Jan
6
On Mentors, from Russ Sears
January 6, 2009 |
On Mentors: seek others help in your talents. A good coach is a necessity to keep your balance, even if you are an expert in the field. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel of course, but the coach will see your errors of over eagerness while still encouraging your dreams.
On Losses: when the changes or losses happen, view them as a time to change the dysfunctions in your life. Always strive to improve your response. Be it a new school year, a new school, leaving home, college, various new jobs, marriage status and having children. These are all times to consider what you did well and continue the good work. But also want to change, what bad habits did you indulge, and then set about improving response to life.
Value consistency. A child thrives on a consistent environment, rules and routine. Adults do also. Loyalty, marriage, daily effort thrive on consistency. The brilliance in Sharpe’s ratio, is that it sets the bar high. The question isn’t did you make money but did your actions and acceptance of volatility actually improve your lot or where you better off, passively consistently buying and holding. It's the reckless investor i.e. gambler, who does not hold himself to this standard. They end up trading to trade. Life will force some losses on you, without that escape hatch. Yet, there will of course be times when you must cut your loses, but those that don’t weight against the standard of consistency, will end up changing things just for the change. Like the Sharpe ratio, there are many ways to game the system and trick you into self-deception. Those that don’t learn this end up like the gambler; they die broke morally as well as literally, without a nickel and without a true friend or disciple.
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It is my experience that a mentor should choose their students carefully. Some students, especially in the markets, are looking for a guru to tell them what to think, when to think, and when to act. Many are looking for an easy way out, free money so to speak. I’ve had unfortunate experiences with the students I’ve tried to mentor. I had three mentors when I was coming up. They didn’t want anything to do with me at first, as they had seen hundreds like me come and go over the decades. It was my extreme persistence that finally convinced them to give me a hand. Early on, I would ask a favorite mentor what he thought the wheat market was going to do, and he would turn it around and ask me what I thought it was going to do, and why. He would then tell me to watch carefully what the market was doing at any time, and carefully observe the reaction of the market to various events, or the reaction of the market to no events. Sometimes, a quiet market can give the best sense of market direction, as I was taught. The greatest characteristic of my mentors, the three most important people in my life, was that they guided me, made me think independently and rationally, and taught me the power of observation.
I agree, the best thing my mentor did for me is to make me self reliant. When it comes to trading, I need no one. Not only do I not need them, I don’t want them around (including my mentor).
I have had one mentor in my life as of this date. Hebert H. Sawyer, Esquire showed me the law, unlike any schooling or professional tutelage.
A founding partner of Bernstein, Shur, Sawyer, Nelson in Portland, Maine, Herbert nurtured my curiosity while helping me learn to balance my thoughts and feelings not only about my future but about my self in daily life. He consistently amplified reinforcing messages to the lessons evinced by my parents.
A graduate of Boston University Law School – he would quip, “BU, PU” – and a member of the OSS who opened one of the concentration camps, Herbert warned me of the oncoming conversion of the practice of law into a business during the 80’s. Yet his passion for trying a case was as undying as my curiosity.
Being confused as a junior association by judges inviting me to join bench conferences; cocktails with the King of Torts, Melvin Belli; visits to his office; car-ride discussions on case reviews and updates; studying his Trial Lawyer and ABA professional magazines; hearing him and Nanny (Barbara, his wife) joust about law school days and early cases: such was the stuff that cemented my idealistic visions with hopes and realities a plenty as so fueled by his daily practices.
Now, of all the years, all the cases and clients, the opposing counsels, judges, and members and officers of the court, I see him… walking into the kitchen, mail in one hand, suit coat buttoned, ushering me with authorization for entrustment to make the first round of Manhattans, as hourderves are dished, there lingers a college boy anticipation of encouragement and guidance, like the telling of his first case to be told yet again…
A working lad, local farmer’s son, dating an adjacent farm family’s daughter, had been charged with driving while drunk. The police officer’s testimony presented and, upon cross, preserved as sermon like.
The date was recorded and so interceded en route to a local dance. Destination of the young man and lady could not be proven to be with circumnavigation, directing a course from the girl’s home to the youthful fair – a fall season event.
Prosecutor and judge knew the information to be alike. Conviction, though, rested with a panel of community members selected as being peers, honest and forthright.
Defense counsel, with his case all but presented, awaiting now only final arguments, rested not on quantifications of reasonable doubts and probably causes. No, no, no…
The town respected, farmer, father of the impressionable girl passenger, so chaperoning the truth of this matter, was called to memorialize just and only the exact weight of this matter, regardless of learned men and hallowed halls filled with blindfolded ladies scaling the imports of human deeds.
“I let him drive her to the dance…” the doting father spat to the prosecutor, whom would therewith withdraw without further questions…
And so goes victory to the ones who find rules-based states among positions relevant to directions charted by others, regardless of quantified prognostications, seemingly where all that is required is a confirmation of the sum for parts so cast…
Thank you, HHS, I miss you.
dr