The Best Trading Models are Built on 1000's of Hours of Failed Experiments.
The importance of persistence in trading research.
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Persistence is inevitable if you want to be good at trading and making it a business.
By the end of today’s brief post, you will see why persistence is so important.
Thomas Edison is an example of persistence.
His goal was to improve a light bulb that would last for many hours.
Back then, this wasn’t possible, as other inventors had already tried and failed.
Edison was different.
He saw each failure as a lesson.
He had this workshop in Menlo Park, where he and his team tried everything they could think of to make a light bulb work.
They tested platinum - too expensive.
They tried cotton - burned up too fast.
They tried human hair - didn’t work either.
Each of those experiments cost him both time and money.
After each defeat, instead of losing hope, he approached it from a different perspective.
He saw each failure as a signal of something that didn’t work, but got him closer to the end goal.
These stories are inspiring when he read about their hero’s struggles merely through words.
However, going through it, is a much different story.
Eventually, people started making fun of him.
The newspapers called him crazy as his money was running out.
But he kept at it…
And after thousands of failed attempts, Edison had an idea.
“What about bamboo?”
He proceeded to get some bamboo, tried it, and lo and behold, it worked!
The light burned for 50 hours straight initially, and later extended to 1,200 hours.
Later on, when he was asked about all of his failed attempts, Edison said something that people still quote today:
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
He also said:
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
To this day, we all know his name and the importance of his work.
I see the attempt of becoming a better trader no different than Thomas Edison’s improvement of the light bulb.
Like Edison, we have to make something extremely difficult, that the vast majority of people fail at, work.
We’re also competing with the most advanced, well-resourced, people in the world.
You will fail for 1000’s of hours before you find anything significant.
I have no way to estimate how many hours I’ve spent on research over the past 7 years, but one thing I know…
… it was easily in the many thousands of hours.
Recently, I’ve decided to track the time I spend on each of the research articles that I share with you.
Just for the last 8 articles, that I’ve shared here, I’ve spend almost 100 hours doing research for them.
And you know something interesting?
The vast majority of those hours were spent not on the actual idea itself, but filtering out bad ideas, before I was able to reach a good one.
And it does not include a bunch of other adjacent stuff, that I spend time on, that are related to these articles.
This week I am delayed with Research Article #54, and it should be coming out either tomorrow or on Friday.
As I am writing this, I have just decided to stop researching an idea I’ve spent nearly 7 hours on, but was leading me nowhere.
It is not easy to let go of 7 hours of research.
But I’ve allowed many times 7 hours to become 20, or 40, or more.
In my experience, if an idea is not good in the first few simple tests, you should ditch them and move on to better ones.
The goal of Trading Research Hub is to provide you with a filtered catalog of good ideas, that I spend my time researching, so that you don’t have to.
Sometimes I will be delayed, some weeks I won’t post.
But my main goal is to make each article the highest quality that my capabilities allow.
And for that, just as Thomas Edison did, I will keep exploring new ideas until I find something that works, that is worth sharing with you!
Ps… Looking to Work With Me?
After testing 100’s of trading strategies and spending 1,000’s of hours studying trading and building my own models, I had a few clients reach out to work with me and the outcomes have been quite good so far!
I’ve helped multiple clients now:
Develop their first systematic model
Help reviewing their current trading processes
Build solid frameworks on trading system development
Stop wasting money and time on bad ideas
Develop better risk management models
And much more…
If you want my custom help on your trading business, or would like to work with me, book a free 15-minute consultation call:
And finally, I’d love your input on how I can make Trading Research Hub even more useful for you!
Disclaimer: The content and information provided by the Trading Research Hub, including all other materials, are for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any type of security or investment. Always conduct your own research and consult with a licensed financial professional before making any investment decisions. Trading and investing can involve significant risk of loss, and you should understand these risks before making any financial decisions.