Trading: Exhausting!!

Great post and many helpful replies! I compare it to being a professional athlete...if you play every minute of every game, your career will end up short. You can get hurt, burnt etc...Try to minimize the amount of time you trade. Keep a journal on when you perform the best, morning hours? the open? the close? which markets?
Learn to take time off and refresh.. just sharing a few quick pointers as i observed thousands of clients over the years and try to learn and share the good and the bad things so others can learn.

Works best if you automate, have others sit and confirm it working and like any other business check it once a day and go off to tackle others commitments besides the Starbucks breaks. Watch other people work is much more fun.
 
Not too keen on his politicking but Warren Buffett certainly has it right when it comes to keeping your eye on the prize:

"Except for his company’s private plane—more a business tool than a luxury—there is nothing of self-importance about him. He drives his own car, lives in a nondescript house, hardly ever vacations and just last month passed up an invitation from his close friend, former Washington Post chairman Katharine Graham, to dine with President Clinton on Martha’s Vineyard. Buffett will travel a long way for good bridge game {not during business hours}, but he’ll scarcely bother to cross the street for the sake of rubbing shoulders with celebrities."
 
It is interesting to see how people do very difficult and complicated things to improve their trading performance. I am too stupid for that.

But I always wonder: what is their real performance at this moment?

Because in the end, that's all that counts. And being smart and doing high tech things with wizard systems is no guarantee for success. It should be productive and make sense.
 
5 pages of posts, and not one mention of music. Music is the secret.

Other than that.... drink heavily, party with friends, laugh non-stop, jog daily, get a cool dog, help people, protect the weak..... and never look at the numbers on your screen like they are actual dollars. Its a scoreboard, nothing else. Play to win.

And get that music. Always trade with music. Your account will look like this:

stf.png

-vz
 
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Likely simulates actual price action in the NQ/ES/DJ futures markets.....good for backtesting algos.
Why simulate if you have REAL historical data to backtesting. Nothing is more real than real data.
 
A famous trader once said ' you get out of the market whatever you are looking for'. When you are ready you can always switch to the 'less is more' way of trading. Some star trader
Hi kmiklas,

maybe less is more ? I was in a similar situation, but I learned that I dont have to trade all day long to make good money. I dont know your style, but 80% of my good trades happen during the opening of the equity markets (1st hour).
So what I do now is to really focus on the european equities opening (9:00am Frankfurt time). I really focus for about 1 hour, then I do whatever I want. If I feel like it, I do more trading, if not, I do something else. Later in the afternoon I come back for the US opening (15:30 NY time) and trade for about 30 more minutes. After that, my trading day is usually done.

So on average I really focus on trading for 1-2 hours per day. My results are better than in the past when I tried to make good trades all day long. And I have much more fun with my trading now.

Many possible ways to make money in the markets. If you want to stay with this long term, I think you should find a way that you enjoy what you do. Otherwise you probably wont be able to stick to it or you will maybe not be able to perform as good as you would with something you really enjoy.

Greetings,
CALLumbus


I agree on this for sure.
Dear All,

I'm a newcomer to this game, and have only been trading for about six months now. I'm now trading full-time, all day long.

I am finding it to be EXHAUSTING! Don't get me wrong--it's a good exhausting, and I wouldn't have it any other way, but it's still exhausting!

When I had a full-time job, and was on salary, I would play around a lot more: maybe stay out until midnight on a Tuesday and have a couple drinks. Why not? Not so now! I can't afford to play those games anymore. Early to bed, early to rise. I get up in the morning with the sun, go for a good hard run or hit the gym for an hour, have a healthy breakfast, and I'm at my workstation well before the opening bell.

Like many of you, I work very hard at it all day. Taking notes, giving everything I've got to make good picks, and researching as best I know how. When the closing bell sounds, I literally stumble out of my office and collapse onto my yoga mat for a quick nap, utterly exhausted.

I come from a Computer Science background, and would often code from 8-5pm, often later. I would be tired at the end of the day. I sometimes thought, "Why is it that the market closes at 4pm? Jeez... must be nice for those lazy traders... they get to keep 'bankers hours.'"

Now that I'm actually doing it myself, HOLY Mary, Mother of God have I changed my tune! Today at 3:35 I was ready for bed!

Thank you for reading. A bit of a rambling post, but from the bottom of my heart.
Dear All,

I'm a newcomer to this game, and have only been trading for about six months now. I'm now trading full-time, all day long.

I am finding it to be EXHAUSTING! Don't get me wrong--it's a good exhausting, and I wouldn't have it any other way, but it's still exhausting!

When I had a full-time job, and was on salary, I would play around a lot more: maybe stay out until midnight on a Tuesday and have a couple drinks. Why not? Not so now! I can't afford to play those games anymore. Early to bed, early to rise. I get up in the morning with the sun, go for a good hard run or hit the gym for an hour, have a healthy breakfast, and I'm at my workstation well before the opening bell.

Like many of you, I work very hard at it all day. Taking notes, giving everything I've got to make good picks, and researching as best I know how. When the closing bell sounds, I literally stumble out of my office and collapse onto my yoga mat for a quick nap, utterly exhausted.

I come from a Computer Science background, and would often code from 8-5pm, often later. I would be tired at the end of the day. I sometimes thought, "Why is it that the market closes at 4pm? Jeez... must be nice for those lazy traders... they get to keep 'bankers hours.'"

Now that I'm actually doing it myself, HOLY Mary, Mother of God have I changed my tune! Today at 3:35 I was ready for bed!

Thank you for reading. A bit of a rambling post, but from the bottom of my heart.
 
In the late 90's I was day trading Amazon and a few other darlings of the day. Meanwhile my friend set a large position - 5 years later he was a millionaire and I
Dear All,

I'm a newcomer to this game, and have only been trading for about six months now. I'm now trading full-time, all day long.

I am finding it to be EXHAUSTING! Don't get me wrong--it's a good exhausting, and I wouldn't have it any other way, but it's still exhausting!

When I had a full-time job, and was on salary, I would play around a lot more: maybe stay out until midnight on a Tuesday and have a couple drinks. Why not? Not so now! I can't afford to play those games anymore. Early to bed, early to rise. I get up in the morning with the sun, go for a good hard run or hit the gym for an hour, have a healthy breakfast, and I'm at my workstation well before the opening bell.

Like many of you, I work very hard at it all day. Taking notes, giving everything I've got to make good picks, and researching as best I know how. When the closing bell sounds, I literally stumble out of my office and collapse onto my yoga mat for a quick nap, utterly exhausted.

I come from a Computer Science background, and would often code from 8-5pm, often later. I would be tired at the end of the day. I sometimes thought, "Why is it that the market closes at 4pm? Jeez... must be nice for those lazy traders... they get to keep 'bankers hours.'"

Now that I'm actually doing it myself, HOLY Mary, Mother of God have I changed my tune! Today at 3:35 I was ready for bed!

Thank you for reading. A bit of a rambling post, but from the bottom of my heart.

Reading your post reminded me of a quote from a famous trader " everybody gets what they want out of the market" - Ed Seykota
 
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