When it comes to professional sports, I’m a shameless homer for my beloved Philadelphia sports teams particularly when it comes to the Phillies and Eagles.  And when our teams are on a roll, which the Phillies have been for the last five years and the Eagles for more than a decade, I will hardly miss a beat on  any of the news coming out of  pre-season training camps–battles for roster spots and  how   veteran players are shaping up for the season are stories that  fascinate me.

So I’ve been listening with great interest to the news coming out of Clearwater, Florida, the spring training home of the Phillies since the beginning of recorded history.  This year the Phillies have assembled a starting  pitching staff that   is considered the best in major leagues by a wide margin, and perhaps one of the greatest starting pitching rotations in baseball history–not that I am biased (nor am I unaware of the ridicule I’ll face if the Phillies don’t make it deep into the post-season this year).

Over the last couple of days I’ve been listening to interviews of some of the Phillies veteran players as they talked about  the philosophy behind their individual  training regimens and I found the parallels to   the disciplines that any great trader needs to possess to be uncanny.

Phillies slugger Ryan Howard, for example this morning, pointed out that  while it is good  for rookies to listen to the overabundance of  advice that they will get from coaches and teammates on how to correct flaws in their batting style,  at the end of the day  the player has got to find out the style that works best for  him and work to improve that everyday.  At SMB we teach that same lesson to all of our traders, in any trading practice.

Phillies star pitcher Cole Hamels the other day was recounting a spring training  outing in which he    struggled in the first three  innings  and began to defeat himself by focusing on the number of runs he had given up and a few pitching errors that the opposing team exploited.  Then in the fourth  inning he decided to simply  focus on “just making one good pitch at a time” and he settled down and pitched very well for the rest of  his stint.  At  SMB we preach the concept of following  “one good trade” with “one good trade”  repeatedly to our traders as the key focus in each trading day, tuning out the result of our most recent trade (whether positive or negative)  and working to simply make sure that  this trade   meets all of the characteristics that we define as a high quality, well executed and  well conceived trade.

A veteran pitcher and former number one draft pick  Matt Anderson, attempting to make the Phillies staff this spring, spoke this morning about his awe  in the  work  ethic of  Cy Young award winner  Roy Halladay. Apparently Halladay runs up and down the steps of the stands  each day as a workout regimen that he has personally  adopted.  Here’s a guy who could easily rest on his laurels as the best pitcher in baseball but instead he chooses to be the hardest working player on the team. I have no doubt that  he’ll have another great season.  And as readers of our blog know, there is no getting around the hard work and preparation  necessary to succeed at trading. Trading, while  a blast, is in fact very difficult to master. Without hard work and preparation,  we have found that no trader has a shot at being consistently profitable–just like great baseball players.

Here’s to a great season for the Phillies and a great trading day from the rest of us!

Seth Freudberg

Director,  SMB  Options  Training  Program