In Memory of My Beloved Grandmother

My Grandmother took care of me when I was young. I was not born into a rich family. My parents had a factory in Hong Kong and they were busy with their business and worked almost everyday. I still remember that during summer vacation (July and August each year in Hong Kong), while other friends of mine would be going for overseas vacations, I had to help out in the factory. This was how I spent my summer vacations during my early childhood.

So, I was pretty sad and could not accept the reality when I heard the bad news from my sister in Hong Kong last 17 October of my grandmother''s passing away. As a human being, I had strong emotional issues to deal with. It was deemed to be a major correction if my life chart. For some of you who are curious about what a life chart is, it is a graphical representation of your life since you were a child. X-axis will be your age. Y-axis will be your emotional sentiment. It’s useful to plot your life chart so that you can recall what happened in the past. What were the happiest things and the worst things in your life? How do you overcome any major set-backs, etc?  So, I encourage you do the same to evaluate whether you have been a happy person.

My Grandmother’s death is synthetically equivalent to losing my entire trading account. Well, I know it is hard to understand this, but think about someone you love as now gone. How deeply will you be affected? Now if you can visualize this scene, and relay to what I told you at the beginning of this article, you should be able to understand how badly I felt during the past month.

Is it the end of the world if your trading account is wiped out? I don’t think so. In fact, it will give you very good feedback, subject to how you view the feedback. Like I said in Part I, if you choose to accept failure and give up, the feedback will be translated to something like “sorry, you are not qualified to be a trader. You should go do something else, my friend.”

Now, if you choose to accept this incident by evaluating what went wrong, and doing post-mortem analysis of your trading business diligently, will you make the same mistake next time? The answer will be “No,” provided you don’t repeat what you are doing. You must change your strategies and continue to do so until you see the result.

I have many of trading buddies who have lost their trading accounts for many reasons. I am sure some of you had heard of Mike Wade’s story of how he wrote a naked put before obtaining a proper education, and lost a lot of money. Each of us has our own stories. Your story may not be the same as mine. The key thing you must learn is to evaluate each setback as a valuable learning experience. Staying positive will definitely help. The moment you give up and look for excuses not to continue with the trading business will mean the end of your trading career. See, it is not the act of losing the entire trading account that ends your trading career. It is you who decide whether you want to end your trading career. These two events are independent.

To access previous articles written by Jack Wong, please click here.

Jack Wong 
Staff Writer and Instructor
Optionetics.com ~ Your Options Education Site

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Recent Articles by Jack Wong, Optionetics.com

• December 1, 2008
  Lessons from My Grandmother, Part V: The Choice Is Yours
• November 24, 2008
  Lessons from My Grandmother, Part IV: Respect Yourself and Others
• November 17, 2008
  Lessons from My Grandmother, Part III: Taking Charge of Your Life
• November 10, 2008
  Lessons from My Grandmother, Part II: Dealing With Loss
• November 5, 2008
  Lessons from My Grandmother, Part I: Never Give Up