Honestly, Have You Ever Seen Anything Like This?

In the 1995 drama, thriller, mystery Se7en, there is a haunting scene when Detective David Mills asks his veteran partner, Detective William Somerset the question,

“Honestly, have you ever seen anything like this?”

Detective Somerset shakes his head slowly and replies, “No.”

They are chasing a disturbing homicidal maniac on a killing spree. Mills being a new detective to the NYC area, asks his partner who up to this point had seemingly seen it all, if he’d experienced any case like this one. The word “no” used quietly by Somerset in this context was an admonition that this case was different from all the rest, one of a kind.

I’ve been trading now for over a decade. In addition to that I have been in the fintech business helping traders find market data, technical analysis platforms, quant software solutions, and trading mentors and brokers find the tools they need to try and become profitable. I have seen market gurus come and go, trading systems and their developers disappear, and countless others fail at making any money in this business. I’ve seen a few make a decent run, and fewer still muddle away making a decent living from some fancy probabilistic option trading system.

What I haven’t seen before is someone proclaim to have a “map” that can guide an entire trading group through a volatile market stretch. Day by day, gosh damn near to a T, said map and leader called the ups and downs before hand as if he had tomorrow’s newspaper today.

In early February most of you know we had a major market event, a big sell off that got everyone engaged in the markets once again (he called that too) and that is when the map was penned.

A chart to illustrate:

Docker trousers were being soiled on Wall Street and Main Street, as the uninitiated were in a frenzy to make highly emotional decisions. Even myself, being in this game quite a while was reminded that I am not at his level yet. I can’t effectively call day by day what is going to happen with unwavering confidence. Maybe one day, but not yet. And if I don’t get to that level it won’t be surprising because I don’t think any one but the man with the map is.

But when the masses engage, map man rises to a new level. Like Michael Jordan time after time near the end of big games, he clicks on and does things you just don’t see very often or at all. He understands crowd emotion and market sentiment like MJ understood what he needed to do to help his team win in high pressure situations.

He helped the entire group make money and saved a lot of them from losses that certainly would have happened. Over the last month I was reminded that I have plenty left to learn, and also reminded of the aforementioned scene in the movie Se7en.

I haven’t ever seen anything like this.

My guy had a map.