Try The Other Handle
"Every event has two handles — one by which it can be carried, and one by which it can't. If your brother does you wrong, don't grab it by his wronging, because this is the handle incapable of lifting it. Instead, use the other — that he is your brother, that you were raised together, and then you will have hold of the handle that carries."
— Epictetus, Enchiridion
An interesting meditation today, but not really something that I thought that I could relate to trading.
However, what springs to mind for me, is if a strategy is consistently a struggle and you are not making any progress after a period of time, then maybe it is time to try something new.
When I started trading horses, I was using a B2l strategy, focusing on horses that were likely to lead or challenge for the lead (front runners) early on in a race. This proved successful when the horses did as expected. However when horses were slowly away the odds would fly out far too fast for me to be able to react quickly enough to hedge for a controlled loss!
This is where I was willing to "try the other handle" you could say! I flipped it on it's head and started to research and then try out the opposite; L2b.
My thinking behind this was; only one horse can win a race and it will take pretty much until the business end of a race, for the odds to get really low. Therefore I would have more chance of taking a controlled red, than when I was doing B2l.
This proved to be quite true and I got to work on developing my L2b strategy, which I still do to this day and it is my only horse racing strategy.
Sometimes you have to try something different in all walks of life and trading is no different.
Occasionally we need to "try the other handle."