Scared Straight

Given the fact that we've never even been able to teach any of our puppies any trick at all, the saying "you can't teach an old dog new tricks'" while perhaps not true in every situation, is definitely true in my household.

Maybe I can blame that on "Low T," as it seems that just about everything else is being piled on its shoulders. Besides, that would make sense, especially if both trainer and trainee suffered from that malady.

In Laszlo's case, his descent into "Low T" came fairly suddenly, so I do  wonder whether his reluctance to learn any tricks is just a manifestation of his passive-aggresive behavior.

Although I'm at the point that I'm not likely to learn much new anymore, I'm getting increasingly proud of my ability to adapt, if not learn.

I've certainly recognized my advancing limitations as I've completely given up on the idea of learning even the most simple of technical analyses.

I don't even do cost averaging anymore, but I continue to be able to count by "fives."

But over the past few years, I've noticed the ability to make some behavioral changes as push would come to shove.

Monday was a good example.

Armed with lots of cash due to the assignment of about 60% of my portfolio, in the past, I would have felt compelled to burn through all of the funds, regardless of where prices were headed on that day.

If they were heading down, that often was fine, as given the market's behavior, there would be a predictable bounce upward sooner rather than later and then why not buy at a presumed bargain price?.

On the other hand, there really was no rationale reason to rifle through the money chasing rising share prices.

But I did, over and over again.

Not yesterday, though.

Restraint and judgment helped to start this morning with a decent amount to still play with, looking for what appeared to be bargains that weren't there yesterday..

Had retraint not been there, I would have picked up shares of Deere at about $2 more than where they were purchased today.

I felt good about that, although that's just a small step resuting in a small advantage. Mostly, I'm proud of that small step because I did it all on my own.

Learning how to exercise restraint to prevent premature speculation is a big achievement.

But sometimes you need others to help you and sometimes they have to take drastic actions to scare you straight.

In my case, I needed to be scared straight into inaction.

Do you remember that series of specials describing the seemingly drastic and harsh measures taken to deal with hardened bad boys. Lots of yelling, lots of crying and then success.

Okay, maybe a suicide or two, as well, but by the end of the episode, all we saw wa success.

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