We Have Met the Enemy…And It’s a Clown

February 14, 2018

For the first time in a long time, I hated trading.

The robots got in a trade last Friday, and the trades did not complete by the time markets closed.

Almost always, that’s not a problem. In fact, we talked last week about how amazing Friday trading can be.

But this time, I hated being in that Friday trade.

Why?

Because I saw the most hideous, most debilitating, most evil thing I’ve ever seen.

I saw this tweet:

https://www.screencast.com/t/axaNGZDfL

I didn’t ask to see it. I never search out news on any of my positions.

It just insidiously floated into my Twitter feed right under my nose like The Night Fox.

“So you want to hold short over the weekend?”

Guess what? I was short the USDJPY, and I was holding over the weekend.

As you know, there has been a whole mess of chaos going on with cryptocurrencies lately. At the same time, the stock market has been dropping like a rock and volatility has been rising fast.

Of course, common sense would know that the craziness going on in the markets has done nothing but help my robot Forex trades. 2018 has been really good so far.

And on a normal Friday, like I said, I wouldn’t have even batted an eye at holding a trade over the weekend.

But I couldn’t get that freaking clown face out of my head.

The truth is: I don’t even know what the tweeter was talking about. Maybe he was referring to stocks, maybe something else.

But the message of the tweet seemed to be that anyone is an i-d-i-o-t if they’re holding a short trade over this weekend.

Which got me to thinking.

Maybe I missed something.

I never pay attention to news, so maybe there was going to be a secret meeting of some sort. Maybe the Fed was going to enact a policy that would make the suffering USD shoot up. Maybe traders were going to trigger a big rebound, and that rebound was going to start Sunday night in Forex.

Maybe that’s what that freaking clown was trying to tell me.

Regardless, I wanted not to be in a trade in the worst way. I wanted to be out and be sitting on the sidelines when the freaking clown’s prophecy came true.

As a result, I was angry at Friday’s close because I was still in a trade.

Then I was apprehensive on Saturday.

Then I was anxious on Sunday morning.

Then I was on pins and needles right before the Sunday open at 5 pm EST.

Was the clown right?

Was my position going to rocket up and stop me out (or worse)?

Would there be no escape?

I knew I shouldn’t have been in this trade!

When the market opened, I took a deep breath and checked my position. Know what I saw?

Nothing.

Nothing happened.

My USDJPY position opened at just about the same spot it closed.

A few hours later, it closed out in profit. Another boring Friday-to-Sunday trade like almost every other Friday-to-Sunday trade.

A weekend of pointless worry.

The lesson? If you’re a systems trader, never look at news. Ever. Don’t look at news or read Twitter or listen to the opinions of your barista.

Trade the system without pride or prejudice.

For the first time in a long time, I forgot rule number one.

I got ambushed by a meaningless tweet on a subject probably unrelated to anything I was trading, and I unnecessarily lost my marbles.

But I do know this: it won’t happen again.

Freaking clown.