What does NOT being a hero look like in trading? Some possibilities

  • Not trying to catch the absolute top or bottom
  • Not “fighting the tide” because you are “right”
  • Being agnostic and opportunistic deep in your bones
  • Changing your stance immediately if price action fails to confirm
  • Never entering without price confirmation in the first place
  • Looking for max risk-adjusted odds of profit, not max glory

Not being a hero means less glory, but ultimate far more profit, because if you have the patience to wait for the (non-heroic) optimal moment — which is almost never the initial turning point, which heroes love to call out — you can more effectively scale up and put leverage to work in your favor.

Not being a hero in respect to adverse price action — dumping positions quickly that aren’t working out as planned — also lets you safely deploy more size in general, which in turn allows for more effective pyramiding and greater profits from the very same move the hero took with less size (because he got chewed up so many times trying to catch the damn turn).

And of course, there are the invaluable merits of pure survival and never going down with the ship (as heroes all too often do)…