Nothing is forever. We all know it. Healthy and successful people prepare accordingly while others hope and wish for ideal. Trading preparation for hope is a losing formula.
Seeking pleasure over preparation softens our muscles. It exposes us to danger. We don’t realize it because we’re feeling so good in our hope-driven play world to see reality. We’re too busy seeing what we want to see and hearing what we want to hear instead of observing what is.
Unfortunately, life doesn’t roll out a manicured red carpet. There are ups and downs. Things change. People change. People die. Costs increase. We lose our job. Our neighborhood changes. Freak accidents happen. Our house burns down. The investment we made didn’t work out. Our kid doesn’t get into the favorite school or make the team they tried out for.
The idea of a “forever home” is a fantasy-land concept for television. It makes for a feel-good story when it all works out, but it’s not a viable strategy for everyday life. Again, things change. There are too many variables that conspire against us making one decision and being in one place forever.
As adaptive trend-following traders, we accept and prepare for change. The “Forever Home” concept, similar to “buy and hold” isn’t allowed to enter our minds. It slows down our reaction time. It inhibits us from getting out of that losing trade quickly. It blinds us to new opportunity because “we’ve got all we need”. All we have to do is sit still and we’ll be fine.
Nothing survives by sitting still and hoping for better days ahead. Trend-followers know life and the markets are chaotic and unpredictable. We know we can’t settle in one spot and dig our feet in too deep; that can’t get too attached to any one stock or idea. We have to be ready to move in a moment’s notice.
The only “forever” we know is change.