Saturday, June 27, 2009

Paradoxes of Risk

This may be willing to comprehend that if people are frantically seeking remuneration for the physical, they're also easy to retreat, as their ultimate aim is the pleasure, which means that the achievement of this goal should be quick and easy, or problems with obtaining the pay would be more than the reward. Their prevailing mood, then, becomes a passionate, then relaxed, the fierce, the prostrate. Death is often less afraid of them than perseverance in continuous efforts in motion to the same result.

Alexis de Tocqueville

From an early age, we all learned our family, school, and indeed any other social-shaping force in our society that we avoid risk. Inappropriate risk; play that safely - advice for which we are accustomed from childhood. In conventional wisdom, the risk is asymmetric - it is only one bad side. From my experience - and I suppose that any other - this is the usual presentation of the risk is shortsighted and often just wrong.

My first observation is that successful people understand that risk, properly conceived, is often very productive, rather than something which should be avoided. They estimate that the risk is an advantage that should be used rather than a trap that must be circumvented. Such people understand that taking calculated risks is very different from that associated with recklessness. This idea of risk is not only unorthodox, it is ironic - the first of several paradoxes that I'm going to present to you in this article. This can be rephrased to read - risk is a dangerous game. Much more often than you may imagine, a real risk in life is connected with the refusal of risk. In other words, in fact, most threatening dangers usually occurs when you're evading a confrontation with the fact that only seems to be most at risk. What is widely regarded as a safe game, is not safe. What I propose here is not unambiguously guaranteed formula for success. This formula simply does not exist and never will be. If anyone ever tries to sell you a formula, it is better to leave their money with them. In life, first of all, there is a risk. I do not try to dispel this risk with the help of a magical elixir. I can only give you a little food for thought. I have a few suggestions. You might not agree with them. But if you even think about them, I felt that the time we spent together was not spent in vain. We all know that modern civilization has much to ancient Greeks. Since the 20th century ended, it is difficult to call the Greek thinker, who spoke more directly to us than Garaklit. Everything flows, everything changes - Heraclitus said about 2,500 years ago. Nothing can withstand the test of time, everything changed.

Most of us agrees with the postulate that nothing withstands the test of time, everything changes, but the conclusions following from it still deserves some explanation. Obviously, if the change is a fundamental rule of life, then resistance to change is foolish and doomed to defeat. Just as obviously, if the change is a constant, the uncertainty is an unavoidable part of our lives. Uncertainty is inevitable, life is unpredictable. The very essence of life is an unexpected and unintended, unexpected turns, we can metaphorically ascribe fate or Providence. Consequently, if we do not want to be like a shipwreck on the waves of the inevitable changes, we must take place in the middle of change.

We must learn to go on stream changes, rather than swim against it - even people who do not perceive the problem to learn how the world really works, would be to think that we are doing exactly the opposite. In other words, the risk is usually thought of as a movement against the flow, the selection of the difficult road to the highest chances. However, in a world of constant change, in a world that Heraclitus said that "it is impossible to enter into one and the same river twice", the assumption of risk is the adoption of the flow of change and movement along with it. Remember the first paradox - just like the risk of ill-exposure risk. For those who understand the reality, the risk is actually the safest way to cope with the changing, uncertain world. Adoption of the risk in fact is a dive into the circumstances that we can not completely control. But the fact that the circumstances in this life that we can totally control, are so small and so trivial, that are barely any effort. In addition, the lack of absolute control, which is impossible in any case, does not entail the absence of any control or substantial control. Here again there is a paradox - in a world of constant change, the risk is actually a form of security, because it takes such a world, what it is. In line with traditional values, safe, where indeed there is a danger, because it denies and resists the world.

I believe that you understand that when I say that the risk of actually safe, I'm talking about a specific form of risk. I do not advise you that you jumped from a skyscraper in the hope that the ongoing changes in the law of gravity will deploy in mid-flight. I speak rather of some form of risk that you actually adjusts to the direction of change.

To be more specific, I am firmly convinced that the kind of risk, which takes a trader in a position to control their lot in a world of continuous change is a risk, which adds some value to this world. To create value, concentrating its efforts on increasing that deserves attention involves (as we see) a sort of risk. And yet, paradoxically, it provides you the greatest control over the changing world and maximize your ability to achieve truly significant personal satisfaction.




Forex Magazine
based on www.turtletrader.com

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