What does it mean when you lapse back into bad habits? Is it a good idea to copy what a successful trader does? How do you know which time frame you should trade? Do experts make good teachers? Have you ever had a long night with a bottle of vodka? Darren and Walter tackle these issues (and more) in this episode…
Download (Duration: 35:13 / 48.3 MB)
In this episode:
01:33 – Darren’s bad habits are surfacing
03:22 – Darren’s usually pious
04:44 – When Walter is “on guard”
05:15 – The value of a “day off” from trading
06:32 – How “talking out loud” helps your thinking
07:11 – Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Blink”
07:36 – Why many experts are awful teachers
08:47 – The case of the expert art examiner
11:11 – Is Walter flat out all the time?
12:15 – How Walter sets up his week
15:02 – What Darren thinks about surprises
16:10 – How Darren takes time off trading
17:53 – Does electricity bring disease with it?
20:33 – Nordic traders are obsessed with sunshine
22:10 – Do traders over complicate trading?
24:02 – When Walter looks at the charts
25:20 – The danger of smart phone trading
28:20 – Trade the correct time frame for your life
29:15 – Beware the mentor trap
30:56 – How Darren does analysis now
32:03 – What to do if your trading is now working now
33:53 – See what Darren sounds like sleep deprived
Tweetables:
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Profitable trading doesn’t have to be complicated. [Click To Tweet].
Download The Full Episode 7 Transcript Here
Walter: Welcome back. You know where you’re at. You’re here at the 2TradersPodcast.com. This week Darren and I look at structure and trading. We talk about taking breaks and how to structure your life so that you have blocks of work and blocks of play, and Darren and I take a very different approach to that. We also look at what it takes to foster intuition and what it means once you achieve intuition in terms of how you can explain this to others, and that’s a little bit surprising.
We also talk about the importance of routine and how your routine affects your trading, and we get into whether or not your sleeping patterns are determined by the right person or the right things, and Darren also talks about slipping back into some bad habits. All this and more in today’s 2 Traders podcast episode.
Two traders: Darren and Walter, pull back the curtain on profitable trading systems, consistent money management, and profitable psychological triggers. Welcome to the Two Traders podcast.
Walter: Darren, welcome back.
Darren: Walter, how are you doing, mate?
Walter: What’s been going on in your life, Darren?
Darren: I’ve quite a good week trading-wise, but I’ve had a bit of a strange week as well. I’ve slipped back into some old bad habits so not necessarily in trading, but in other aspects of my life. Normally, I’m really good at going to bed early and a few people I’ve mentioned on the daily trader thing that I’ve been posting videos of like 2:30 in morning and 3 in the morning, and saying, “Do you ever get any sleep? I’ve been drinking more as well and staying up late.
It’s weird I’m trying to workout why that is because really I’m happy at the moment and things are going well for me. Normally, when people turn to vices like staying up late and drinking. I’ve even been drinking and smoking and I gave up smoking three years ago, and I don’t … Yeah, it’s like … I’m trying to workout why it was and it’s weird that when things are going well, why … You associate those things with when things are going bad for people, so it’s a …
Walter: Is that typically how it is for you, though? That you would say, for example, I probably drink in celebratory mode when people are around and stuff, so that’s my mode is … I’ve never hit a bottle of vodka on my own. You know what I mean?
Darren: Yeah.
Walter: Is that how normally is for you that you generally would say that when you’re a bit down you’d be drinking and smoking or is it just feel like you just slipped into old habits for some reason?
Darren: Yeah, I mean, not like you. Normally, I only really do that now when I’m on holiday and I’m having a bit of a party, and generally when I’m back here. I’m … My business partner said I’m pious. Is that the right word?
Walter: Sure.
Darren: I’m very … No, I’m not having a bacon sandwich for breakfast, I’m going for a run in the afternoon, I’ve have major focus on being just superfocused all the time and it’s like I’ve changed. The only thing I know that’s changed for me personally, recently, in my routine as I’m doing the daily trader videos … They’re having a weird effect on me as well. I’m getting … It’s improved my trading by trying to share my ideas with other people. I think I’ve probably got a confidence boost from that really, and it made me drop my guard a bit. I hope it doesn’t turn bad.
Walter: Yeah, I guess it’s nice to have … I’ve noticed here in the private forum you’ve got this great following of fans, and when you think about it and when I think about it in terms of psychology I think in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. One of the ones that when you get higher up on the pyramid would be you want to be respected and appreciated by your peers, which is clearly what’s going on in the forum I’ve noticed, but as you say, I don’t know what it’s like for you.
For me, the periods when I really have to look out and make sure that I’m on my game is after a really successful run. It’s always the case that that’s when I get a little bit off in terms of following my rules, I suppose.
Darren: Yeah, I think that’s what’s going on and that’s probably why I’m noticing that I’m thinking what’s going on here? I’m noticing a change in me and what can I do to make sure it doesn’t mess my trading up because that’s something I want to do.
One of the interesting things that’s come out it from a trading point of view is that one of the things I always find hard to do before and I’m finding easier to do now is sit out and take a day off from trading, and I always had this view. Even someone recently asked on the forum if I … On news days and I said there was no need to, but I find myself doing that and it’s worked quite well. I had Monday and Tuesday, I traded really well. I was trading the Pound/USD, and then when all the big news was coming at the weekend, I sized it up and I took one or two trades and they didn’t quite workout. Then, I said, “Okay, right, just call it a day. Let the dust settle and then come back.”
I always used to find that really hard to do and I think … I feel great that I’m getting more in tune with that. Almost like I’m just much more relaxed about trading. I think it’s that fact that I’m having to share on the daily basis what I think’s going to happen and then what trades I took. It’s regulating my trading there in a way.
Walter: It’s almost like … To me, it’s almost like you have to be accountable. You have …
Darren: Yeah.
Walter: But it’s more than that because you actually have to explain what you’re doing and the basis for it in often with things that we’ve been doing a long time. It’s almost so automatic that you don’t necessarily have that as a conscious thought that I’m doing this because of this. It’s more like when you’re driving, you know when to slow down because there’s some crazy Hoon up ahead, right? They’re swerving around, you know how to brace yourself for that and how to deal with that car that’s coming up down the road, but you don’t really think it out loud.
I find the same thing with trading and anything where you’ve gone beyond the novice phase where you’re not consciously trying to access what you should be doing, but you just do it.
Darren: Yeah.
Walter: There’s a really good book about this idea, which is Blink. Have you read the book, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell?
Darren: Never heard of it, mate.
Walter: Well, basically the whole book is this idea that people can get to this point where they’re making automatic decisions and they don’t necessarily understand why they do it. This is, in cognitive psychology, they talk about this idea how the experts aren’t necessarily the best teachers because the experts don’t necessarily know what they’re doing. I mean, they know what they’re doing, but they can explain it, and so the book starts with this sculpture that they found. They thought that it was, and I’m probably going to get this all wrong, but they thought that it was made by Michelangelo. Michelangelo is a famous artist, right?
Darren: Yeah.
Walter: Okay, so I got that right. I think it was him, right? It was someone back a long time ago. I’m not … I have to admit I’m going to expose my weakness here. My Achilles heel is my art history, but anyway, so they have this sculpture and they thought, okay, we’re pretty sure … They did all this testing on it; carbon dating and all that, so the scientists had their go at it, and then they brought in this guy who was, essentially, an art expert. He was known for being able to take a look at something and just knowing whether it was a forgery or not, right?
They brought this guy in and this is at the Getty Museum which is … If you’re familiar with it, it’s in Los Angeles near this wonderful collection of art, and it’s right up on the Hill. It’s a beautiful part on the entrance to Malibu. It’s a nice area of Los Angeles. Believe it or not, there are a few nice areas of Los Angeles.
Anyway, so he looked at it and immediately knew within seconds that it was a forgery. This was a situation where they were ready to acquire it, they were ready to pay big money, they’re like, “Wow. We can’t believe this was lost throughout history.” All the dating, all the scientific analysis had come out that this is real and they just want- … Basically, it was the last stamp of approval.
It turned out that, of course, he was right, and so this is one of those things I think a lot about in terms of trading, which is not only is it possible to get to that point where you can almost see at a glance what to do with the market, which is for me most of the time stay out, but occasionally, buy or sell or even more frequently, buy or sell given if X or Y happens.
That’s one piece of it, but the other piece is do you have that kind of access to your thinking so that you can explain what you’re doing? And so for me, and I don’t know if this is what you’re getting at, Darren, but for me, doing these videos in the private forum has been a really good thing for me because it’s allowed me to almost create a checklist for what I do because what I’ve been doing is so inaccessible and automatic that I hadn’t really thought about it in terms of a checklist for years.
I don’t know if that makes any sense, but I guess … And the other part of it, of course, is you’re accountable, so if you say to people, “Look, I really think that the Pound/Singapore is right for a buy,” then you got to explain why you don’t want to buy the Pound/Singapore now after 24 hours has passed or something like that.
You really have to articulate what your thinking is whereas before what I would do is just look at the chart, literally click away and go to the next chart.
Darren: Yeah.
Walter: You scan through charts really quickly. Whereas now it’s more of a a process, I guess, in discovering, I suppose, what my checklist is.
Darren: Yeah, definitely. I notice it when I’m Tweeting something and I just … I know what I want to say, I start writing it down and then I have to stop myself and say, “Hang on. What I’m saying here? I pause and think about it. Is quite fascinating and it’s been really helpful for me. I guess that is one of the positive things of being in this group.
The thing that puzzles me about you is that since we’ve been doing this podcast together and we’ve been meeting up every week, and having a chat on that, it always … It strikes to me and from what I see on the forums, the stuff you do there, it’s like you’re flat out all of the time. Whenever we meet it’s like you’re always just finishing another meeting , then you’re going to another meeting, then you’re racing back here to get the router, you’re handing the baby over the child minder, and you’re … Compared to me, your life just seems like every hour has got … Is that good for your trading? Do you think if all of that was wiped away and you had only trading, would that make it better for you or worse do you think?
Walter: Right. Yeah, I don’t know. That’s interesting that you say that because maybe it might be this, it might be the reason why it appears that way is because what I try to do is set up my week so that I do things like this podcast, I do it all in blocks, so I have these two blocks during the week where I do the majority of my, I guess, you would call it work stuff, and then I have the rest of the week off to go surfing.
Darren: Nice.
Walter: For example, that’s how I try and structure my webinars back-to-back in and things like that, and if someone wants to talk to me I try and do it basically today. These are the things that I try and do to make it so that I have big blocks. The other thing is my friend who has a similar life and we surf a lot together. I used to surf with the retired people; the retired guys in my town because they were the only ones that were surfing at the same time I was because everyone else was at their job or whatever, but they’re getting old and they’re not surfing as much these guys, and so it’s been a bit tough because I’ve lost my surfing buddies. They’re getting to the point where they’re actually starting to give up surfing and things like that, which has been really sad.
That means for me I spend more time having lunches with them rather than surfing, but that’s been a transition, but luckily, I have this new friend who over the last two years we’ve done the same thing, which is he structures his day … He basically has a two day work week and the rest of the week is open. I’ve tried to do the same thing because I think it’s a smart way to do it. I still try and have breaks, so in two hours I’m going to go for a run, and then I’ll come back and do some more stuff, but yes, I think, I don’t know, maybe that’s what it is every time I’m talking to you I’m racing around because I do a webinar before our podcast and things like that.
It might also be just having a kid; a young kid as you’ve gone through you know it’s that whole early part of that, I guess. Your focus changes from you to now all of a sudden you’ve got this other thing that’s super important and you’ve got to put a lot of focus into making sure that this other human is comfortable and in the right situation. It’s always … You’re thinking I’m I doing the right thing by giving the kid the nanny now or should I be with the kid or those things, so it’s … In fact, I was hoping to come out and see you. My wife going out there to Bristol tomorrow, actually, and so we were hoping to have a bit of a holiday , then we can go down to Italy and things like that. I was actually going to stalk you, Darren. Show up at the pub.
In the end we just decided … The last couple trips we’ve had with our little guy he’s been really a handful on the plane, so I just felt like …
Darren: Yeah, that’s …
Walter: I don’t want to go through that again. I’d rather just …
Darren: That’s on a big journey with a small child that is to take, and I don’t like surprises, mate, so if you’re ever going to do that.
Walter: No, I would have told you. I would have said, “Hey, we’re coming to you there because I know Bristol is not far so I thought, yeah, it’s always interesting to me when I meet other traders, what is their life like. For example, I met a group … A couple that trade; they both trade. They were from the UK and they’d moved to Portugal, so it’s really interesting seeing their new life in Portugal where they basically were retiring down there.
That was really fun for me because you meet these people on forums, on the Internet, webinars or whatever, but it’s really when you get to meet them face-to-face that you see a better … You get a better sense of what their life is like.
Darren: Yeah.
Walter: I don’t know. Maybe my problem is I’m trying to fit, too, much into these little packets because I really value my free time.
Darren: Yeah. I was just under the impression that you were just on it all the time and I wondered whether … No, I was trying to workout when you actually got a time to focus on your own trading, but that sounds cool, and that sounds a bit like what I do really, but I do mine in two month blocks of coming back here, trading and then I’ll do a month block of just time for myself and focus on other stuff, so it’s similar scenario really just different time frames.
Walter: Yeah, but do you … When you’re off because I know you like to go off epic motorcycle trips. Do you actually … Does it depend on where you’re at whether or not you’ll continue trading when you’re off on holiday?
Darren: Yeah, I’m half asked about it when I’m on holiday and I might trade off and on, but really I don’t … But there’s more of just that curiosity that I look into the charts and I do take the odd trade, but I’m not really trading in a way that you could sustain and make a consistent living from it really, so it’s mainly just that I’m interested. I don’t think that I could live that lifestyle and trade at the same time. I need, getting back to where we started tonight, I need to get into that head space, focus and I need the things around me to be insync as well like eating well, having a daily routine and getting some sleep. As soon as those things start to go, then I think I’d had difficulty long term trading successfully.
Walter: There’s a lot to be said for the routine, I suppose.
Darren: Yeah.
Walter: One of the things that popped into my mind when you’re talking about staying up late, drinking and smoking and … This idea of the … Not, I guess you could call it biorhythms, but there was a book I read called Lights Out. The basic idea of the book was that heart disease and things like this traveled with electricity, so what they noticed was that in the old days when these people were farmers and they lived out in the country, for example, in the US that the last pockets of the population to get heart disease were those that were the last to get electricity.
The author tried to link it back this idea that we should naturally go through these cycles every year. For example, in the summer which is … It is in the summer where you are now, we naturally are less likely to have as much sleep because we have more sunshine, so the idea is that we should sleep when the sun goes down and we should be awake when the sun comes up.
What that means for most people in the western world is that you probably shouldn’t stay up as late as you do and you probably should … Well, I guess most people wake up fairly early, don’t they, with jobs and that? It’s like the sun gives you this pre-determined sleep pattern and what we’ve done by having electricity and artificial sun in our homes is we’ve created summer all the time. The other thing about it, the other part of it was this idea of why are we getting so much weight as a society?
One of the things that the author talked about is how we seem to fatten up as we go into winter, and so that’s … It’s the same rhythm where you fatten up during summer, at the end of summer, to get you through winter. That’s right, that’s what it was, so when you have light and when you’re awake, you’re less likely to burn off the fat or whatever and you’re more likely to eat. When you’re sleep deprived, certain things happen to you like you get hungry for carbohydrates so that’s why if you had a big night out in the morning you want pancakes or some toast or something. You want some hash browns or something really starchy, but you don’t necessarily want that or crave for that if you’ve had a full night’s sleep.
Anyway, I just thought it was an interesting idea because it might link to how your particular rhythms might change between summer and winter. That’s why they say it’s really bad for people to hop hemispheres and keep in the summer a year round. Although, it sounds like a really sexy thing to do, you might be just enough to disturb your sleep patterns. You know what I mean?
Darren: Yeah, exactly.
Walter: All that goes with it, yeah.
Darren: Well, I’ve noticed my trading …
Walter: You think it’s an interesting idea?
Darren: Yeah, my trading friends who live in … Up near the arctic circle in Finland and Sweden, they’re all obsessed with this idea of light and sun because it’s such an issue there. They’ve either go no sun at all or it’s daylight all day, and they have massive issues with suicide up there. No, there’s probably a lot of truth in that.
Walter: Wow, yeah. Then, don’t they also, I know a few traders from Norway and Sweden, so don’t they also spend a lot of time down South? They’d go down to Spain or Italy or something like that?
Darren: I think a lot of them would like too and I think some can’t necessarily do it because of work commitments, but I chat to this guy from Finland all the time and according to my architecture, if I ever I send him a picture of a beautiful wood house in the forest or so. He’s like I’m from Finland, right? I’m not interested. Find me a house on the beach because they’re just so keen to spend more time outdoors and in the sunlight.
Walter: Yeah.
Darren: The other interesting thing that I had from a trader this week. This going back to the point about your life being hectic and that. I get emails from another trader; a female trader. I noticed in her trading … I’ve got this bug now for looking at things in people’s life that might be replicating in their trading, and seeing where the link is and that. She’s got a really hectic schedule as well. She’s also got a young child, and I noticed when she was talking to me about her trading system, her … When she first sent it to me I said, “Well, how do you trade that way?” It seemed really complicated. It was pages and pages of detail in there.
I wonder whether in some of us, we just want to make it complicated because we’ve got a feeling that it’s something important and if you make it complicated, you’re more likely to succeed. She wasn’t particularly happy with that analogy that I made, but I do wonder that because we do all … Want to make trading a little bit more complicated thinking that that’s going to make it easier. Is that something you do?
Walter: Yeah, I think you’re right. I think that’s … Whether we realize it or not we probably think, look, there are a lot of very smart people, there’s teams of computers. All of these things are in the market and we have to somehow defeat them or, at least, occasionally win against this army of people with more resources and more power, the intellect and all that than we have, and so there must be something that we can do to tilt the odds in our favor and that might be adding three or four more indicators than we typically need.
I think you’re right about this idea of your trading may reflect your approach in life. What I try to do I think with my training, which is similar to what I try and do with my scheduling in my life is I have, essentially, two times during the day when I want to definitely see the charts. One is in the morning when the daily candle closes down here for me, which is 5 pm, New York time, and the other time is when London starts to trade.
To me, those are the most critical junctures in the chart. The other one would be when New York starts to trade, but I’m usually either sleeping or thinking about going to sleep when that happens. I try not to pay attention. Also, I find that, for me, it’s a little bit trickier to nail that that time period when New York comes in perhaps because I’m just not used to watching it as much, so by having these two packets of time that I want to pay attention to the charts, it’s … I guess, to me, it’s very similar to the way my week is set up where I have these packets of work, where I, essentially, have two days where I’m going to do ‘work stuff’, right? And then the rest of the time I’m trying to focus on other things which are not work or chart related.
What I’ve noticed the first time, Darren, I ever had a smartphone which was … I was an early adopter and had this phone that had … I worked out how to get Meta Trader on it and all this stuff, right? What I found was I would be out to dinner with my wife and … Which is an evening that London session, I’d be watching the chart and not really paying attention to what we were doing much having a nice dinner or whatever. What that meant was I was actually changing my trading plan and what I was going to do with a particular trade simply because I could watch the market unfold in front of me, and I had … I thought it was a great idea to have my account in my in my pocket, have Internet access and all that. This is this was 10 years ago, so it was a while ago, but it was the worst thing that ever happened to me.
I think that learning that get … I was like a light bulb came off on for me where I said, “Okay, well, it looks like I’m actually much better at coming into a chart fresh and seeing the chart after quite a bit it’s happened, and I’m not so good at analyzing it on the fly as it goes one hour; candle by one hour candle. That, to me, was a big leap for me in terms of the bottom line results because I’ve learned to give myself that buffer between glances at the chart.
I don’t know if this is typical for everyone, but for me it was a big deal to be able to get away from that crack addict feeling of having to see every one hour candle print, and that’s a really, to me, it’s been a very liberating thing.
Some people might say, “Well, Walter, that means you’re going to miss out and you’re going to get stopped out and things like that.” Well, if you’re trading the weekly chart or the daily chart and your stop loss is 200, 300, 500 pips away, that’s a rarity as it is, anyway, so you don’t really have to concern yourself with that. The advantages that you get and the benefits that you get from seeing the chart with fresh eyes, as I like to say, far outweighs the ability to make a decision on a trade that’s going pear shaped, so that’s what I found. I don’t know if that’s something similar to what you … For example, if you’re off on holiday, I don’t know, when you come back to the charts for the first time in a couple of days or weeks, does it does that make it easier for you?
Darren: It’s nice to come back. I think that idea of the structure and I go on a lot about … In my strategy, it’s about creating that structure rather than having any particular ‘this is what you’re looking for. This is the the free stars aligned’. It’s more about, like you say, having a structured day and a structured way of working. A lot of my strategy is just setting that structure up that you work within, and then there’s a few elements that decide the outcome; a few other elements.
I think we think it’s just strategy and emotions, and I think is that work flow as well. I think we say it’s about finding the right strategy for your personality, but it’s almost … It’s the right time frames for your life. For you, it’s that longer time frame and your structure. It’s almost like you structure your week and time frames as well. I do the same with me and I’ll have a two week … Two month period of trading and then a month of going and letting my hair down, enjoying myself and, yeah. It’s … You’ve got to find that way to step in and out of the trading arena that works for you, haven’t you?
Walter: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely right. Yeah, that’s the key, I think, is that you don’t … There’s a real concern in the beginning, I think, with getting this right. What traders tend to do is they default to their mentor or the person that they look up to rather than thinking about, like you say, how is this going to affect my life? How can I fit this in around my job and my family or whatever: The important things are in your life? To me, I think it takes a while for most people to get it right because they, essentially, just say, “Well, he’s making money so I’m just going to do what he does. He trades the New York Open on the 15 minutes charts, so that’s what I’ll do.”
Darren: Yeah, but he might have a completely different life set up. He might have no kids, he might be living in a condo in central New York and you might be living in a house in the woods in Finland. That’s, I think, that’s … I’ve never really seen anyone touch on that really and look at the other elements of your life and and how they’re going to impact on that. I know we’re told that you shouldn’t trade when they are impacting on it, but it’s almost impossible to do that because you’re there, you living it and it’s going on around you, and unless you’re in a position where you can dictate the rest of your life, but most of us we’re doing other jobs, we have other commitments and getting those elements right can make a big difference like I’ve been finding…
Now, it’s the added structure of this or daily trader has made me be disciplined on the days I’m trading I need to think about my analysis, like you were saying before, I might have just come and not really done my analysis because I know it in my head, but now I’m having to write it down, put it in a video and then share it with other people. I’m giving it a bit more focus and considering that.
Walter: Yeah, exactly. I think the big lesson for me is that traders who are feeling like it’s difficult to make all of … To tick all the boxes in any given day in terms of work, commitments and you’re trading, it probably means that you’re approaching it the wrong way. It probably means that you need to come at it from a different angle which is, “okay, now, when I’m I really going to be able to make my analysis?” Not in the morning because I’ve got to get my three kids ready for school, I’ve got to get on the subway and whatever, but when I get home after the kids are asleep maybe that’s the best time for me, so that’s when I’m going to set aside that 20, 30 minutes every day to figure out when I’m going to enter into these trades and what I’m going to do with the current trades.
That might be, for those people listening here, one thing to takeaway is, if it’s not working the way it is right now. If you feel like you’re missing out or you feel like you’re stressed out with your trading, it probably means that you need to restructure it in a way so that you can trade and you can be more relaxed and more deliberate in your approach.
In the beginning when I traded I felt like I had to be awake during the London session and that meant, living in California, that meant that you had to be awake in the middle of the night. That was probably the wrong way to do it. If I were to do it over, I probably would have instead gone to bed early and woke up before New York opens. That might have been a better approach and instead learn to approach the New York Open as my jumping off point as it were for the day or even better take a step back like I do today and look at higher time frames so that it’s not as critical when you’re watching the charts, so for those listening, I think that trading shouldn’t be another stress. It shouldn’t be another thing that adds to your sleep deprivation and I know a lot of people out there are probably like, “I used to be,” which is trading was so important that sleep came second, third or fourth on my list of things to do.
You can catch yourself when you’re not on your game. You can look back and see if some of the emails that you sent and the words were all jumbled up or the text on your phone. You know that you’re sleep deprived as a trader when you’re not coherent. That was the big thing for me was learning that, okay, I’m doing something really bad here because I can’t even get my words right, something’s going on. I need to figure out a way to get more sleep.
Darren: Yeah.
Walter: For me, the easiest way was just to move countries.
Darren: Yeah. Well, listen to my daily trader videos from last week if you know what it’s like when you’re sleep deprived. You’ve been drinking, smoking and staying up too late, too, but what would be great would be if some of the listeners here … This is interesting about structure. It’d be good if people perhaps leave some comments about how they structure their life around trading and if you’d get some feedback there.
Walter: Absolutely, yeah. That would be good, I think that would be helpful for, especially, if you’ve been training for a while, they’re going to be some people that are new to trading and that’s really going to be something that’s going to help them is to be able to point out some of the mistakes that you made, like I said, for me a big mistake was not ranking sleep high enough on the list, yeah.
All right, Darren. Well, I’ll see you next time. Thanks for your time and thanks a lot for today’s session. This was fun.
Darren: Yeah, cheers. Well, I’m going to get an early night.
Walter: Bye.
James
The importance of having a daily routine, and me “time” rather then “screen time” rings home. Especially the addictive nature to trading when your trading system and plan works..
I can relate being a x smoker! as well.. when you get a constant winning trades its natural to role back into old reward mechanisms.
After 4 years straight of trading successfully in FX I must admit I still today have to practice allot of self discipline.
Keep the Podcasts coming :0)
Walter
Too true, James, too true…
Self-discipline is the secret glue that holds all of the mechanical trading stuff together…
Enjoy your “me time!”
greg
Thanks boys. Informative and enjoyable. Best wishes, Greg.
Walter
Thanks Greg, it’s great to hear you are enjoying these… hope you’re trading is better for it as well… thanks for your feedback!