Hello traders!
John Kicklighter, Chief Strategist for DailyFX.com, became a father before Christmas: on his return to
work this week, he has made this video
which deals with the concept of trading with limited time, and which draws on his recent appreciation
of what it is like to parent a newborn AND try to stay in tune with the markets/trading.
We often do not mention real life scenarios like this, but this is exactly what we should talk about, as most
retail traders get into trading exactly because they want to make money while handling being a parent, or holding a job that is not to do with trading (and having to do the trading bit in the evening or early in the morning)…
hired a nanny
stopped watching news - no time
stopped watching any news release - no time and no use
threw out al indicators/oscilators
stopped forex - started stocks/commodities
stopped daytrading for good - no time to watch charts constantly
stopped reading useless stuff on internet - no time
stopped looking for turns etc but learned to follow the trend
started trading in longer terms - focused on the big chunks and not the miserable "daily 30 pips"
started to put more focus on life - hired a manager for my company, reduced trading as explained above
only in hindsight i understood that thats the right thing i should have done from the beginning. noone gets ritch with daytrading or checking every unimportant news release or watching indicators/oscilators.
and you only have 24 hours a day
now i make more with trading but im putting way less effort/time/work into it.
and now baby number 2 is on the way, soon to be followed by baby number 3 i hope.
Unfortunately we have to adapt our trading style to the rest of our lives, rather than the other way around. Trading with a newborn in the house, trading while working fulltime, trading while there’s a big construction site next door, etc.etc. so many different scenarios where something can distract you or take up your time. We just have to adapt.
I find it refreshing to go behind the stereotypical image of the faceless, screen-addicted retail trader who somehow has nothing else to do … I always like to hear how retail traders manage to do that around all their other commitments…
but theres one thing i cant resist to add. over the evening today i suddenly remembered your post and remembered how it was at the moment the kid was there and theres another thing i feel like mentioning and that is the risk awarenes.
When you (in this part i say “you” but i mean “me” as this is what happened to me/my situation, i dont say it will happenn to you aswell) trade only on your own behalf and have a company which backs you up financially you dont mind going into some risks as you know everything is going to be all right anyways. your wife has a well paid job so no biggie going broke once or twice (even if you dont want to, it still happens). but after your baby arrives your thinking will change, youll think more of the way of “its my duty to keep it healthy, get her food, provide her a great life, security and other things in which money helps”.
sounds logical, yes, you know that yourself, i know. but it will change your view on trading as in your subcauscious you will (not knowing) take these “fears and problems” in every trade you make.
in my case it changed my trading into going rather the lasting trades of days and weeks or even months as to be honest, thats the least risky way to trade (and as i discovred the most profitable aswell) as you take the risk of loss only for a day or two and afterwards you calculate profits, the worst that can happen is you get stopped out too early and take less profit then anticipatet.
i dont know if this helps and i know i have some sort of “cave-men-thinking” when it comes to that part as i still think its the fathers duty to give a certain standard of living to your own family and secure only the best for my kids etc.
but it think we started our trading in different stiles. from the posts ive seen of you the last two weeks my guess is you started trading as an additional income and that it gives you a secure monthly income with which you can live a good life without having to work for a some company (its only a guess, dont be mad if i say something wrong, i dont mean to). i started out in full risk because i wanted to change my economy sector from running a company everybody can run who is able to read, to something bit more complicated and something i finished my college for. and idiot me only in the first month, still as noob, i lost two good german-average-yearly salaries.
my risk awareness changed after birth drastically.
but one thing helped me a lot to get some clue abut trading. by accident i stumbled upon John Maynard Keynes (btw that the guy who invented the theory of government pushing money into population during recession to speed up a recovery of economy, aswell the idea of conetal banks buying assets to get “rid” of lousy contracts and releave the economy in a debt crisis, so basicly he is the father behind the quatative easing programms we see in all major economies nowadays - among other more important things like abandoning the gold standard etc. as i always say the BRITTISH are the masters in econmy, the rest of the world only copies. but i guess you guys learn about him in school anyways) and read about him, one fact i found very interesting. he was a extremely sucessfull speculant on stocks and commodities in his time, and he revealed his style which was: he read newspapers 30 minutes in the morning after waking up and made all his trading decitions within those 30 minutes and then went on to do other things that arent connected to trading.
billionair/millionair by 30 minutes trading a day. funny fact
I really appreciated your post, which was very insightful…
I am on my 'phone so I will keep this short, so all I can say is that I find a lot of what you wrote close to my own thoughts…
As for Keynes, I am not British but I know that British schools do not teach Keynesian theory I am also more and more interested in Meses, the Austrian economist who established the economic theory of the business cycle which very much challenges the Keynesian constructs of modelling, of money-printing, of fiat currencies without a gold standard, and of central bank interventionism… It is not to take anything from Keynes’ achievements and status to challenge some of the Keynesian concepts…
On a different note, I must apologise for correcting you on the topic of the Frankfurt Börse opening hours: I had not seen that you live in that very city,and, if I may add, what a beautiful city it is (I visited it briefly two years ago). . .
We will mourn your absence PMH, gone but not forgotten.
You’ve got a very demanding & equally rewarding time ahead of you - enjoy! Good luck &
congrats in advance; here’s hoping GBPNZD has sorted itself out come your return.