While on a long call with my brother at the beginning of this year, I remarked to him idly, “wouldn’t it be nice to be mentally healthy, in peak physical shape, a multi millionaire, and to live with a woman that loved me?” And he replied in kind along those lines with “wouldn’t it just?”
Well that landed for me. I took it to heart and I’ve been working on that every day since then. To be honest, I mean that literally. I have worked towards those goals every day since then.
It’s such a joy to go for a run and push myself. Each run I stop at the park nearby and do a single set of max pullups until my shoulder strains, as I had a rotator cuff injury two years ago. Today I did a new high score of 12 pullups without kipping. I’m getting into great shape and am resuming a long process of training for a 3:30 target in the Long Beach marathon on October 11th. I’m just running 4 mile blocks a few times a week to build a base, maybe around the end of May I’ll start ramping up past 30 miles a week. But I’m not in a rush. I have plenty of time.
Given the focus I’ve been applying towards trading, I’ve been doing a light routine of kettlebells, deadlifting, pushups, pullups and running. I used to work out for ~2 hours in the gym several times a week but I don’t want to dedicate that amount of time right now. The metrics I’m optimizing for are being lean, strength proportional to my body weight, increasing my hip flexibility as I sit around all day, and trimming stomach fat that I accrued from drinking in my 20s.
Between therapy, 12 step meditation meetings, and journaling both privately and in my blog, I am working towards being a more mentally healthy individual, both for living within my own head and for how I interact with my interpersonal relationships and romantic attachments. I’m really proud of the work I’m doing in this area and am content with the steady pace of progress I am making.
Financially, things are looking a little bleak, especially when compared to my all time highs. However even after paying significant taxes, getting stiffed collectively on over $600k, round tripping half a million, and losing a growing amount from trading, the financial buffer I am left with is more than sufficient to see my way through to profitability trading while maintaining the lifestyle I’ve become accustomed to. I’m not worried. And my work output is greater than it’s been in many years. I have faith that I will get my second comma back in due time.
As to a healthy romantic attachment, that I’m leaving for when I am in peak shape, have income (netted a penny at least guys, come on), and have more sobriety under my belt.
This morning I slept in till 6am and finished off Bella’s first book One Good Trade that I’ve been dragging my heels on. His writing style really is not my cup of tea but there are so many quality anecdotes and tidbits of wisdom in it that I just have to push through. I’ve finished it and spent time reviewing small cap halts, doing some modeling in Claude, reviewing historical charts from specific stocks I’m interested in to annotate key levels and particular ticker specific tells, and strategizing with my trading partner. I have some ideas for additional scanners I want to build out and am reviewing my trades from last week.
Work is humming along. That I am very happy with. We are very, very close to having our playbook & tech in a place capable of facilitating consistently profitable trading.
One topic I keep coming back to is my pennies per shares executed metric. If you execute 10,000 shares and lose $100, you’ve lost 1 penny per share executed. That means if you had more accurately placed your stoploss a penny closer to your backstop orders or had the restraint & werewithal to let your winning trade ride a penny (or ten!) further, or the trade that you held offsides the farthest which turned out to be your biggest mistake of the day was cut twenty pennies previously, how all those adjustments would stack up to turn your day profitable. It’s why I feel like we are so, so close.
Bella has a concept in OGT that talks about adding up all your winning trades and all your losing trades and then seeing where you could extend your winners and cut your losers; rather than looking at a single P&L number. I relate to that style of review. It always amazes me how hitting a modest number of singles can outweigh the biggest losing trade of your day. The relatively small loss rate that I experience (around 1-1.5 pennies/share executed) while trading SO POORLY compared to the standard I know that I am capable of, makes me confident that I will flip positive in very short order.
I am optimistic that it may be this month. However, the only thing I am truly concerned about is the quality and quantity of my inputs, leaving P&L to be a lagging indicator of my effort. Which is why as I hit publish on this post, I will resume poring over charts feeling most satisfied, sitting in a body that has been pushed physically and now will be pushed mentally. That’s all I’m trying to do. All the right inputs and let the outputs take care of themselves.
Enjoying the sun over here in warm LA. All the best, OTN.