Tuesday, December 25, 2007

What a year it was...

It's been a year to remember...NOT!
Not if you are swing/intermediate term traders.
With all that volatility kicked in right after the first quoter of 2007 a lot of good traders I know sustained heavy losses, both monetary and psychological... unless they were flexible enough and switched to day trading ( or just stayed with the trade for a very long time and rode ups and downs, downs mostly ) or been disciplined and stayed away from the market unless opportunities presented themselves.

But there were few brave souls who were not intimidated and jumped right into middle of carnage and became full time traders.
I'd like to repost article I wrote back in Fall 2006 and dedicate it to my friend Brandt A.K.A. BullTrapper who made his transition in the most volatile time of 2007 and IS MAKING IT.
Read on...

"... time to quit your job? Sunday, November 19, 2006"
Every month the number of "Investment blogs" doubles, a lot of "cubicle prisoners" instead of doing they job, wondering around the floor, bothering co-workers with stories of "how they doubled their accounts in the last 4 months and they are about to quit this stinking job to become full time trade for living guy".

Is having a desire to quit day job with asshole manager good, bad, ingenious or just plain stupid? Tricky question, lets break it down.

Hate your job and manager? Time to move on to another place, but you better be damn certain that it is your manager who is an asshole and not you.

Next, speaking of becoming full time trader as oppose to making few dollars when market is good. This IS a tough decision to make. Think of not having "guaranteed" paycheck, benefits, pension (if you got one), having to pay toward Social un-Security, long term disabilities insurance .. list goes on, and the only source of income would be trading, Geez - takes all fun out of idea, isn't it?

Don't forget that in order to MAKE money you have to HAVE money -do you have $200,000.00USD hard cash ready for that? Think 2001-2002 - that is what you needed to make money in trendless markets.

Not to overlook money for at least 6-9 months to maintain your lifestyle - market sometimes does not pay on the regular basis even to the very best of traders.

I found compromise for myself, even knowing that I can survive in the stock market on the long run, I still work a little over 20 hours a week to retain corporate "goodies". Do I care about place I work for? Way less then before I found out and PROVED to myself that I can make living trading stocks, surprisingly "my place I work for" seems to care more about ME knowing that I'm not a corporate slave anymore and I HAVE A CHOICE.

Why am I saying all of that? Because I want to remind to everyone, including myself,
that HUMILITY and MODESTY are one of the most important qualities for good trader.

BE A TRADER, DON'T SAY YOU ARE.

DavidDT

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