#12 - Confidence vs. Arrogance
Hey and welcome back to the daily call. On today’s call today, we’re going to talk about the difference between confidence and arrogance and especially when it relates to people in the market, investing people in the market, talking heads on the news. Honestly, anybody that you ran into. I ran into this myself just the other day where I was talking to somebody about investing in the markets and this difference really brought up something to me that I think is important to use because I think you could use it for anything, whether you think you’re maybe not arrogant, but maybe you are. Maybe you have some arrogance to you and that’s okay. We all maybe do have that for sure. But you want to try to be more confident in what you do and use a different approach. I’ll say this first about this difference and why it drives me crazy. When I’m talking to somebody or I’m having a discussion with somebody, immediately, I will know that I have won the discussion or the argument that they either think they’re participating in or not because we’re all trying to prove a point when we talk to somebody and this is where it comes out all the time, is if we’re talking about the markets or politics or whatever the case is. I know immediately when I hear somebody say a couple of key things, I know immediately I’ve won the debate. Not even that I’m actually debating. Again, I’m not physically confronting somebody. I’m just talking with them. I’m trying to have a conversation, we’re talking about whatever and immediately, they’ll throw something out right off the bat that I didn’t even ask a question about. It was just something that they presented. But the reason that arrogance is so bad is because with arrogance, you use something over someone else. You use some pedigree that you have like, “I went to Harvard over somebody else.” No matter what you say, it’s, “I went to Harvard, so therefore I should know.” I’m not downplaying anybody who went to Harvard. I’m just using it as an example. Or they use like, “Well, I played football in college, so I know.” or whatever the case is. As soon as I hear that type of thought process come out, I know immediately that they’re actually probably not as confident as I am or as I want to be or strive to be and that they’re using their pedigree or their stature or status or physique or whatever the case is as something to overshadow that fact that they have no clue what they’re talking about and that drives me insane. I think what you should be is you should try to be more confident in how you approach basically everything. I only say this because what I do here at Option Alpha, I try to do from a level of more confidence than not for not only myself, but for you. I don’t talk about like in every single video like I’ve seen other people do, I don’t talk about where I work or where I went to school because ultimately, that doesn’t really matter. It was a stepping stone and it gave me education and it helped me learn and see new insights, but it was a stepping stone to where I am now. But if I’m trying to prove something to somebody, I want to prove it to them with facts, with logic, with case studies, with data. I don’t want to just say, “Hey, this is the way it is because I went to X, Y, Z school or because I worked at X, Y, Z company.” That’s arrogance. That’s, “I know more than you because of my pedigree or status.” When really, you should be trying to not argue with people, but prove your point and however you’re doing it with facts and rationale and data or case studies. That’s what you should be using as part of your communication. Hopefully you understand that to be a confident trader and to kind of try to wrap this up a little bit because I know I’ve been maybe talking in circles a little bit, but this topic just drives me bananas really. But to wrap this up as far as trading, as a trader, you want to be confident in your trading based on the numbers, the math, the probabilities, the stats, the data, the research, the case studies, however you want to show it because that’s ultimately what is the underlying foundation of a good strategy. It’s not enough to follow somebody just because they went to Harvard or just because they say it’s this because they worked for X, Y, Z company. That is not enough. You want to have confidence in your trading. You don’t want to be arrogant that you’re too smart for your own good. That’s another place where I see people often fail, is that they will send me an email and they say immediately in the email, it’s like, “Hey Kirk, I did this, this, this, this, this, I worked for this company, this company, this company and therefore, I think that this should happen.” Immediately, I think to myself like, “None of that stuff has anything to do with what you’re proposing, what your question is. It doesn’t matter. You could delete all of that and it still should be just like a valid question, argument or a proposal for a strategy tweak or idea. But it’s this level of arrogance and confidence I think you have to walk a fine line with and maybe be aware of. Again, maybe this is a little bit different than what you expected and of course, as you’re maybe seeing with these new daily calls is that it’s not always just strictly like this options trading topic. We’re trying to do a little bit more psychology stuff that I think about and comes up with me and this is a big one for me. Hopefully you enjoyed this. Hopefully this helps out. As always, until next time, happy trading!
