Who said trading and vacationing don't mix?

[Bolimomo]

So you work hard... you trade hard... a couple times a year, you allow yourself to unwind... forget about it all...

Well... hard for me to do. You see... we are in this trading business. If we stop trading, the income stops coming. It's not like we have a 3-week paid vacation every year working a salary job...

So... vacation will be mixed a little bit with the monkey business... while the kids and wives and mistresses go out in the morning to have their latte and shop for souvenirs... you sip on some cheap in-house coffee in the hotel room and shop for trading opportunities.

I wouldn't forgo the opportunity to trade the opening. I make most of my trading living from trading the first 30 minutes to an hour. There are only about 260 openings in a year. Giving up 20 to 30 of them is a good chunk.

I forewent my 16 monitors for a simple setup on a laptop, with a gorgeous view of the water over Key West for a week.

Trading the market opening at 9:30 am EST has been interesting. I heard two regular bird sounds: one from the parrot in the hotel that sounded like a three-year old constantly screaming, and one from the pigeons that sounded like "cookoo". Then of course the pool party conversations, and the workers blowing leaves plus other workers ferrying the jet skiis from the hotel's pier to other piers... All testing my concentration on how to trade the most crucial moment of the day.

Traded the opening. Went out and have lunch, jet ski, parasail, snorkel, swim, sunbath, sight-see for a few hours. Then came back to trade the closing hour.

I just need to remind myself not to overtrade. Forget about the doldrums. I had made the mistake twice during my trip. Coughed back the hard-earned gain in some marginal setups. Since I don't have my usual multiple monitor setup, I overlooked.

4345

[jacobnbr1]

So you work hard... you trade hard... a couple times a year, you allow yourself to unwind... forget about it all...

Well... hard for me to do. You see... we are in this trading business. If we stop trading, the income stops coming. It's not like we have a 3-week paid vacation every year working a salary job...

So... vacation will be mixed a little bit with the monkey business... while the kids and wives and mistresses go out in the morning to have their latte and shop for souvenirs... you sip on some cheap in-house coffee in the hotel room and shop for trading opportunities.

I wouldn't forgo the opportunity to trade the opening. I make most of my trading living from trading the first 30 minutes to an hour. There are only about 260 openings in a year. Giving up 20 to 30 of them is a good chunk.

I forewent my 16 monitors for a simple setup on a laptop, with a gorgeous view of the water over Key West for a week.

Trading the market opening at 9:30 am EST has been interesting. I heard two regular bird sounds: one from the parrot in the hotel that sounded like a three-year old constantly screaming, and one from the pigeons that sounded like "cookoo". Then of course the pool party conversations, and the workers blowing leaves plus other workers ferrying the jet skiis from the hotel's pier to other piers... All testing my concentration on how to trade the most crucial moment of the day.

Traded the opening. Went out and have lunch, jet ski, parasail, snorkel, swim, sunbath, sight-see for a few hours. Then came back to trade the closing hour.

I just need to remind myself not to overtrade. Forget about the doldrums. I had made the mistake twice during my trip. Coughed back the hard-earned gain in some marginal setups. Since I don't have my usual multiple monitor setup, I overlooked.

4345

I couldn't do that... Look at that view dude!

[Mastajab]

16 Monitors? What do you have on each screen and why?

I get my best trading ideas when i'm dropping a deuce.

[Bolimomo]

16 Monitors? What do you have on each screen and why?

Why? Because I can.

Next question.

What I have on each? Here is a cross-post from another forum.

=====
This is my home-grown 17 screen trading setup.

I aggregated to 17 screens over the years, not all in one shot. On a shoe-string budget. Whenever Fry's has some LCD monitors on sale, and I felt like it, I would go and get one. Mix and match. Different makes, different sizes, different resolutions. I still use 4 old 19/17-inch CRTs acquired before 1999. No fancy multi-mon mounts. Just lighter LCD mons stacking on top of big old sucker CRT mons. Older LCDs are 4:3 ratio. They don't sell them any more. New ones are all 16:9.

3 different desktops: 1 drives 6 mons, 2 drives 4 mons each. 1 laptop with a 22-inch ext mon. 1 laptop solo.

Both Comcast cable and DSL on wired/wireless routers for redundancy.

I am a visual trader. Lots of charts mostly. TradeStation (I lover their charting capability. Schwab's StreetSmart Pro (CyberTrader went to hell since Schwab bought them out. Now it is a piece of crap. No reliability. Their server can't handle fast markets). Realtick (I love) for order entries only. Charts from Realtick are okay. But no "wow" factor.

I can't stand tidiness. Cables and cords everywhere. It's my nature. I am formerly a computer technician, plugging and unplugging things all the time. I don't bother to put the side panel of the desktop back on once taken off. Being functional is the most important thing for me. Not the looks. My trading room looks like a computer lab than a Fortune 500 company executive's office.

Correlating which time-frame of which stock on which screen is messy. But I get used to it.

No Jack Daniel. Drinks and trading don't mix for me. No view (how I wish...). All walls on 4 sides. Not even a window. Someday maybe. It's me and the market. Radio news over the Internet. TV video feed onto one of the PC screens occasionally, if I feel like it.
=====

4346

[WiqqyNYU]

Wow. that is impressive. I use yahoo finance :) I still don't use T/A because im not a day trader.

So which F500 company did you work for?

[timmhaan]

i would banished from the house if i ever gathered that much stuff.

looks like a hell of a lot of fun though. :biggrin:

[aiki14]

I trade about 150 of the 250 or so trading days a year so I can travel with out the trading pressure, but still find myself with my laptop scanning the market for a few trades while the family is on the Beach or in a lot of cases sleeping. The hardest times are when I am in other time zones and want to trade the US market. At my house on Maui the market opens at 3:30am a lot of the year and I almost always trade there. The good part is at 10am I am off to sail my kite or surf. But try trading the US markets from Japan (14hrs) or Australia (15hrs).
That all said, todays tips: Long drives, Short putts. Back in front of the computers monday.

[simpletradesnet]

Lots of charts mostly. TradeStation (I lover their charting capability.


4346

Monday I am trying Multicharts 30 day free trial. I love tradestation charts but dont trade there so its super expensive as subscription services.
Multicharts allows me to import any or all elds from there as long as they arent locked.
Look into it.

[Mastajab]

Nice setup Bolimomo. Looks like it might fall over.

[Bolimomo]

So which F500 company did you work for?

A few. McDonnell Douglas (oops, no more MD), Intel, Hewlett Packard, EDS, Sprint...

I think they are F500 companies. At least at one point they were.

Don't like corporate cultures. Too many office politics. Resolved to trading. Forget about the salary job. I am a lone hunter.

Don't get me started... Former CEO at HP: Carly Fiorina. She put her own pretty face in the HP's TV commercials. Wanted to drive the message across: HP... "Invent". Traced back the root to the humble garage in Palo Alto.

That's good. HP drives itself to be different.

Then like a year later, HP bought out Compaq. What the hell happened to the "invent" spirit?

Big corporates are just as ugly as our government. Our government is, of course, the biggest coporate in America.

Now I am pleased to be the CEO of my own company, as well as managing director, financial planner, tech support, bottle washer and toilet cleaner.

[Bolimomo]

The hardest times are when I am in other time zones and want to trade the US market. At my house on Maui the market opens at 3:30am a lot of the year and I almost always trade there. The good part is at 10am I am off to sail my kite or surf. But try trading the US markets from Japan (14hrs) or Australia (15hrs).

Of all places, Hawaii is the place I dread the most in trading. The opening starts at the ungodly hour of 03:30 am. Europe is okay, late in the afternoon.

I kind of like trading the US market from Hong Kong. The market opens at 10:30 pm (or 9:30 pm depending on winter/summer - as they don't observe DLS). Trade until 05:00 am. Take a taxi to some 24-hour eateries... crowded with some taxi drivers who just get off shift... chow down some wonton noodle or something. Taxi back and sleep til noon before sight-seeing. I am a night owl so it suits me well.

[Bolimomo]

Nice setup Bolimomo. Looks like it might fall over.

Thanks Mastajab. It's a good thing that they don't have earthquakes in Sacramento though it is California. About 100 miles from the San Andreas Fault.

One of these days I am gonna do a make-over to get rid of the CRTs and get a few multimon mounts...

[timmhaan]

good for you! i hope to join those ranks soon myself, looking at about 3 more years of working and saving before i can cut loose on my own. if i'm gonna do it, i'm gonna do it with a safety net of at least a couple years living expenses covered.

[Florida]

16 Monitors? What do you have on each screen and why?


Why do men have their fast cars, big boats, fancy suits?? Why do women, (and some men) have their $100k kitchens and fancy jewelery? Like Bolimomo says, because they can.

It certainly is not required, the Ford Fusion or Chevy Malibu will get them where they are going just as well, the basic kitchen will handle the family meals, and the Mens Warehouse suit will get you into the nice restaurants, and the 2 or 3 monitor setup will handle 99.99% of all traders needs.

I have visited several proprietary trading operations of some major firms, and all of the traders, (even the ones well into the 7 and 8 figure annual incomes), use 2 or 3 monitors.

[john_for_u80]

Why do men have their fast cars, big boats, fancy suits?? Why do women, (and some men) have their $100k kitchens and fancy jewelery? Like Bolimomo says, because they can.

It certainly is not required, the Ford Fusion or Chevy Malibu will get them where they are going just as well, the basic kitchen will handle the family meals, and the Mens Warehouse suit will get you into the nice restaurants, and the 2 or 3 monitor setup will handle 99.99% of all traders needs.

I have visited several proprietary trading operations of some major firms, and all of the traders, (even the ones well into the 7 and 8 figure annual incomes), use 2 or 3 monitors.

Florida, I like your posts on OTF. You are on the right point(meaningful) 99.9% of the time :top:
Sense positivity and discipline from your post:biggrin:

[Bolimomo]

Absolutely. You don't need to have multiple monitors to trade well. Some trades well even on just an I-phone.

I am being lazy. I constantly monitor the price movement of the 4 stocks I trade (GS, AAPL, SKF, SPY). I am tired of typing in the symbols every few seconds.

Why do golfers carry a whole bag of different clubs? Why do fishermen have 20 different fishing rods? Why does Jay Leno have 40+ cars? Can't they do with one or two?

[madcowdisease]

Why do fishermen have 20 different fishing rods?

I realize this was a rhetorical question but I have an anecdote that explains this behavior.

I've got an uncle who is on the BASS circuit. He has 49 rod-reel combos. He might take 7 or 8 to a tournament. He explained that time in the water increases liklihood of getting a strike. So if one lure isn't working it is more efficient to simply grab another rig with a different lure than spend time switching lures on the same setup. If taking 7 or 8 rods can give him 6 hours of time in the water versus 5 he has increased his chances/probability by 20%.

[Bolimomo]

So if one lure isn't working it is more efficient to simply grab another rig with a different lure than spend time switching lures on the same setup.

This is a great answer!

I have 16 monitors tuned in to different symbols, with different periodicities... To save time.

Now if I have all 16 monitors displaying the same stock with the same periodicity... I may need to see a shrink... :D