The Key to Good Luck Is an Open Mind

Trading is often about how to take the appropriate risk without exposing yourself to very human flaws.
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Euler
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Luck can seem synonymous with randomness. To call someone lucky is usually to deny the relevance of their hard work or talent. As Richard Wiseman, the Professor of Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, in the United Kingdom, puts it, lucky people “appear to have an uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right time and enjoy more than their fair share of lucky breaks.”

What do these people have that the rest of us don’t?

http://nautil.us/blog/the-key-to-good-l ... -open-mind
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Euler
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Personally, I think this links into prospect theory.

Most people view the world through the flawed logic of prospect theory. When if you open your mind up, you realise opportunities and issues are equally created. Therefore, opening your mind isn't anything amazing it just allows you to see opportunities that would normally be hidden to you because of inbuilt prejudices.
Polefaith
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I would suggest to read a book called Secret. It's showing simple rules of good luck.

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fbr
Last edited by Polefaith on Mon Apr 03, 2017 8:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Frogmella
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Having an open mind is a good thing - as long as you don't let your brain fall out.

As far as I can see, this game, and all other speculative investments, are simply a matter of mathematics. You will suffer losses whatever you do, they have to be viewed as just one of the expenses of running a business. What matters, and how you end up with any profit at all, is what you do to limit the impact of losses both on your bankroll and your psyche.

Equally, you have to guard against over-optimism when you strike an unlikely run of positive results, the danger here is that you think you've cracked it, you're invincible, you have always to remember that reversion to the mean is coming, the maths insists upon it.

Look at Leicester City, one and a half seasons worth of good results and they win the league, then reversion arrives and the universe is restored to normality. In the absence of massive financial action to change the whole paradigm of the club, it was inevitable.

For a trader this streak would have manifested as a steady climb in bankroll, maybe some spending on luxuries, probably coupled with increasing stakes (why not, I've cracked it) then successive losses, a downward spiral of bankroll, an unknowing denial of reversion, ever more trading activity to try and arrest the slide (sack the manager), and back to square one.
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Euler
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I was betting against Leicester last year and lost money, but have recouped it this year and then some.

I think it's more about looking for opportunities rather than following things blindly. I've often discussed opportunities with people who have been able to prove mathematically that they don't exist, but they were just looking in the wrong place and their closed mind prevented them from seeing the real opportunity. I think that's how I would encapsulate this frame of mind.
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marksmeets302
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I think what depresses people is a perceived lack of control. Something happens that will probably have a negative impact in the future. You can fret about it each day, or you can try to see the hidden opportunities that it brings and focus on that.
Yesterday, my son told me he had failed a class and as a result can't start with the next semester. After a bit of initial grumbling he said he was going to try to talk his grade up (he thought he deserved more) and if that didn't work he wanted to re-take the exam and spend the rest of the 6 months abroad doing some kind of internship. He saw an opportunity in an otherwise bad situation. It made me very proud.
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Frogmella
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Frogmella wrote:
Thu Feb 16, 2017 11:49 am

......

Look at Leicester City, one and a half seasons worth of good results and they win the league, then reversion arrives and the universe is restored to normality. In the absence of massive financial action to change the whole paradigm of the club, it was inevitable.

For a trader this streak would have manifested as a steady climb in bankroll, maybe some spending on luxuries, probably coupled with increasing stakes (why not, I've cracked it) then successive losses, a downward spiral of bankroll, an unknowing denial of reversion, ever more trading activity to try and arrest the slide (sack the manager), and back to square one.
Blimey, they DID sack him. I must be psychic. (Or perhaps I've seen it all before?)
Bluesky
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Frogmella wrote:
Mon Feb 27, 2017 6:19 pm
Blimey, they DID sack him. I must be psychic. (Or perhaps I've seen it all before?)
Did you bet on this, no point being right if you don't make any money out of it lol.
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ShaunWhite
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There's no such thing as 'luck', only probability & odds.

Luck, or being lucky, would require some interaction between an indiviual and an event on which they had no bearing. If you consider yourself lucky it reduces your ability to assess risk, and if you consider yourself to be unlucky you will deny yourself opportunities which are otherwise potentially advantageous. Therefore, with no feasible positive outcome, the whole concept is as damaging as it is irrational.
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Frogmella
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ShaunWhite wrote:
Mon Feb 27, 2017 7:56 pm
There's no such thing as 'luck', only probability & odds.

Luck, or being lucky, would require some interaction between an indiviual and an event on which they had no bearing. If you consider yourself lucky it reduces your ability to assess risk, and if you consider yourself to be unlucky you will deny yourself opportunities which are otherwise potentially advantageous. Therefore, with no feasible positive outcome, the whole concept is as damaging as it is irrational.
Luck does exist, it is when an unforseeable happenstance occurs, something that you could not reasonably calculate for. Like when a bird gets killed by a cricket ball or David Beckham's foot slips from under him just as he goes to take a penalty kick. or some unforseen equipment failure. While it is possible to calculate a mathematical probability if you have all possible information in advance the fact is, you can never have it all. Besides if everything were simply mathematically predicatable there would be no point in sport of any kind, no point in living either. This is why I am opposed to video ref's, refereeing mistakes are a part of the uncertainty (luck) of a game. If you reduce uncertainty then it becomes more likely that those with the most money to invest will win all. We are already seeing this as Peter has pointed out in his video about wage bills in the Premier League.
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ShaunWhite
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Frogmella wrote:
Tue Feb 28, 2017 1:56 pm
ShaunWhite wrote:
Mon Feb 27, 2017 7:56 pm
There's no such thing as 'luck', only probability & odds.

Luck, or being lucky, would require some interaction between an indiviual and an event on which they had no bearing. If you consider yourself lucky it reduces your ability to assess risk, and if you consider yourself to be unlucky you will deny yourself opportunities which are otherwise potentially advantageous. Therefore, with no feasible positive outcome, the whole concept is as damaging as it is irrational.
Luck does exist, it is when an unforseeable happenstance occurs, something that you could not reasonably calculate for. Like when a bird gets killed by a cricket ball or David Beckham's foot slips from under him just as he goes to take a penalty kick. or some unforseen equipment failure. While it is possible to calculate a mathematical probability if you have all possible information in advance the fact is, you can never have it all. Besides if everything were simply mathematically predicatable there would be no point in sport of any kind, no point in living either. This is why I am opposed to video ref's, refereeing mistakes are a part of the uncertainty (luck) of a game. If you reduce uncertainty then it becomes more likely that those with the most money to invest will win all. We are already seeing this as Peter has pointed out in his video about wage bills in the Premier League.
You're just describing probability, not 'luck'. When a 1000/1 shot wins it's not luck, it's simply that a certain set of unlikely circumstances has occured including those which were not considered (ie not forseen). Like with your bird analogy, you know the area of the sky over the pitch, the bird population density, the amount of time balls are usually in the air during a match... all entirely predictable even though that might work out as once in a 500 hundered years. Same with the penalty, observe 1000 games and you'll be able to derive a reasonable probability of slipping, boots coming off, being hit by a throw coin, fainting under pressure etc etc.

I'm not saying that all probabilities, or even any, can be calculated with much degree of acurancy, most are just a best guess.

I think the issue here is that you're making a mental leap between something having a probabilty of occuring, and it being predictable, that's simply not the case. You can have a 1 in a hundered event not happening for a 10,000 attempts, then happening 100 times in a row, or it might happen for the first five in a row.

If you think probability and predictability are in anyway related you're mistaken....toss a coin 20 times, a pure irrefutable 50/50 outcome ? (ignore the tosses where it's hit by a bird, or lands on its edge, or it rolls down a drain) and I'lll wager you don't get 10 heads. Actually, what odds would you give me on it being 10 ?

Luck, magic and other notions like 'religious miracles' are just manifestations of the human brain being absolutely useless at handling either very small or very large numbers. We can't even understand a tiny numbers like a billion, that's why politicians try and impress us saying things like 'we're spending a billion pounds on education' and everyone cheers ...say it's 32p a week per head of population, and we understand, and it sounds pathetic.

We're just an 8 bit organism barely coping in a massively complex set of physics.
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ShaunWhite
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I've just been working out the answer to my 10 heads out of 20 coin flips question.....I'm making it about 17.6% but happy to be corrected.

A 'lucky' person wouldn't be suprised to get it, an 'unlucky' person would be amazed. It's the same coin.
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ruthlessimon
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those interested in luck, might wanna read this handsome fellas thread :D : viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13117
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ShaunWhite
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ruthlessimon wrote:
Tue Feb 28, 2017 9:31 pm
those interested in luck, might wanna read this handsome fellas thread :D : viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13117
That was a bit of false advertising simon, I expected a thread on 'luck' but got one on statistical varience.
Polefaith
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Great discussion thank you for sharing. I believe there are things that can't be foreseen and that luck exist. The probability and/or odds does not equal the outcome.

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