I'm wondering what helps you find a balance between trading and quality of life. For one who has a job/family/hobbies, how do you prevent yourself from getting carried away or consumed by the markets?... Interested to have your thoughts/perspectives on this.
If you go on vacation and you have some very short term speculative positions on, take 3/4 off the table so you can enjoy your holiday and not be glued to your phone!
I used to trade more. Options. Scalps whatever. I was always stressed. Ive switched to only buy long term shares. Its much less stressful and i can look at my phone once a day to check in. Not stress if its a red day, and move on with my life. I personally feel if trading is ruining my living my life balance, than i am overtrading. i now only trade companies i already am familiar with and if some catalyst news happens. Which is usually pretty rare. case in point. NIO just announced a new model, oldman sacks upped them to a $56 target. I bought calls, and now am market stressed for the first time in months. Lol
This makes sense B Russ. I hear ya! Yes, I could imagine it's a quest to find the right balance. I guess we need to adjust here and there along the way (of course nothing is perfect). Somewhere between overtrading and never looking at the markets (quite a gap). I know a couple people at each end. I have a tendency towards overtrading (overdoing it, it makes me feel less settled), when I do have the time to trade. Something I'm trying to do is establish a routine: a set of steps I methodically follow every day at a given time; don't have to think; can go on autopilot if I want to; then don't think about it the rest of the day. I'm relatively new, learning... I also like meeting with friends who trade to share our ideas, which can break the monotony of things and freshen things up. (As long as we're not talking about it 24/7, lol, it's good to move away from it, too ; -). And, hey, forums of course, hehe (I visit forums now and then, I find it can energize our routine and a nice sense of solidarity). I'm in Canada so I'm on a Canadian forum + this one. It seems Canadians have different investing styles so it's nice to have different perspectives and a well-rounded view Anyhow, thank you for sharing, and it's encouraging to know you have found some balance! Hey, thank you for the NIO share : -) Hope it won't get you too off track! ;-)
To further this conversation…. NIO had a great qtr. the stock has been punched down. I thought sure thing, buy the dip. “i chose options”. It was a wild ride. From initial “investment”. 50% positive one day, 50% down the next. I scaled out, 2 days before epiry, at small profit, closed the rest one day before expiry, at about 20% loss. The day they expired, had i held, it would have been a bagger. short term speculation is very very hard even with a lot of research. Long term is easy if u do a little research.
This puts it into perspective, I know what you mean, happens to me far too often. Seems longer-term can equal lower blood pressure.
They should think about making a chart of our blood pressure when we trade long vs. short. The B&P 500
