continue to improve, to be open to criticisms and new ideas. Strangely and coincidentally, the time when we all make big losses is usually after a string of consecutive winners. Never ever believe you are smarter than the market.

These may seem like common sense to many out there. It may even sound like preaching. Well... maybe i am.......... I am trying to preach to myself myself because i know that many a times.....

...... COMMON SENSE ARE NOT SO COMMON!