Source of Inspiration
How do you light your inspirational fire
Where do you turn for inspiration? A favorite source of mine was walking around downtown Chicago and absorbing everything I could. The sights like rowers on the Chicago River. The smell of fresh bread pouring out of bakeries and sandwich shops.The sounds of moving conversations, cars and el trains. Engaging all of my senses on these walking meditations calmed and excited my mind at the same time. Had I left the office with a problem, I could often circle back in twenty minutes with a solution.
It’s different now. I’m in the north woods of Wisconsin. It’s gorgeous and the sights are amazing. Lakes, trees, eagles, deer and bears. All very wonderful. The forest-y smell is intoxicating. The constant callings of owls and random birds mixed in with the occasional loon shrill is a wonderful experience. Long walks along the lake have tremendous inspirational power. It’s not the same, but a huge blessing.
I’ve been fortunate to live in several environments including inner city Detroit, the farmland of northwest Indiana, the mountains of upstate New York, the amazing community surrounding Butler University in Indianapolis, a handful of neighborhoods in Chicago, the western ‘burbs of Chicago and now here. I’m confident that it doesn’t matter where you are and If you want to create, if you strive to build, if you seek inspiration, it’s always there. Personally, the more senses I engage, the more easily creativity comes. How about you? How do you gather inspiration to create and flush that out into a working model?
Let’s tie this into trading and ask how in the world does anyone come up with something original? There are thousands of traders exchanging E-minis, Bunds and Iron Ore futures every day. How do they come up with an original approach? How do they differentiate? Thousands of traders trading the same contract with thousands of approaches. How do those approaches evolve? We all know that the more traders using the same strategy, the less efficy the strategy has. We can’t all chase the same nut with the nut squirming away as it shrinks in size.
I can of coure go into a sales pitch for DIY algo tech like ADL from Trading Technologies as a phenomenal means of differentiating your trade, but that’s not the point. This isn’t about executing new ideas, it’s about forming the new ideas in the first place. Trust me, nothing is off the table here. I’ve spoken with hundreds of traders about idea generation and there are unlimited sources. The vast majority are tweaks of the same trade. I sometimes think there are five strategies used in bond futures, most all futures really, and everyone out there uses variants of those same trades. That’s often enough. Take the base trade and differentiate it yourself. Everyone’s trading an opening range strategy in the E-mini and they define the opening rage as 8:30 CT to 8:50 CT? Fine, I’ll use an opening range of 8:30 to 8;35. Everyone’s using a 3 point stop with a 12 point profit level? Fine, I’ll use a 3 point trailing stop with a 12 point profit level. Whatever. Just be different.
So tell me, are there new trades out there? Are all traders really just copying each other and their great inspiration is really just a tweak? Does your edge look an awful lot like the edge of countless other traders? If you have what you believe is a radically different strategy, I salute you and would love to hear about it. No need to share your secret sauce but if you honestly believe you have a 100% original trade, can you at least share some pointers on what inspired it?