PART ONE

전우치92 2021. 10. 13. 01:05

REMINISCENCES OF A TRADER

경험은 최악의 선생이다. 배움을 주기 전에 먼저 테스트를 하기 때문이다.

- 익명

나는 248,000달러를 벌었다. 하루만에, 100만 달러의 4분의 1을 번 것이다. The high was unbelivable. It's literally like you expect god to call up any minute and ask if it's okay to let the sun come up tomorrow morning.

I had a speckail desk that was a copper pedestal coming out from the floor, and on top of it was a giant 3' x 6' x 7" piece of mahogany. The tabletop looked like it was suspended in midair. The credenza was a matching piece of wood bolted to the wall, also looking like it was suspended in midair. When you walked into the office all you could see was carpet wtretching out in front of you, a copper column rising up from the carpet, and two pieces of wood levitating in midair, defying gravity. And that is just what I thought I was doing : defying gravity. I sat down at my desk on the edge of my chair waiting for the market to open, ready to have another $50,000 day, and thinking life didn't get any better than this. I was right. It didn't

The market opened down that morning and never traded higher than it did on that last Friday in August. It started down that Monday, and I proceeded to lose on average about $20,000 to $25,000 a day, every day, for months. The decline was relentless, with only occasional spasms to the upside. Fortunately, I started getting the clients out of the market. 대부분의 고객들은 어느정도 수익을 갖고 나갔고, 일부는 약간의 손실을 보고 나갔다. Naturally, I didn't get out. I was in for the long pull. This was going to be the Big Trade. Kirby and I were going to make $10million on the trade.

By the middle of October I was under water. I didn't know how far under I was, but I knew I'd lost most of my money. As the position got increasingly worse, I began to get margin calls. I'd wait a few days to see if the market rallied so I wouldn't have to meet the margin call. If it did, fine. If it didn't, I'd spend the next couple of days trying to borrow money from my friends. I'd be on margin call for two or three days at a time, but the brokerage firm's attitude was, "We know ou're a big wheel. You're onthe Board of Governors of the Exchange. You're on the Executive Committee. You're an officer of you firm, etc. We know you're good for the money."

The first wek in November, I was under water big time : $200,000 or $300,000. I didn't even know how much it was. Bean oil had gone from 36 or 37 cents a pound down to 25 cents. So from the high in August, I was down $700,000 or $800,000. To make matters worse, I'd borrowed about $400,000 from my friends.

회사는 마침내 그리고 자비롭게도 나의 플러그를 뽑아주었다, 왜냐하면 내가 스스로 하지 못했기 때문이다. On November 17, one of the senior managers from the brokerage firm came into my office and proceeded to liquidate all my positions.

나는 8월 26일에 모든 것을 가졌다가 11월 17일에 모든 것을 잃었다. 하지만 나는 트레이딩을 포기할 생각은 없었다. I viewed it like blackjack in the caddy pen: I wasn't going to quit playing, but I was going to quit losing.

I didn't lose that kind of money simply because of a faulty method of analysis. That may have played a role, but something else was going on to keep me in a losing position even to the point where I went into debt to hold onto it. 그 무언가는 연속적인 성공과 함께 온 심리학적 왜곡이었고 이것은 drawing my ego into the market position and setting me up for the disastrous loss.

Preface에서 언급했던 것처럼 이같은 왜곡은 헨리포드에게도 일어나서 그의 회사가 1920, 1930년대에 몰락하는데 기여했다. 그리고 이러한 왜곡은 현재에도 사업들, 매니저들 그리고 경영자들을 괴롭히고 있다. For example, in 1993 management guru Peter F. Drucker wrote in the Wall Street Journal that " the past few years have seen the downfall of one once-dominant business after another: General Motors, Sears and IBM, to name just a few" Drucker has also said, "Success always onsoletes the behavior that achieved it." While some of the factors contributing to these downfalls were a function of the particular strategies the firms emploed (Drucker called them the Five Deadly Business Sins), there were oher factors that were a function individual managers' decision making. This book explores the latter factors.

성공을 개인화 시키는 것은 사람들을 처참한 실패의 늪에 빠뜨린다. They begin to treat the success as a personal reflection rather than the result of capitalizing on a good opportunity, being at the right place at the right time, or even being just plain lucky. People begin to think their mere involvement in the undertaking guarantees success. Apparently, this is a common phenomenon. Listen to An Wang, founder of Wang Laboratories: "I find it somewhat surprising that so many talented people derail themselves one way or another during their lives ... all too often a meteoric rise triggers a precipitous fall. People fail for the most part because they shhot themselves in the foot. If you go for a long time without shooting yourself in the foot, other people start calling you a genius." Listen to Herb Kelleher, CEO fo Southwest Airlines: "I think the easiest way to lose success is to become convinced that you are successful." This "becoming convinced" is the process of personalizing achievements or successes. Learning to recognize and prevent that process is what this book is all about.

내가 어렸을 때, 나의 아버지는 이 세상에는 두가지 종류의 사람이 있다고 말했다 : 똑똑한 사람들과 현명한 사람들. 똑똑한 사람들은 자신의 실수에서 배우고 현명한 사람들은 다른 이의 실수에서 배운다. 이 책을 읽는 모든 이들은 지금 현명한 사람이 될 수 있는 멋진 기회가 있다. 왜냐하면 나는 매우 매우 똑똑해졌기 때문이다. I learned a lot from the mistakes that led to a million-and-a-half-dollar loss in the market. But there is more to the story than the fantastic fall from the pinnacle of millionaire trader and member of the Executive Committee at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. There is the almost fantasy-like ascent to the top that set the stage for the collapse.