The mountain
My mom gave me this one. I just noticed it was also about trading.
She talked about life like a mountain — the climb, the summit, the way back down. The longer I run money, the more I think a trading desk is just a climbing party with a P&L. Every rule a good guide lives by turns out to be a risk rule with the labels changed.
The climb is supposed to be hard
Nobody summits without the burn in their legs. The effort isn't the obstacle — it's the thing itself. A flat, easy path doesn't go up a mountain. So when the work is grinding and the gains are small and repeated, that's not a sign you're doing it wrong. That's the shape of a real ascent. The people selling you an escalator to the top are selling you a photograph of a mountain, not the mountain.
Admire the peak — then keep your footing
At the top you stop, you breathe, you take it in. You are grateful. But summit fever kills climbers: the euphoria that says I'm invincible now, one more ridge. On a desk it's the green streak that whispers size up, the rules are for other people. The discipline is to enjoy the view and bank it — take something off the table, mark the moment, and remember the mountain doesn't care how good you feel.
The danger is after the win
This is the one that reorganized how I think about risk. The statistics on real mountains are brutal and counterintuitive: far more people die coming down than going up. Exhausted, relieved, attention gone slack, treating the easy part as already over. Trading is identical. The blowups don't come in the drawdown — you're careful in a drawdown. They come right after the best run, when you've stopped respecting the descent. Discipline after a win is worth more than courage before one.
The ditches, and the rope
You will fall into some. Drawdowns are ditches, not cliffs — you climb out, you keep the party moving, you don't pretend they won't happen. And every serious climber ties into a rope and carries a way to call for rescue. On our desk the rope is the kill-switch: a pre-set line that stops everything, no ego, no "just a little further." Getting pulled off the mountain isn't shame. It's why you get to climb again tomorrow.
Still waters
She'd point out that even the psalm about walking through the valley has the shepherd leading you beside still waters — the rest is part of the route, not a detour from it. A body that never cools down breaks. So does an account, and so does a person running it. The pause at the river isn't lost time. It's how the next climb is possible.
None of this is advice, and I'm not a guide for anyone's money but my own yet. It's just the map I was handed, by someone who was talking about a life and happened to describe a discipline. Thanks, Mom.