Billy,
Whittling away profits from the late September/early October robot trades during November proved to me the importance of the insights presented in the article. But these insights were known by me as I made many mistakes.
Knowing the axiom but acting contrary to it is a condition that probably ruins the chances of many people. For me, it was your recent discussion of leverage management in this forum against the backdrop of my personal failures that has made the greatest difference.
The problem rests with a single fact: While we are following well programmed robots, we are ourselves not robots. A 70% success rate over the course of a year is fantastic, of course. But should the 30% of losers occur while one is beginning, it would be difficult for any human to continue. Moreover, if a bad robot trade cannot be managed to minimize damage, we are not being human-- insofar as we are not reacting to events that our robots, as presently designed, cannot compute.
During one recent bad robot trade, I took a nap during trading hours to avoid watching what I reasoned would be a likely horror show. I awoke to find a mess of a loss, and I found on this web site that others, alerted to the money flow, had exited the trade. Via my nap during trading hours, I was trying to sacrifice my human capacity to respond in order to ride the bronco as a true trend follower.
Why am I concerned with leveraged positions? Leverage does provide us with the power to accumulate capital with greater acceleration while containing losses. My point is that while "get rich slowly" certainly makes sense, the robot and creative use of leverage allows the trader to get rich slowly a lot faster.
For these reasons, I am very grateful that you have shared insight into leverage management. I believe this is as crucial to us wet ware beings as is self control.
Many thanks,