I'm glad someone out there is honest enough to admit that relationships (good or bad) can be a distraction from one's trading...impacting trading results as a discretionary trader. Too many traders that has such will put the blame on their trade strategy and spend countless days tweaking their trade method instead of dealing with reality if their trade problems stems from a relationship with someone. With that said, I don't understand how you being a player would require you to stop trading (days off as you stated) unless you're choosing to be with people that don't work (unemployed) or their work hours do not correlate with your trading hours. Thus, they're done working for the day and you have decided to ignore trading to spend time with them. Further, you may have a maturity problem or you treat your trading more like a hobby instead of a business. In addition, you shouldn't be starting relationships with those that's going to be a distraction for you from your business of trading. Seriously, if you treat your trading like a business like any other self-employed business and you have clients (the market) to service them...would you blow off your clients just to spend time with a new squeeze or will you tell your new squeeze your work hours so that the person understands play before work and play after work...but never during work. P.S. I mentioned the unemployed thing above because I knew someone that had been very profitable for 3 consecutive years...averaging about 205k per year. Then he meets and falls in love with a part-time college student that had no job. She would often come by his condo during the trading day, sometimes he'll take the afternoon off and do activities with her at her university...within about 6 months he had his first drawdown and he was never able to recover during that relationship. Yet, he did spend a ton of time tweaking and changing his trade method while ignoring the real problem...his inability to manage relationship and trading. Anyways, the relationship didn't work (she met someone else) and he was depressed for awhile...still losing money. Took him about a year to get over her and that's when he started being profitable again. Then he meets someone else...someone that worked (didn't distract from his trading) and when her work day finished...he too was wrapping up his trading day. Simply, he was at work (trading) when she was at work...consistently profitable again.
Thanks for sharing this very concrete example wrbtrader (at least 1 on the thread ! Finally !!! lol...). Since you probably already had it in mind, you slightly misunderstood me, I was not talking about taking time away from work FOR girls (chasing or rough and tumble), but taking time away from work ONCE you feel your emotional balance is off (say you met girl A whom you quite like, and then after a while you don t want to get attached and need to stop the relationship. Then, unless you're Casanova (or a psychopath haha), your emotional balance will be a bit off for some xy time; just one scenario out of many, not a post about what can cause it specifically, since it will also depend on each person.) From your friend’s example, you would imply you need to wait until balance is back.
Yes, exactly. Its for anything in life. For example, I know someone that works at an insurance company. Her young daughter died of cancer and the boss told her she can take as much time off as she needed before returning to work even though she only had about 3 months worth of paid leave. She returned back to work in about 4 months but only after she had some balance back in her life. Now imagine if she was a profitable trader instead of an executive at an insurance firm. The circumstances will not change but reality is that we don't have paid leave, we don't have work man's compensation if we suffer an injury except for the rare few of us that are profitable and have private health/dental insurance that cost anywhere from ($200 to $1000 per month) for such. Therefore, most traders will return back to trading even though there's no balance in their life due to financial need...gotta pay the bills even though we've now increase the chance of failure. This is a big issue for traders that trade for a living...a reality most traders do not talk about. We're self-employed and must treat our trading as such to prevent or limit the possibility of failing as a trader. There's more to profitable trading than just trade signals and its the reason why so few of us are able to make it.
Gotta disagree with the advice not to see the girl during the trading day, I used to run two separate businesses from an office and the best days were with a girl in the office (might be more of an issue for scalpers though or for guys working in crowded rooms) Just send the girl to an empty room when you need to focus on your work. Nowadays i clear the stress with more regular sports, it works as well but not quite as fun - and money isn't coming in any faster, plus I spend almost as much on the coach as on sexy sugarbabies back then
Nice Luis ! HK babes from LKF?! ahah Well, sure, to some extent this is a personal matter, how some emotions will affect your trading. Personally I don t think it could work for me, even though my style of trading involves indeed a lot of waiting... Maybe in some psychological level it could work cos it is congruent with what one would seek in the trader lifestyle.
Ok...I get it. She comes to see you but you then send her to an empty room when you're busy. Sounds more like a "waiting room" with just a bed in it.
I've traded through my playboy years and relationship years and by far my best years were during my most serious relationship. Could've simply been a coincidence but there was a certain state of Zen that i felt knowing that i had it all, not just the money but also a meaningful connection to another human being. In my opinion this calm state of mind improved my trading performance significantly but of course things like that cannot be quantified so we as traders are wired to dismiss them. As far as emotions go, i have had the opposite problem over the years. It's the lack of emotion in trading that usually transfers over to my personal life and causes damage, not the other way around. Finding the proper balance has been very elusive so far. If relationship drama affects your trading then perhaps you should be single until you've made it. Life is about prioritizing.
Dang, that's the best feeling. A best and meaningful connection that could brings calm to your life and to your mind, and that's still rare to find. *hats off*