Ed Viesturs would probably make a great trader. Except Viesturs’ passion is not markets, but mountain climbing.

Viesturs is known for climbing 14 of the world’s highest mountain peaks — all of them above 26,000 feet.

It took Viesturs 18 years to do it. In an interview with Steven Colbert, here is the reason he gives why:

A lot of the peaks you go to for the first time, you don’t successfully get to the top. Because of weather, avalanches… you’ve got to go sometimes three times… sometimes the mountain wins, and you’ve got to walk away.

It clearly takes guts, and a willingness to take risks, to scale the world’s highest summits.

But Viesturs is not the typical thrill junkie.

He proceeds with caution, as this New York Times profile highlights:

Viesturs is the antithesis of the swaggering, risk-it-all personality that infuses so many extreme adventurers, often gravely. He is known for his equipoise and sensible approach to dangerous undertakings. Despite the pressures that come from sponsorship money, he has not been incited to push further when he deemed the hazards too great.

In 1988, on his first attempt on the 29,035-foot Everest, Viesturs turned around 300 feet from the crest. On the 26,289-foot Shishapangma, he stopped 20 feet from the top. He is nothing if not courageous, and sometimes the greatest courage is to turn around from a fight you may not win.

In markets, a failure to respect risk can blow up your trading account. On the mountain it can cost you your life, as the same piece relates:

Ten years ago, Viesturs was on Mount Everest with his friend Rob Hall of New Zealand. Hall was considered one of the greatest climbers of his time, conservative and judicious in his decisions. He mandated that a climber turn around for safety reasons if he did not reach Everest’s summit by 2 p.m. But Hall broke his own rule in May 1996, and he met the ultimate consequence.

Viesturs had been scheduled to climb about the same time. He was starring in his own Imax film, so the incentive was great. But he did not like the look of the weather or the crowds, so he elected to stay at base camp. Viesturs reached the summit several days later.

This combination of boldness and sensibility is extremely rare.

Many people have one or the other as a sort of default setting — extremely bold by nature, or extremely cautious by nature.

But rarely do you find bold, aggressive individuals who nonetheless maintain the self discipline to limit risks.

And it is perhaps even more rare to find conservative, overly anxious worrier types willing to go for the gusto. (Climbing mountains? Fuhgedaboudit.)

This partially explains why there is opportunity in markets.

The nature of the trading game attracts chest pounders and thrill seekers who don’t know how to maximize survival odds. Meanwhile, the riskier aspects of trading keep the overcautious from storming the summit — or even attempting it in the first place.

The balance, then, is a Viesturs-like “calculated risk mentality,” in which downside risk is measured and heeded, but opportunity is boldly pursued as conditions dictate.

JS

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