2026 Goals

In high school, I once shot a three pointer and turned around to celebrate before it actually went through the net. As soon as I had taken a full step, there was a disappointed gasp from the crowd which gave me a heart-attack. I turned around thinking I had missed expecting to have to switch to defense and expecting to get benched by my coach but all I saw the other team inbounding the ball. Then I watched the score board update. The shot had gone in.

A looked around and no one was even looking at me. Not my coach. Not me team. Not my mom. Everyone was concernedly looking and few people were pointing off the court. Even some of the players.

A little kid had fallen down while running along the sideline carrying a hotdog. He was fine and he got a new hotdog.

I don’t usually like to talk about goals publicly. Goals are a very personal things and comparing oneself to another person is rarely a good psychological activity. But, on the flip-side you never know if what is possible if you don’t know - what other people achieve.

And when it comes to making money - let’s be honest - most everyone lies. Whether it’s credit or leverage the financial system is not based on sound truth.

So it’s hard to know on face value that one person’s returns are achievable or if the methods they claim to have used to achieve those returns where actually how those returns were achieved.

I can tell you it is smarter to wait out your trade than to over trade. I can tell you that you only need to make one really smart trade a year. I can tell you stop-losses are stupid.

But, really no one is going to listen without proof.

Since I don’t wait out entries (I am always early) and I make often hundreds of trades a year it feels disingenuous even to me to say these things and then expect other people to just believe it. I am genuine in my belief but I am not going to buy a Ferrari and a Rolex to show what I am saying is true.

My running personal goals are the same. I don’t want to be perfect. A- or better. I want a 90% win rate (discounting any hedging I do) across all accounts. I average around 80-85% so I achieve a B/B+ most years. The gap there is because I am still an idiot. The market will never let you feel smart and will always beat all hope out of you before deciding to move the right way. And even I sometimes get weak knees.

Getting weak knees is the parlance of the stock market is called taking a tax loss. There is the great video of a JPL engineer taking heat shield tiles out of a kiln. They cubes are glowing white hot. Now, that engineer knows, because he has done the math, that those tiles are not going to melt his finger prints off when he tries to pick one up.

But, still you can see him hesitate in the video. Just a little flinch he has to consciously push through before he fingers grab the tile to lift it.

I can imagine no one on Earth has used their fingers in a Safety Saw so frequently they don’t flinch as well when demonstrating the safety feature. You can trust the math all you want. You’re still going to flinch. At least that’s what I have found.

We discussed this yesterday in chat. I have little tricks I play on myself. Stanley Druckenmiller would just throw up on occasion. When I get nervous and feel like panicking on a trade that has taken too long, I sell one share triumphantly and then go for a bike ride.

Anyways, back to the point of this.

In December, while talking with a subscriber I half jokingly said I could go a year without a losing trade but I have never actually done this that I can remember. I am fairly certain the year Disney bought Marvel I probably did but I never actually checked back and did any account post-mortem back then. Only since I entered the US Investing Competition have I actively paid attention to January 1st on the calendar. Any constrain you put on yourself is going to limit returns. So my positions exist on their own timelines. If they run January to December, great. If they run May to the following October, also great.

But, this year I decided to try and see if I could go an entire calendar year exceeding my 70+% goals without a losing trade. A++ gold star, test goes on the refrigerator.

This means only making a few trades and being patient before entering. Accomplishing this would show it is possible to be patient and still out perform.

I am sharing this now mostly because I am procrastinating from what I have to do this week and partly because I am almost at that goal already.

I have only made three entries in this account. One I have closed already and the other two are both decently up and I suspect the account will cross 70% in a few weeks baring a giant toddler face planting while holding a McDonald’s hamburger do distract everyone from the game.

If you are just starting out it can be tough to be patient. I think it is pretty universally true especially in young men to want to do something all the time. And the shopping cart problem is very real. Everyone else does appear to be moving faster than you in life. And every day some stock that you don’t own takes off and you regret not buying it. But, patience is the key when you are just learning.

One of the reasons I have mentioned just waiting until you put together $100k and paper trading is to give you time to learn how the market works and to (more importantly) give you time to learn that there rarely is a reason to rush.

As your account grows you can start to worry about position sizing and volatility and statistics and opportunity costs, all the things that help protect your marriage, but in the beginning it’s really about being patient and just waiting for the right trade.

Then making it and turning your back and walking away knowing you put in the time and the shot is going in.

Just don’t gloat about it and make finger guns.

— AJ

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