Lessons from the Future – 6. Execution and Continuous Upgrade | Life & Work Series

Today we will wrap up this segment with the lesson that will continue to keep you ahead in the game.

Read time: about 2 1/2 min.

All previous lessons from the Future’s trading focused on the tools essential for successful trading, with a parallel drawn to our personal lives. However, just like a trader’s growth and success, our personal and professional growth and success will be short-lived if today’s lesson is not in the mix.

Here’s a quick recap for those who came in late.

Lessons from the Future – 1. Charts | Life Series
Lessons from the Future – 2. Stop Loss | Life Series
Lessons from the Future – 3. S&R | Life Series
Lessons from the Future – 4. Indicators | Life Series
Lessons from the Future – 5. Planing | Life & Work Series

Now that the traders have all the pieces assembled, the trading can start, and they are set on their path to financial freedom. Piece of cake, correct? Not exactly. The real work for the traders begins when they are ready with their plan to trade.

There are a few more steps before the traders are prepared to pull the trigger in the live market with real money, including testing and mental readiness for trading. The real work is to continuously study the results, revalidate the plan and the tools, re-adjust and re-apply. The most important of all is to consider the factors affecting the trading ecosystem – technology, changing market sentiments, regulations, automation, machine learning techniques, high-frequency trading, augmented intelligence, and the list goes on. The traders have to keep up in the changing landscape to improve their edge.

That is hard. It’s better to do a 9-5 job and keep doing it until retirement. Straight and simple.

That is correct if you are still in the 1980s.

The old thinking toward career has traditionally been linear – complete school, get into University, optionally do some vocational courses and find a job. Full stop. This method worked for decades because the candidates produced through the education institutions complemented the organizations that recruited them. Organizations required people skilled in certain disciplines for running the business, and the education institutes provided skill-sets in those relevant fields. This symbiotic relationship re-enforced the traditional education machinery to produce the widgets for keeping the organization engine running.

Until globalization hit the scene.

Like trading, every profession now undergoes continuous evolution. Whether we ask for it or not, whether we realize it or not, whether we are prepared or not. Our job is constantly changing. Some changes are subtle, whereas others are disruptive. Our technologies are racing ahead but many of our skills and organizations are lagging behind.

Let’s use an example from the post computer world to nail this point. Not long ago, all kinds of reports were painstakingly produced manually. The data used to be sourced, fed manually into the computer and computed. The only automation involved was the computer for storing and basic computing, and the printer for producing the reports. Blessed be Bill Gates for inventing MS Excel and a magical add-on called Macros. Data sourcing changed over time through the interconnected network, and the computing process that used to take hours of manual labour was transformed in minutes or seconds. Data Operators doing this job using traditional methods got replaced by software.

Staying relevant for tomorrow is the way forward.

Execute with vigour
Silicon Valley has an expression that sums it up. “Execution eats strategy for lunch.” No matter how strong our strategy is, sub-quality execution won’t get us anywhere. Smart execution is the key to success, whether it’s trading futures or developing a product. A trader in the financial market competes on a global scale. Those with the right edge have a better chance to win. No favouritism, subjectivity or influential connections are at play. Just the trader’s execution prowess. The vigour to produce a superior output in our current discipline of work or expertise will keep us in the game. If not, then often, as the untrained traders get whipsawed in a choppy market, we will be pushed aside.

Continuous Re-innovation
No matter how educated and knowledgeable we are with our subjects of expertise, they may not be sufficient for the coming tomorrow. Traditional and non-traditional professions and careers require the same level of innovation and re-validation of the current and future changing dynamics for improving the edge. Even the hardware and software we use requires a constant upgrade, so how can we expect our current skills and experience to maintain pace in the exponentially fast-paced world. Disrupting ourselves before someone else does it for us is an almost guaranteed method for ahead of the curve.

Loop
Re-innovate and re-apply and keep doing it.

Remaining stagnant is old. If we are not moving forward, we are not stagnant anymore but behind. Continuous learning is constant. If we can’t learn, we can’t thrive.

Thank you for sharing some of your precious time with me each week.

Until next week.

Razak
CommonInterest