Thing is, even that dude isn’t happy. He’s just a bigger douche than you.

Anyway, what’s this all about? I want to try to get at a universal: the need to breathe. Today I got smoked early. So smoked that all I wanted was to get back to flat. You ever get that feeling?

I got smoked in FDX. In retrospect, of course, silly. I mean, oil is ripping, FDX goes down. A rookie correlation if ever there was one. But regardless, I was in and out most of the morning. Things got so disgusting that I might have even sold my testicles to the devil. I don’t remember. I just remember praying a bunch.

We all need to breathe. When you get yourself into a tight spot trading, you often hold your breath. You’re underwater, dude, and you can’t think straight. All you want is to get up to the surface again, take a breath of fresh air, and you swear you’ll never get in that situation again. So your stock bounces, or whatever, you get back to flat, and all too often, you get out.

Anyway, I did end the day green. I had some great entries in the ag stocks, I bought them all.  And here are my last sales, all for decent profits:

AGU $88.64
CF $125.21
MOS $76.86
POT $164.82

But guess where they closed:

AGU $91.13
CF $134.44
MOS $81.31
POT $172.47

My exits simply represent me breaking the surface of the water again and taking that big gulp of air. You can’t get anywhere treading water. You get tired and eventually, you sink.

How do you avoid that? Don’t let yourself get too far underwater, ever. Stay in the mental position of “Winship.”

So I’m happy I ended the day green after an early smokefest, but disgusted with myself for not making more of a huge trade.

Tough job. Don’t make it tougher on yourself by diving too deep.

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