Desperate Times Lead to Predictable Results

Sean McLaughlin
January 24, 2024

For the past seven weeks, it was “do-or-die” for my favorite football team, the Buffalo Bills.

They came into the season as one of the favorites to make it to the Super Bowl. Las Vegas even had them at good odds to win it all for the first time in franchise history.

Of course, nobody can predict the future. Not in sports, not in markets, not anywhere.

And naturally, the real world had different ideas.

Twelve games into the seventeen-game season, it looked like all was lost and Bills fans would have to “wait ’til next year” once again. The Bills’ record was just 6-6 and they were looking up at 10 teams ahead of them in line for only 7 available playoff spots.

It looked like it was over. They faced a situation where their only real path to make it to the playoffs was to win their final five games. And those final five games were scheduled against a gauntlet of teams who were locks for the playoffs already — each with their own valid dreams of winning the Super Bowl.

But the Bills won against the Chiefs in Kansas City (I was there!). They beat Dallas. Then the Jets. Then New England. Finally, they finished off Miami to make the playoffs. And they continued the streak by beating their first playoff opponent, the Pittsburgh Steelers.

But this post isn’t about all that winning. It’s about HAVING to win.

The Bills put themselves in the unenviable position of playing MUST-WIN games for 5 straight weeks before entering the playoffs tournament which are also MUST-WIN games if one hopes to win the Super Bowl. All in, they would’ve had to win nine straight MUST-WIN games to become Super Bowl Champions.

Talk about long odds!

As the Kansas City Chiefs were running out the clock to eliminate my Buffalo Bills in this past Sunday’s game, I couldn’t help but think about the times I’d inadvertently found myself trading as if I HAD TO WIN.

Sometimes I was trading as if I had to win because I’d been on a terrible losing streak and I just wanted to get back to even. You might call this revenge trading. I’m not sure whether it was fear of accepting that I’d lost, or greed to get back what I viewed as “mine” that would drive me during these times, but I can tell you the end result was usually the same — more losses.

Sometimes I would trade as if I had to win because I had set unreasonable expectations that I should be earning x-amount of dollars each day, week, or month. Anything less than these goals was completely unacceptable to me. Predictably, forcing trades into inopportune setups simply because I needed to hit an artificial target that did not take the market environment into consideration was always a recipe for mind-melting frustration. The stock market is not an ATM. It will not spit out money on a schedule according to my needs or wants. The market doesn’t care about me.

I’m sure there are more reasons why I traded this way. But the point here is that being under the gun — having to win — is no way to go. Not in trading, not in sports, not in life.

The pressure for sustained perfection will wear down even the most sturdy of humans. Some can keep up that pace longer than others. But inevitably when there is no margin for error, it eventually happens. We snap. We break. We crumble. We’re exhausted.

Trading is hard enough. If we put ourselves in a position where we HAVE to win in order to stay solvent or relevant or whatever, well… the results are predictable. Always has been for me, at least.

So now as I process another fruitless end to the Bills season and begin looking forward again to next season, I’m grateful for the reminder to avoid desperation at all costs. It’s simply not worth it.

Trade 'em Well,

Sean McLaughlin
Chief Options Strategist
All Star Charts, Technical Analysis Research

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