Daily Routine of a Self Employed Trader

http://oneminutetrader.tv/2017/11/14/daily-routine-of-a-self-employed-trader/

This is the transcribed version of the podcast posted above ^^^

[00:00:00] Hello I would like to talk to you about the one minute trader we are here to take the time strapped trader and turn them into a profitable money making machine with daily ideas that give you, the trader on the go, a reason to trade with risk defined and profits taken when able I’m Matt Davio and this is the one minute trader podcast.

[00:00:55] Welcome back to the one minute trader podcast. I am Matt Davio, your host. And today on our podcast I want to talk a little bit about questions I get regarding being a professional trader. And here’s some of the questions that I get on a regular basis and I’m going to try to roll all of these into: what is a professional daily trader lifestyle look like. So here are some of the questions: What is the daily routine of a self-employed day trader? But air quotations on that daytrader and I’ll tell you why later. And the second question do you trade every single day? Third Question: Do you take holidays or are you in front of your big screen or laptop or a screen every day all day? And those are essentially the three questions I get all the time asked by what is it like to be a trader. What are some of the things I like to look at to be a trader and here’s the secret I want to give you today. The number one confusion non traders have about trading is the belief that making money in the markets is about having a brilliant strategy or a program or a quantitative algorithm. Honestly it’s not. It’s more about process. Yes trading is 20 percent strategy and 80 percent psychology. Like most businesses you make 80 percent of your money from 20 percent of the customers. And in this game 20 percent of the game is strategy and 80 percent of it comes down to your psychology. If you have great strategies but you fail because you over trade when you’re feeling excited or under trade when you’re not, you will fail. If you have great strategies but don’t follow up with a system to check and monitor and improve your execution of the strategy, you will fail. If you have great strategies but you are not mentally prepared nor ready when a good opportunity does appear, you will fail. Instead you follow the same process every day so that your psychology remains stable and your trading is in tune with the rhythms of the market. So fair warning process is profitable but it sure isn’t sexy. The rest of this answer will probably be of interest only if you’re a trader or have great desire to be a trader. In the market time is measured by shares traded contracts on the futures side. Also on the options side etc. not by seconds and here’s how I kind of break out my day. The morning activity is largely clustered near the opening the beginning of the day so I focus on trading for the first couple of hours or so and I talk about this all the time. These magical first few hours would be better devoted to high level thinking. But considering the level of opportunity you know you must consider being around for the open to be a part of your operational plan. So think about that midday really brings around three to five hours and that’s you know again if you if the market opens at 6:30 Pacific you’ve traded until eight thirty three hours gets you until 11:30. That’s about right if you’re trading in the futures markets. So during this time you have anywhere from three to five hours why do I say three to five because the first hour and tell me that I need to get away from the screens and probably only the first hour in the last hour really mattered to me ultimately anyways. Especially in a market where we are in right now where we have so little volatility it becomes pretty regular and I can get alerted and be back to my office if I need to. So half the time on the midday I use this for working out getting the exercise reading doing some research developing new ideas. And the other half is for meeting with people doing this podcast doing interviews things that I like that are healthy diversions so that if anything happens in the market I can come back to it pretty quickly. So that’s a really key point. Midday is really a key crucial component of the day even though there’s not a lot of actual trading that goes on in a typical day. The afternoon I usually prepare for the closing in the last hour as I said earlier again this is the most important the closing prices are always more important than any opening price during the day and an opening or rather a closing price on the week trumps any daily close and a monthly close trumps a weekly or the four weekly in a month and a quarterly trumps the monthly etcetera. So it’s very important then once the markets are closed what do I do. There’s a post close structure that really comes into place writing in my journal how keeps me accountable provides a touchstone for future reflection. After this I have two hours for administrative activities e-mails responding to questions from our clients working with new clients on the onboarding them. So if there’s nothing queued up I’ll actually go and spend some of my free time here reading about some different technologies maybe on quora that I’m interested in. Do some studying up on Bitcoin or some of the different currencies find out if some of these may be real and trade able in the long run. And then in the evening when I’m home I don’t typically bring home any work except for my home my phone anymore and I can spend time with my four kids. Couple are off to college now already read a good book maybe watch a little curb your enthusiasm get a little humor with the family and that’s about it. So the traders job really here as a trader is to have a process is to distinguish the signal from the noise. And there are a lot of noise. Noises out there in the playing field for traders. Systems that can definitely help. So you’ve got technologies that can both that are both digital and analog can cut the noise out of your life and keep it simple. I like routine eating at the same times every day really sticking to the same healthy if it grows eat it foods.

[00:07:44] So fruits and vegetables, loaf, you know, less red based meats, coffee. I have no problem with. So routine’s really important, take care of the little things for the weekend what you’re going to wear again. I like to wear the same kind of dress in the summer shirts in the winter slacks or jeans. It’s real comfortable I keep it simple buttoned down or a sweatshirt, a T-shirt or a blue t shirt, or a red T-shirt. For me that’s as complicated as it gets. I also like to keep note cards or pads of paper that really and I do most of this digitally now that keep track of my To Do list both professionally and personally. So if you have doctors appointments. So these are these are really the key things that I’ve gone to. I’ve also still run through my scans every night where I go through the charts at the end of the day and then I periodically do those over my nine time frames that I’m checking. So this is pretty easy when you’re trading in futures. There’s really only 30 to 50 items I’m watching now on a regular basis. I’m not scrolling through thousands of stock charts every night like I used to when I was younger. I don’t play the stock market as much. I’m more interested in having more freedom and liberty with my life and that’s why futures is a benefit for traders that have been doing this for a long time. So in addition to the rhythm rhythms of the market throughout the day there are seasonality is that flow throughout the year. Mondays are different than Thursday’s, binary events happen whether it’s an FOMC meeting every six weeks or the OPEC weekly oil number on the EIA the options expiration numbers. All these things are binary events that cause for a rush of activity. I like the pause before the activity but post these news announcements is when you can find many of our good and best opportunities for this reason we can plan to travel throughout the year. You don’t have to be working 52 weeks a year. Besides there are many three day weekends to come on with trading with the regular holiday calendar and there are slow times in the year. Often times summers especially Augusts and the last couple of weeks of August the last two weeks of the year into the new year are very slow. These are traditionally slow times of the year. So I know that I need to take my time off during these traditional slow times of the year and I don’t concern myself if I miss anything. We’ll be back to pick up the next train when we’re back from vacation. You have to take a break. So if you’re going through a losing streak you have to step away. I know that my psychology can get changed just by you know some of my kids having issues at school or broken bone illness cold, cold streak in the market, no volatility, high volatility all these things are changing all the time. So even when I’m out of town, and I’m on vacation I need to be aware that I’m going to take a break and use this time accordingly. Wrapping up our podcast as they amateurs are here for the game meaning the action the junkie professionals. We go to work like any other professional does in any job. People think traders are really like Gordon Gekko but he was really a sales trader. He wasn’t someone with a disciplined PnL. He was really a riverboat gamblers so disciplined in execution and psychology or the name of this game treating high opportunity set ups the same way every time so that you can make more money on the very good opportunities and lose less on the times when you do lose. That is the key to success as a professional trader. That’s also why you build a trading style that matches your personality. So we’re here to help you with that. If you’d like to learn how to do that just drop me a line. matt@oneminutetrader.tv . We would love to find out what trading style matches your personality what patterns of life would fit that trade in style and guide you on the path to a successful and challenging and fruitful career and a business as an investor and or a trader. Thanks. I’m Matt Davio

[00:12:17] The one minute trader was developed to bring you fresh trade ideas every day of every trading week. Make sure you go sign up for our invaluable one minute trader daily emails along with our five minute video emails to get timely insights into evolving trade possibilities. Let one minute trader be your second set of eyes for trade opportunities that may have passed you by. We appreciate you listening today to the podcast and we hope you’ll support the show by leaving us a positive rating on whichever platform you’re tuning in from. I’m Matt Davio and this is the one minute trader podcast.