Lesson of the Week – Perseverance

Nothing says failure like giving up.  This week, while optimizing and running walk-forward tests on upwards of 12 stocks with 5 tests each, I was confronted with this FAILED almost every morning I woke up.

To wake up every morning seeing the word FAILED in bold capital letters plastered across the screen can weaken your resolve that it’s even possible to make money in the market using automated strategies.  After a few days, I saw PASSED! I was ecstatic! 

I could feel the rush of dopamine flood my brain like a well trained rat pushing that level for a fix.  Of course, the moment was fleeting and further degraded as the next FAILED came up again and again.

I was soon reminded of Carel Dweck’s groundbreaking research in Mind Set.  Focus on the process, the growth, what you learned NOT the outcome.  I supposed that’s a beautiful element of being human: how quickly we can be overtaken by our ancestral brains.  I’m not a zen monk and I won’t pretend that seeing FAILED doesn’t bother me but refocusing on the process made the work less emotionally draining.

Focus on the process, not the outcome.

What was my process?  :

  1. Find stocks that “look” like they trend
  2. Run optimizations with at least 10k bars in each & 1 year worth of data
  3. Run walk forward analysis
  4. Log it
  5. Live paper money test for PASSED

The process is productive, thinking about FAILED is not.  Keep persevering, focus on the process.

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