The Journey of Making a Living as a Professional Trader

Nobody cares about your success

So I’ve experimented with different kinds of motivation, I’ve found that motivating myself by pulling myself towards a goal is usually best. But sometimes we all need a little push to wake up and get as Napoleon Hill coined… a ‘burning desire’. This is my ‘bootcamp officer' side coming out.

I’m a grown ass man, if I go to war and die no one’s gonna give a sh1t, no sympathy, no one cares about my success apart from me. If I want to master trading then I have to do it myself. Not only that but people will actively be jealous of my success, ridicule my efforts, laugh at my setbacks and try to pull me down in order to make themselves feel better or confirm their worldview.

Nobody is going to ‘put me on the map’ – there are so many talented people in the world that are stuck doing mediocre jobs – waiting to be ‘put on’ by someone else, you need to take action and think for yourself. Talent means very little, in some cases talent even hurts people as they relax in early life only to see others with more persistence and determination speed past them. As soon as a set-back occurs they have no idea how to handle it, it’s almost a curse. It’s all about determination and a relentless drive.

In trading its equivalent to someone wanting someone else to teach them the secrets – the magic pill that will get them into the land of riches. Not gonna happen, no one gives a sh1t about you, if you want something – take it. If you’re not willing to take sh1t from other people, do endless repetitive tasks, make sacrifices to ‘hone your craft’, tear yourself down then build yourself back stronger just give up and slink back into mediocrity.

This path is hard work, either go at it 100% or pursue something else, don’t be like the average person when you age – looking back at the good old days with cynical and bitter world views. Wake up! Don’t slip into the zombie like consumer culture state that’s so common in society.

Something Brett Steenbarger said: ‘Trading is a vehicle to self-mastery and development’ – I’ve taken that to heart. I think it’s significantly more aligned to consistently profitable trading than taking on a ‘poor me’ attitude or that trading is an easy get rich quick scheme with zero effort.

So decide right now, are you willing to go down the narrow road with hyper-focus, face all kinds of setbacks – have a relentless drive – or would you rather sit at home watching X-Factor whining about how unfair life is like a little biatch?

Influences


The Narrow Road – Felix Dennis
The Daily Trading Coach – Brett Steenbarger
Think and Grow Rich – Napoleon Hill
Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell
High Performance Trading - Steve Ward
The Truth About Success - Owen Cook

 

Alright sounds like you have done your due diligence...looking forward to the journal!

 

Achieving Goals – forming habits with smartphone apps

I’m sure everyone has read about the importance of goals, off the top of my head one of the first things I read was a study done quite a few years back with goal setters from Harvard or Stanford. Basically something like 3% of graduates from a class had written out their goals and that 3% went on to make more money than the other 97% - don’t quote me on that.
There’s one thing to have goals, another to actually write them out and another to actually take steps toward achieving them. One method that has worked really well for me in recent years is achieving goals through establishing habits. Success is that slow walk to mastery, inch-by-inch improvement – its sometimes difficult to get started and consistently follow through.

Apps

The apps I use at the moment are ‘Habit Streak’ and ‘Task:Life’ both on the android platform – there are probably even better ones on the iPhone – it’s all about finding the right fit for you.

The Process – step 1 – setting a goal and asking questions

So I set myself a goal in trading that’s incredibly broad – ‘master trading’.
I then ask myself questions that help to break down that abstract goal into sub-goals, a technique I learned from Tony Robbins.

• What is mastering trading?
• What do I need to study?
• Who do I need to learn from?
• What experience do I need?

So on and so forth.

The Process – step 2 – creating sub-goals

After answering those questions or having them answered by others the major goal gets broken down into smaller pieces that are still pretty big, but now we’re getting somewhere. Some subject areas that might come up are:

• Understanding and applying the psychology of trading
• Learning about money management
• Finding a trading method that suits my personality
• Learning about indicators and systems
• Learning about price action

The Process – step 3 – going deeper

The next step is to further break these down by asking more questions.

• What books can I read to learn about psychology?
• What do I already know and how have I applied it?
• What experience do I need to gain from the market?
• Who can point me in the right direction?

So now you’re really drilling down into the minutia, it may take more steps but hopefully you’ve broken down the task into smaller actionable steps.

• I need to read x book
• I need to begin practicing meditation
• I need to visualize my trading experience and practice it out in my head

The Process – step 4 – using apps

This is where the apps come into play – you now have a sub-goal to accomplish – the next stage is to choose habits that will help you achieve those goals:

• Read ‘The psychology of trading’ for 30 minutes a day and take notes
• Prepare pre-open by visualizing what you will do if the market comes close to your stop or any other psychological problems you might encounter

What I like about ‘Habit Streak’ is that you run up a streak of habits daily and you are motivated to keep that streak running even when you don’t feel like doing the habits because you don’t want the streak to reset – it provides an ‘external motivating force’. I think it’s between 21 and 30 days that a habit becomes more of a routine and significantly easier to stick to.

It's in our culture to expect the quick fix and 'instant results' so we often don't follow through on goals or habits when we don't feel like doing them - using the apps I've found that I get a buzz when I tick the box on my phone every morning - I've associated a reward with the achievement of a habit and I'm motivated to keep going even when I really don't want to.

Anyone have any input on how they break down their process?

Influences

Awaken the Giant Within – Tony Robbins
Habit Streak - App
Life:Task - App
The Daily Trading Coach - Brett Steenbarger

 

Sounds interesting

 

know your trading platform cold, there have been lots of execution errors which have killed people over the years. You see some fat fingers that take people out, so whatever you are using practice executing orders, getting in and out when there is a fast market, etc. Under pressure people make errors, you hit buy when you want to sell, good luck...take your time.

 

Preparation for the Start Date

It’s now only a few more days until I get started, I moved into my new place last weekend and am a 10 minute walk from the trading floor and the gym. This time around in order to ensure success I’m establishing goals outside of trading and getting into productive routines.

Exercise

Established a gym workout incorporating weight lifting for strength and cardio for increased energy. One sprint cardio day, one hardcore lifting day and two mixed per week. I’m never good at going in the mornings so I’ll get everything done in the evenings – we’ll see how it goes, might do mid-day or morning in the future.

Proposed results: increased energy, better able to get to sleep at night, endurance in front of the screen, reduction of cortisol, a form of self-confidence and discipline not related to trading.

Diet

I make my food twice a week and store it. Lots of meat and legumes, no processed carbs and massive amounts of fruit and vegetables. Probably snack on nuts and fruit with oat shakes for slow energy release. Blueberries and other antioxidants.

Proposed results: no shit in my diet screwing with my energy or killing my brain. Hyper-focused when on the floor without worrying about what or when to eat, no sugar or caffeine crashes. Really have to completely give up smoking.

Routines

Consistent weekday morning routine - wake at same time daily, take vitamins and have healthy morning smoothie/shake, morning yoga and light exercise, shower, brush teeth, make bed and clear desk.

Consistent weekday evening routine – stretch before bed, read something other than trading, occasionally watch TV, meditate, chill with housemates, eat dinner, glass of red wine, chat to friends.

Maintenance – cooking food, washing clothes etc.. going to the gym, buying food.

Social

Friday and Saturday nights out extreme socializing with new people and friends – goof around and have fun – guilt free play, clubbing, karaoke and paintballing etc...

Goal outside of trading in socializing - to take pimping to the next level – go hard or go home, no time for anything else.
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Once I figure out what I have to do on the floor I’ll work toward establishing work routines that involve a lot of self-reflection and continual repetitive tasks. Such as having ‘report cards’ for certain trading behaviours I want to improve and going through past charts bar-by-bar, developing and backtesting whatever strategy I decide on.

Really itching to go - trying to find out a little about the fundamental relationships, I've created a Mindmap. See attached file.

If anyone has any pointers about the fundamental relationship driving oil calendar spreads they would be very appreciated.

Thanks

 

you should get "oils endless bid" by Dan Dicker. I really enjoyed this. His thesis is that the over the counter contracts mostly traded by the big houses like GS and MS are what is driving fundamentals higher. Mark Fisher a great oil trader seems to talk only about China they loom large in the oil world in terms of fundamental demand. Regarding spreads a calendar is either long or short vol no?

 

Thanks I'll check it out. I'll be doing calendar spreads over the futures markets - so wanting the spread between the contract prices to widen I'd go long Jan Crude and Short Feb Crude, i.e I want Jan to rise faster than Feb, or Feb to drop faster than Jan etc etc. It's the difference between the two contract prices.

When you say long or short 'vol' (volatility) are you talking about options? I don't really have any experience with options if that's the case.

 

When I started trading with a Prop firm they started me scalping on the 5-year because it wasn't as volatile as other instruments. I think it was a good instrument to start with. Once I had success with that I moved on to other instruments but starting with the 5 is a good place to get going.

 

ok I see what you are saying, you are spreading. In options calendars you are selling short front month strike and buying the next month, so it a play on volatility. you may find this link useful, quasi related.

http://www.cboe.com/micro/oilvix/introduction.aspx