LOL, I love these stories (mainly because your significant other either "gets it" or they don't! ... and nothing succeds like success). Be sure to take her on her dream vacation if you can pull your head out of the flat screen ... there'll always be another trade.
She would love to have that dream vacation, but the big discussion these days is about her wanting to be job free as well. She has mixed emotions when I tell her how much money the system makes, because on one hand she is happy that it is generating a nice income, but on the other hand a little flustered that the system makes a lot more money than she does. I don't take this trading success for granted and want her to continue working. Considering how conservative and risk adverse I am with money, it is kinda odd that I ended up where I at.
BP - great email that gives us all a light at the end of the tunnel that all the hard work is worth it in the end!!
Since I was in my 20s, about 40 years ago, I have had a small trading account. This account grew from studying cycle mathematics in grad school and calculating cycles manually. My trading grew in fits and spurts over the years and is now about 36 times what I started with. This includes going bust 5 times from not understanding the markets first. The strategy I trade today is part of what I traded 12 years ago but is now automated to trade cycles. I was not automated 12 years ago. During the 12 years it took to automate I still made money trading my manual set of rules. In 9 of those development years I was an IT manager and time was tight. I estimate I devoted a cumulative 6 monthâs added up to the project on nights and week ends. In the last 3 years since retirement I have been 100 percent active in developing automated trading systems. So when I add up my project time I get 3 years and 6 months full time to get an active automated process that works consistently and pays my retirement bills. My âotherâ ignored my little hobby until it started putting bread on the table. She now wants it to do more so she can retire. We will see about thatâ¦
Another major frustration is when your wife/girlfriend is not being supportive of your work. My girl friend seems to have this misconception that ATS==ATM, even though I tried hard to explain to her that it's probably harder than any other business. Also she kept asking me if it's "done" yet, as if there is an end to this thing.
My girlfriend does not give me such issues, but I do feel guilty if I don't give much attention. To her credit, if my girlfriend were any lower maintenance than she already is, she'd be dead.
if i am not exhausted from work, i do it after dinner for a few hours before bed. Otherwise i try to use at least 1 day of the weekend. But honestly after you got the framework/pipes+plumbing in place, most of the time is spent thinking and analyzing (which can be done anywhere). The coding part is only a few lines here and there. I know this wont be possible after getting married/kids, so i am trying to make the most of it while still single. For those of you with wife/kids and still able to do this, my hats off to you
I see that most of us have similar character traits. Personally, but I think it applies to other people here, I tend to spend more time on the system than it is actually needed, probably twice as much or more. The reason is that in order to trade, I had to cut off all the distractions in my life. But that meant cutting off tv, reading, writing, watching movies, all the other hobbies, and especially people. As a consequence of increasingly cutting off everything and everyone, often now I work on the system because I have nothing else to do. Also, because of having nothing do, I trade discretionary, which I shouldn't (it makes me lose money), but I do it, simply because I lack any other activity in my life, and I need some action and excitement, which is not coming from anywhere else. I am not saying it's all negative, because I improved many things due to working so much on it, but now I'd probably profit more from doing other things and letting the system work, gather data, produce money, without messing it all the time, as I have been doing for the past few months. So, I would sum it up by saying that you need to become a recluse to make it work at first, and then you need to become again a normal person (or become one for the first time), in order to enjoy the benefits of what you made, which are money and as a consequence free time, which was your original goal, but you may have forgotten it in the meanwhile. Actually, I came back to edit the post and add this. Now I have the urgent need to stay away from the system, to let it work and not add my discretionary trades that make me lose money. But I can't really remember what it is that I was doing in my free time when I started studying the markets ten years ago. They now all seem meaningless activities. I worked all this time to have money to buy myself free time to write a novel or poetry, and now that I have the free time, writing novels seems like a waste of time to me. Right now all that seems worthwhile is having enough money to pay some prostitutes to have sex with me. Yeah, because I don't have a girlfriend, who'd make me lose control over my life and free time. I don't know what I'll do. Right now the best thing I can think of is watching tv. Only because I still don't have the money to pay prostitutes. A lot of work and talking needs to be done about the problems I am raising, I know it, but I have to momentarily go to work and stop it here.
Trading is a high level profession... Like medicine, law, engineering... And requires a TOTAL COMMITMENT... Just like any other high level profession. In fact... Unlike the other professions I mentioned... Short term trading is a Zero Sum Game... And ONLY the Top 2-3% make a good living... And I do mean 2-3% of the people at Elite trader. (Arguing against the above... Is not a substitute for actually becoming a great trader). If you are part time... Or you are running some simple, canned "system"... Or you believe all those idiotic ads on CNBC... Then the Top 10,000 traders in the world... Are taking you to the cleaners... And very much welcome your business.