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Mental

The Elder’s Manifesto

Besides exuding a vampire-like feeling (Elder just strikes me as a Vampire Elder, one of the three original Vampires: Marcus, Viktor, and Amelia), the man of the hour is Alexander Elder, a professional stock trader. Elder was born in Leningrad and grew up in Estonia, where he entered medical school at the age of 16. At 23, while working as a ship’s doctor, he jumped a Soviet Union ship in Africa and received political asylum in the United States. Or so his public profile often goes.

Elder is a genius I must say, having read two of this masterpieces, Trading for a Living and Come Into My Trading Room. His understanding of the stock market is profound, to say the least. Two abridged passages that you may find the same fascination as I do:

(a) Wall Street is named after a wall that kept animals from wandering away from the settlement at the tip of Manhattan. A bull fights by striking up with his horns, a bear fights by striking down with his paws, sheep are passive and fearful followers of trends, tips and gurus.

(b) The decade of the 1930s was the Golden Age of charting.Their work went in two distinct directions. Some, such as Wyckoff and Schabaker saw charts as a graphic record of supply and demand in the markets. Others such as Elliot and Gann searched for a perfect order in the markets, a fascinating but futile undertaking.

Elder’s manifesto, as I call it, is a success template. Although originally meant for stock trading, the framework is every bit intriguing to me that I think it warrants far more in-depth attention than it is now.

The 3 Ms are:

(1) Mind

(2) Method

(3) Money Management

Many self help or ‘how-to’ books only focus on one or two of the three areas at best. It will be tempting to speculate that 70% of the books out there focus on #2, i.e. method and the remaining ones are probably on #3, i.e. money management.

Method or the technical know how includes a series of steps to acquire a desired craft. E.g. books on how to make money online, how to profit from real estate etc. Finance books may be #2 or #3; if it’s written to acquire the technical skill of understanding financial statements, then it’s #2. If it’s to save money, then it could be #3, from an individual perspective.

#1 or mind deals with psyche. It is the mindset required to perfect the chosen craft and it differs from one skill to another. Generally, however, it is safe to assume that independent, critical and clear thinking apply to all.

In my mind, to succeed in anything, we need to devote our time equally to each of the three areas.

I have selected this piece of framework to be the third in Dimpledbrain’s List (in the future, preferably when I’m nearer to my deathbed, I may afford a punchier line like dimpledbrain’s five bullets or dimpledbrain’s seven steps when it appears to my mind that the list is conveniently satisfactory).

To date, Dimpledbrain’s Draft List is as follows:

(1) A Great Man is One Sentence (click here for the post)

(2) A Great Man is Also One Question (click here for the post)

(3) The Elder’s Manifesto

 

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