The Commander

Overview

Commanders are natural-born leaders. People with this personality type embody the gifts of charisma and confidence and project authority in a way that draws crowds together behind a common goal. However, Commanders are also characterized by an often ruthless level of rationality, using their drive, determination, and sharp minds to achieve whatever end they’ve set for themselves. Perhaps it is best that they make up only three percent of the population, lest they overwhelm the more timid and sensitive personality types that make up much of the rest of the world – but we have Commanders to thank for many of the businesses and institutions we take for granted every day.

If there’s anything Commanders love, it’s a good challenge, big or small, and they firmly believe that given enough time and resources, they can achieve any goal. This quality makes people with the Commander personality type brilliant entrepreneurs, and their ability to think strategically and hold a long-term focus while executing each step of their plans with determination and precision makes them powerful business leaders. This determination is often a self-fulfilling prophecy, as Commanders push their goals through with sheer willpower where others might give up and move on, and their Extraverted (E) nature means they are likely to push everyone else right along with them, achieving spectacular results in the process.

At the negotiating table, be it in a corporate environment or buying a car, Commanders are dominant, relentless, and unforgiving. This isn’t because they are coldhearted or vicious per se – it’s more that Commander personalities genuinely enjoy the challenge, the battle of wits, the repartee that comes from this environment, and if the other side can’t keep up, that’s no reason for Commanders to fold on their own core tenet of ultimate victory.

If there’s anyone Commanders respect, it’s someone who is able to stand up to them intellectually, who is able to act with a precision and quality equal to their own. Commander personalities have a particular skill in recognizing the talents of others, and this helps in both their team-building efforts (since no one, no matter how brilliant, can do everything alone), and to keep Commanders from displaying too much arrogance and condescension. However, they also have a particular skill in calling out others’ failures with a chilling degree of insensitivity, and this is where Commanders really start to run into trouble.

Trading Strengths

• Efficient – Commanders see inefficiency not just as a problem in its own right, but as something that pulls time and energy away from all their future goals, an elaborate sabotage consisting of irrationality and laziness. People with the Commander personality type will root out such behavior wherever they go.  In trading, Commanders will seek out signals and indicators that cut to the heart of the matter in helping them decide whether to make a trade or not.

• Energetic – Commanders will build a trading plan or system with great energy and enthusiasm and will be ready to execute and follow the plan when the time comes.

• Self-Confident – Commanders couldn’t do this if they were plagued by self-doubt – they trust their abilities, make known their opinions, and believe in their capacities as leaders.  This confidence allows them to trade in volatile market conditions.

• Strong-Willed – Nor do they give up when the going gets tough – Commander personalities strive to achieve their goals, but really nothing is quite as satisfying to them as rising to the challenge of each obstacle in their run to the finish line.  This will allow them to identify a problem in existing trading plans and styles and persevere until a solution to the problem is found.

• Strategic Thinkers – Commanders exemplify the difference between moment-to-moment crisis management and navigating the challenges and steps of a bigger plan, and are known for examining every angle of a problem and not just resolving momentary issues, but moving the whole project forward with their solutions.  Commanders often have very detailed trading plans and set-piece responses to a laundry list of market occurrences.  The market will rarely catch a trading Commander off guard

Trading Weaknesses

• Stubborn and Dominant – Sometimes all this confidence and willpower can go too far, and Commanders are all too capable of digging in their heels, trying to win every single debate and pushing their vision, and theirs alone.  In trading, Commanders can be blinded by changing market conditions, such as convincing themselves that the market action is a momentary pullback and not an actual reversal, even in the face of confirmation in price action.

• Intolerant – “It’s my way or the highway” – People with the Commander personality type are notoriously unsupportive of any idea that distracts from their primary goals, and even more so of ideas based on emotional considerations. Commanders won’t hesitate a second to make that fact clear to those around them.  In trading, this is particularly true in the psychological aspects of trading.  Placing little credence in the emotional effects a string of losing trades can have, they often try to trade through the problem rather than going to cash, taking a break, and re-evaluating the trading landscape.

• Impatient – Some people need more time to think than others, an intolerable delay to quick-thinking Commanders. They may misinterpret contemplation as stupidity or disinterest in their haste, a terrible mistake for a leader to make.  Commanders thrive on trading action as it relates to their plan.  If market action hesitates, Commanders can often convince themselves that a trade or series of trades has triggered, causing them to enter early or without confirmation.  In those cases, a dose of patience would have kept them out of trades going nowhere or trades that reversed direction before confirmation.  This can stoke a vicious feedback loop wherein because their impatience caused them to get into a losing trade, their stubbornness and overconfidence in their plan prevents them from cutting losses at planned points and holding on to losing trades too long.

• Arrogant – Commander personalities respect quick thoughts and firm convictions, their own qualities, and look down on those who don’t match up. This relationship is a challenge for most other personality types who are perhaps not timid in their own right but will seem so beside overbearing Commanders.  In trading, particularly after a period of success, their well-crafted plans and their (in their minds) obviously superior intellect can lead them to believe that their skills are nigh on infallible.  This cockiness beguiles them into increasing position sizes and pressing bets when in actuality a refocus on risk management is what is required.

• Poor Handling of Emotions – All this bluster, alongside the assumed supremacy of rationalism, makes Commanders distant from their own emotional expression and sometimes downright scornful of others’. People with this personality type often trample others’ feelings, inadvertently hurting their partners and friends, especially in emotionally charged situations.  While the occasional trading loss is planned for and expected, when Commanders encounter a series of losses, it is often hard for them to come to grips with the fact that market conditions have changed and that the plan must also change.  They begin to take losses personally, rather than as an expected part of trading.  Unused to questioning their skills, they can often seek other ancillary, and unreasonable causes to explain their losses.

• Cold and Ruthless – Their obsession with efficiency and unwavering belief in the merits of rationalism, especially professionally, makes Commanders incredibly insensitive in pursuing their goals, dismissing personal circumstances, sensitivities, and preferences as irrational and irrelevant.  Commanders are often able to manage outside capital, but they often make poor mentors for newer traders on their team.  To them, results (profits) matter, and emotions are meant for after the market closes.

Conclusion

Commanders are capable of creating complex trading plans with efficient use of price and volume, often eschewing more complex and esoteric indicators in order to cut right to the matter of whether or not to trade.  Their plans are often very complete, with contingencies well thought out, losses planned for, and capital allocation and position sizing well-defined.  When they are on their game, Commanders are formidable traders.

However, Commanders are vulnerable in sector rotation situations or markets changing from bull to bear or vice versa.  Their faith in, and probable success from, their analysis of previous market conditions can blind them to the fact that conditions have changed and therefore the plan must change as well.  Placing little credence in emotions and not used to dealing with their own, rather than attempting to brave the emotional gauntlet during a string of losses, Commanders often benefit from imposing position reduction strategies and mandatory re-evaluation periods after a set number of losing trades within a defined timeframe.  By placing this gating mechanism within their plan, they reduce the opportunity for the stubbornness-arrogance cycle to begin and limit the emotional exposure they have to endure.