I do not make any withdrawals unless clients file a withdrawal request. So far this has not happened. I am fortunate enough to have sufficient buffer to not have to worry much about recurring expenditures ;-) My biggest worry right now, though, is that most of my own funds and investors funds are concentrated with one medium sized brokerage. I am considering to deposit funds with a large i-bank and run broker relationships and trading arrangements through giveup agreements but it would significantly push up maintenance and execution related fees.
I wonder if you may have misinterpreted my question. I asked about expenditures because as a full-time trader you've still got to eat, pay the rent, send your kids to school, etc, so I'm curious as to what sort of compensation structure you're adhering to. By buffer, do you mean you're living off your personal savings? I can't imagine how that'll be sustainable over the long run, unless you're able to keep your expenditures within interest or dividend income.
By buffer I mean savings from having worked for about 12 years in the financial industry at banks and funds, more than half of that time as trader. So, yes personal savings. I and my family does not live an extravagant life style, I guess that is what makes all the difference, despite living in the world's most expensive city.
I reflected on my last trade and need to admit to myself I handled the exit quite poorly. I could have doubled my returns on this particular trade. I basically faced a trade-off, reducing risk the more we moved towards the end of the week vs. letting profitable positions take care of themselves until there is clear justification to the contrary. I took profit way too early on this trade. There is a saying that "nobody ever went broke taking profits". It is one of the worst trading adages I have heard to be honest. Those who understand probabilities and expected value would most likely agree with me. Especially those who are trying to follow momentum. Markets are mean-reverting about 70% of the times and thus someone who attempts to ride tails of momentum will generally end up with more losing than winning trades. Key then will be to generate sufficiently large average returns per winning trade over the average return of the losing ones. Thus, taking profits prematurely very much can turn an otherwise profitable book into negative territory. A very trivial concept to comprehend but to keep on sitting on one's hands rather than taking profit prematurely can sometimes be challenging indeed.
I keep a relatively tight stop on the last two trades, it looks euro is relatively under performing other risk currencies, plus price action to the upside is very muted despite equities having made their lows (most likely) for the session. However, I still see a lot of short interest in euro and retail started to panic again today with every self-proclaimed doomsday forecaster out there, looks like retail increased their shorts again even though eur is still in a temporary uptrend (from 1 June) and I do not see the trend being violated (so far).
still figuring out what just hit the tape (other than London fix) but market blipped in a split of a second from 1.2585 to 1.2565, got filled on my stop at 1.2574, handing me a total loss of -56pips (traded twice the usual size) total down to +258pips will rest things for today, clearly not a good start into the new week.