Bienvenidos mis ositos, tu siempre eres mis queridos! (Welcome back little bears you are always my dears!)
Trading is a tough game.
In a prior life I had nice comfy jobs with several financial institutions.
But they were not as glamorous as the movies, TV shows, or social media clowns make it out to be.
Most of the trading day is spent on research, strategy meetings, and then screen staring.
Assuming you’re actually doing the prep work, trading can actually be boring.
A trading routine helps you keep your sanity and forces you to be more time efficient.
Publsh0x Troll: BUT PAAANDA! Why do we have to do so much work? I just want to gamble in the markets...
Panda: Because you have to. Otherwise you’ll be on the wrong side of a financial gangbang!
Troll’s Granny: You don’t have to threaten me with a good time!
Publsh0x Troll & Panda: Aagh!
The financial mob scene try to dupe the naive trading newbies into thinking you can type some random letters into an app to get easy money.
All you have to is look at funny pictures on a screen and then click some buttons for 10 minutes a day!
The only people that make money are the large financial institutions and contrepreneurs that sell “trading education”.
Look I can’t tell you what to do with your money but if you’re going to attempt trading at least put together a basic plan.
Elements of a trading routine should AT LEAST include the following elements.
Research - Let’s say you have the bright idea of trading a moving average crossover strategy, you should tag and track the history of these types of trades.
You should track stats such as win rate, drawdown length, drawdown amount, expected value etc.
Some trading platforms like Tradestation have a built in backtesting capability. They spit out trading statistics.
Scanner - Again most decent trading platforms will have scanning tools to help you narrow down your trading candidates.
News - News can be a blessing and curse, you need to know what’s happening in the world and yet you don’t want to get shaken out of a good position because of misinformation or outright lies.
Trade structure - Do you want to trade the underlying or is there a more efficient derivative position? Sometimes new traders get carried away with trading futures and options when a simple stock trade will be cheaper and more profitable to put on.
Trade monitoring - You should have profit taking and/or stop losses in place after you place a trade. It’s also good to look for opportunities to move stops in your favor when you have open profits.
Risk management - This is the most important part of your trading routine. This includes sizing your trades upfront to make enough money when you’re right and small enough to not bankrupt when you’re wrong.
You should also think of portfolio hedges like puts, and put spreads if you have a mostly long portfolio
Review - If you work as a corporate trader you generally have a senior trader, director, risk manager or some combination of the three to answer too.
When you’re trading by yourself you need to set alerts for yourself to check on your positions.
The world has gotten much nuttier so you need to have tools that keep you on your toes.
It’s not like what some rando shilltuber pumping their affiliate deals will help you.
Speaking of affiliate links...
Warning! Shill attempt coming up!
Please use my “hypocritcal” affiliate link for the Moomoo trading app if you want a great and mostly free trading app.
https://j.moomoo.com/00B1Py
If you can’t or don’t want a new trading app please leave a tip at the end of this post!
Look, having a trading routine won’t guarantee you make money but it will get you on the right path. At the very least it will help you cut down your losses. You may even find that trading isn’t for you and that your time is better spent somewhere more productive.
In the end, isn’t time your most precious treasure?
Obviously none of this is formal financial or tax advice. You need to find qualified professionals in your jurisdiction.
Be sharp, stay hungry let’s get that money!
