Con-tango

40 second Boyd

Colonel Boyd of the Air Force was a fighter pilot known for his challenge to fellow airmen. He allowed himself to be placed in a position of tactical disadvantage in an air fight and promised that, within 40 seconds, he would be on his adversary’s tail, ready for the kill. Col. Boyd was never known to have lost this bet, earning him the nickname “Forty Second” Boyd.

During his career, Col. Boyd developed his approach to airborne combat into a comprehensive philosophy of military strategy.  He described combat decision-making as a function of Observing, Orienting , Deciding, and Acting (OODA). 

These processes form loops, with new actions providing fresh observations and requiring renewed efforts at orienting and responding.  The goal of military training, Boyd stressed, is to accelerate OODA loops, becoming more efficient than the enemy.

Its been a while that I’ve come to regard trading as a sports activity. It’s not enough to know what to do, which is hard enough in itself; but, one has to perform impeccably in a very competitive and stressful environment.

And, how can we achieve that?

In a nutshell, submitting ourselves to a harsher and more rigorous drilling of our own trading setups than we would encounter in everyday market situations to build our speed in the OODA process, and to build our confidence too.

A while back, Linda Raschke, Brett Steenbarger and Brace Barber combined their trading, psychology and military training backgrounds to setup a trading workshop based on the grueling military Ranger School.

An interesting article on this subject is found in this article from Brett.