Don't Trade Like Tony Montana

Take any flight from New York to Fort Lauderdale, and a curious thing will happen. If one of the Direct TV channels happens to be playing "Scarface," 🎬 every seat with a man in it will turn to that channel within five minutes until the whole plane is watching the movie. Guys love Tony Montana — the swaggering, psychotic gangster of "Scarface," immortalized by Al Pacino. 💼✈️

Who among us can forget that final scene when Pacino faces a crowd of assassins, screaming, "Say hello to my leeeetle friend!" 🔫 as he fires off his bazooka, taking shot after shot, refusing to go down? 💥

Despite the comic book violence and the psychopathology of the main character, most guys view Tony Montana with no small dollop of romanticism. He represents our universal desire to take on the world on our own terms, no matter the cost. 🌍 But the cost matters, because in the end, Tony Montana gets blown to smithereens, and the movie ends with the shot of "The World is Yours" trophy fallen on the floor. 🏆

In trading, we often do a bizarre imitation of the "say-hello-to-my-leeeetle-friend" scene when we fight the tape. 📉

Did the market stop you out as you tried to short the top? ⛔

No problem. Here is another order to sell. Another stop? You can take the hit. More? Go ahead — you are stronger than the market; you can take it all. 💪💼

In any case, you get the idea. After a while, your trading account starts to look like Tony Montana’s body, and you begin to realize that maybe this was not such a good idea. 🤕

Sun Tzu once said, "He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious." 🥋 This is perhaps some of the greatest trading advice ever. Very often, we trade not to win but to satisfy our ego. 🤔

Taking on the world, or the market, is a romantic idea that we’ve all been taught, but in finance, that is a very expensive way to ruin your life. 💸 As guys, we may all yearn for our inner Tony Montana, but as traders, we should be wise enough to know better. 🧠