TOTW How do your trading habits affect your world?

This week's TOTW suggested by @TwinToWin (thanks!) is about balancing your trading life, with your personal and work life (for those holding down a part-time or full-time job).

It's about how your trading habits fit your world and how your trading (or world!) has changed to fit it.

This is an opportunity to share your story, as well as the trials and tribulations you've faced along the way...

How do your trading habits affect your world?

Last week's TOTW: Which are your favourite threads on T2W?

My life fits around my trading, that's it, it's a business, weekends are free though.

I'm either in the office or asleep during the week......

My time is divided up into blocks.

I work away from home living out of a suitcase and doing continuous long shifts until the job is complete. ( this could be 3 months ) Little to no trading.

When I'm home, the trading starts. ( more or less continuously )

The annoying part about being at home is weekends.

Whenever I've got trades on life tends to revolve around the USA open and close. If I'm out and about its difficult to resist the temptation to have a quick look during the day if I've got access. For me, opening and closing is a bit like the old days when the football results came in on the radio on Saturday night – you have to stop and listen and nothing should interfere!

My trading just about fits round my life, but there's often not much room left... I've only really been serious about trading since March when I started working part-time (Mon-Thurs) with Friday looking after my then 1yr old twins. Back then I could scalp some and read plenty, but as time goes on the balance keeps changing.

Now, I trade almost exclusively off my phone (so no pics of my trading station Sharky) which means almost anywhere and when, which is probably not always a good idea as my employers would certainly frown if they knew why I visit the traps so often... Likewise the wife thinks I spend too much time on the phone and until I "bring home the bacon" it not worth pushing for more trade time.

I find it tricky to settle on a system and maintain discipline because I don't have a regular pattern to trade against. Looking at everyone elses comments, blocking time for trading is the way to go.

I've not yet hit a crunch point with work or home (or my acct), but sometimes I get close...

The fewer trades I do, the better planned and managed my positions are. So, these days, I do TA on my target charts at the London Close and a weekly perspective on dailys and weeklys at the weekend. Total time per week about 6hrs.

This allows me to have a non-trading employed job during the week, which brings significant benefits of other kinds. Trading brings more money and future prospects, but working is 'therapeutic' and sociable.

When I first started trading, any free time was spent looking at charts, reading, writing code to test something related to the markets or sleeping. I finally quit reading everything I could find when I realized I disagreed with most of what I was reading, of course it took years to get to the point I could find the flaws in what was being written. I have pretty well found a balance, living in the US where the markets open at 8:30am, I am up at 6:50, showered and cup of coffee in hand by 7:45 and in my office and reviewing the markets and the days trades until the open. I am a swing trader and my trades are usually a couple of days to a week, so usually by 9am my trades are on and I monitor the markets to see how my trades are working out and if I need to take any off. I will daytrade a stock or two if I find anything interesting to buy. Around 2pm, I get potential trades lined out for the next day, all of which is software driven, so it is mainly run my apps and review what they come up with. By 3:30pm, the market has been closed 30 minutes, final prices have stabilized and I have my trades prepared for the next day. I usually have my website updated with the next days picks and equity charts by 4pm. Then I work out for an hour, and it's 5pm and time for a drink! The evenings are mine, and I usually read the news of the day, review market data, then spend some time reading some type of fiction just to relax and think of something other than the markets. Then to bed and the loop begins again!

tomorton said:

The fewer trades I do, the better planned and managed my positions are. So, these days, I do TA on my target charts at the London Close and a weekly perspective on dailys and weeklys at the weekend. Total time per week about 6hrs.

This allows me to have a non-trading employed job during the week, which brings significant benefits of other kinds. Trading brings more money and future prospects, but working is 'therapeutic' and sociable.

Click to expand...

Hi Tomorton, sounds like you have a good balance going on. Do you mind if I ask how long you've been trading and how long it took you to settle into that routine?

I expect to get to something similar so wonder how far off I may be... Its probably easy for the experienced chaps out there to say how straightforward it is now, but the benefit to the newbies like me is really how you all got there :idea: :smart:

Hi TwinToWin - My profile will soon appear on T2W but as an outline, I started shareholding in early 99 as the tech bubble started to over-heat. From late 99 to mid-03 I made a poor job of trying to trade shares in that hard-falling market and moved into spread-betting as a way to make swing trading more profitable. Never found a happy way to day-trade well. Screen-watching for a tiny TA nuance for a quick trade just doesn't suit my personality - too easily distracted if not active, too easily tempted into multiple and increasingly risky trades, and into trying to balance the book every night.

In late 03 I decided to go back into employment anyway, for reasons other than finances, and this has kept me away from daytrading apart from a few experiments.

The most imporant thing I have learned though, and this might apply to traders on any time-frame - your system has to be simple enough to virtually exclude human errors of judgement on trade entry, management and exit. And it can take literally years of trading to find out everyting you don't need to know.

Ha ha ... Aye, I'll bet you're right, and by the time my boys go to uni I better have cracked something...

tomorton said:

And it can take literally years of trading to find out everyting you don't need to know.

Click to expand...

So True ......... So True ......

tomorton said:

And it can take literally years of trading to find out everything you don't need to know.

Click to expand...

Agree - very true

But it also can take you years of trading to find out so many things you DO need to know - many that are never discussed by the Industry.

So... Jumping back to the thread subject, how did those revelations affect your trading / home / work world?

Over time my psychology has become more settled with each acceptance that some ways of trading just don't work!

For me that represents stressed trades which fail with poor time management, but help drive the path of what alternative works better. Or perhaps how my data sources, TA or news/opinion articles have evolved.

I know this will never stop but I really want to get through the Wheat n chaff (without winding the missus up) a bit faster....

Forexmospherian said:

Agree - very true

But it also can take you years of trading to find out so many things you DO need to know - many that are never discussed by the Industry.

Click to expand...

I sort of stopped posting as only 4 people on here that i have chatted to know what the hell is going on and have sused out how it all works....The others think too much.


Happy Days..........

When I am at home, I purely gives my time to trading except weekend. As some should be given to family also but I am addicted to it.

Sonicscooter said:

I sort of stopped posting as only 4 people on here that i have chatted to know what the hell is going on and have sused out how it all works....The others think too much.


Happy Days..........

Click to expand...

Please let us know how it all works.

Sonicscooter said:

The others think too much.

Click to expand...

I quite agree, whilst I am first to agree that I know not the first thing about TA (and you may not be referring to TA in any sense) I feel that many TA gurus on here need to add a healthy dose of common sense to their melting pot of 1337 TA skillz. To recognise when an instrument is clearly overbought or oversold you don't need to be a TA genius IMO...

I found myself pretty awful at day trading and ultimately found it to be plain dull doing 8 hours a day waiting for those good opportunities that weren't going to rinse my account.

However I now finding swing/trend trading a lot less stressful, I'm less concerned about ideal entry points and yet I'm getting many more points to boot... however now I find myself awake at night checking/wondering about any open positions - so lack of a good nights sleep is definitely affecting my world quite a lot although I'm working on it!

counter_violent said:

My time is divided up into blocks.

I work away from home living out of a suitcase and doing continuous long shifts until the job is complete. ( this could be 3 months )

Click to expand...

Mckinsey ?

Oil Rig ?

Gentleman dancer on cruise ship ?

R/R Time off paid for by the state for regularly driving your Aston Martin at full speed past Yummy Mummies waiting to pick up their kids at your local kindergarten ?

Top secret Commando Ops in the Third World ?

You young guys have a lot to look forward to in retirement. If you aren't encumbered with wife/kids then trade when and how long you feel like, 24/5 - blissful.
I use weekends to analyse the weeks' efforts and try to pick a winner on the S&P 500 for next Friday close.
Breakfast, walk the dog and then get yesterday's figures into Metastock. Use that good charting system and neuroshell to pick the likely winners on forex for the day. Try not to leave overnight trades on but take any profits. If I have to leave any on then covered by stop and t/p for a good night's rest.
Spare moments I play poker, but only for reasonable stakes.

Be nice to yourself with rewards of your fav foods and liquid ( not to excess ) for good efforts. Success breeds success. Positive but relaxed, stress free attitude is so important. Feel good.

good trading and keep calm

Retirement?!?!?