Trading is similar to piloting fighter plane

25th February 2019

Previously I have written about why it is dangerous to trade without the help and guidance from "scanner" and bots. Trading... in my opinion is very similar to piloting a fighter plane.

Whenever we trade, we rely on charts and calendars to help us to look ahead. We use tools such as tradingview.com or MetaTrader to help us visualize what's happening in the financial market. We use technical analysis functions such as RSI, MACD, etc to help us understand and make sense of the market variables.

Similarly, whenever we pilot a plane ... we rely on the gauges(flight instruments) and control tower to help us navigate.The flight instruments get live data from the plane's environment, perform some calculations and display the crunched numbers on the gauges for us to view. Depending on our flight path and mission objective, the information from the gauges will help us to understand and make sense of the flight path environment variables.

Lessons from Ace Combat game series.

One of my favorite fighter plane combat game is the Ace Combat series. Playing Ace Combat helped me to think better, gave new insights and new ideas on how to trade better....achieving better profits and minimize losses.

Ace Combat gave me the ideas ... that if I want to better trade, I will need:

Work as a team or in a squadron.
Advise from AWACS(Airborne Warning and Control System). A big brother that will alert me on incoming events or dangers. Such as events in a forex calendar.
Prioritize my targets acquisition. Similar to a fighter plane's IFF, I will need to identify suitable targets. Which crosses such as AUD/JPY or USD/THB to focus on.
Fast targeting and firing system. This part will have to be a computer program. Human brain signals to finger pressing the computer mouse buttons will always have limited throughput.

Still don't get it? Now, imagine this.... Whenever you press the trigger to shoot missile or machine gun... it is similar to issuing the long(buy) or short(sell) commands in trading activities.

When an enemy plane explodes, your trade is profitable!!!

What I am going to do from these lessons?

Like fixing or building a plane, I'm currently working on developing a bunch of trading instruments(kinda like flight instruments found in the cockpit). These trading instruments will help me to focus and hopefully... provide a better navigation system in the financial markets.

After that, I'll work on building a Financial Environment Control System, it will be similar to the function played by AWACS.

The AWACS operator will constantly advise the pilots(traders) on upcoming changes in the combat situation and what sort of things to watch out for.

What else?

I will draw a nose art for my trading desk. A nose art or some pilot prefers to call it "plane angel" usually consists of a drawing next to the cockpit. For some pilot, it is used to remind the pilot of why he or she is flying..... or simply a guardian angel to ensure safe flight and able to return to base in intact.

Image credit : Wikipedia

Taking the idea from Ace Combat to train my trading drone.

Once I'm comfortable with all these trading instruments, then I will start to replicate them into my "trading drones". What are trading drones? Some call it trading bot, some call it expert advisor, some simply call it a automated trading program.

If you want to understand more about the concept of trading drones, then please watch the Ace Combat 7 on Youtube or play the game..