Sorry you haven’t been getting much out of me lately. I’ve been getting to bed too late, getting up too early, and really stressing myself out with the stock stuff. Having been unable to hold to my own rules, which has cost me a decent chunk of greenbacks, I’m taking a step back and reevaluating my approach.
Bottom line, I was getting into day trading to give me a chance at making money in the mornings before going out and doing my nonprofit-type work. Currently, though, the way I’ve been trading, if I hold to my rules, yes, I make money, but it’s taking a lot of emotional energy and time. In order to do what I want, which is make $300 minimum per day trading just a couple hours a day max, I need to change my strategy. So… I’m working on a new strategy. I wouldn’t have any problems if I were trading on margin. Then I don’t have to worry about having my money tied up and unusable for two days after I make a trade. But… borrowing money to trade just… no. Not gonna do that–at least not on a large scale. I might experiment with a max of $1000 because another way to look at what’s cost me so dearly in my losses is the battle of being willing to take a much smaller profit than I want, knowing my money will then be tied up for days. It’s the desire to make a bigger return on the invested money that got me to hold when I should have sold the other day, the error that led to the super crappy big loss.
Were I trading on margin, able to buy and sell without having to worry about waiting two days to be able to use my money again, then I’d have sold without hesitation. Take the profit, play again in 5 seconds. Not… take the profit, stand on the sidelines for 2 days while I wait for my transactions to settle.
It really is funny how the world is run by debt. They make debt the way to go. Transactions are instantaneous electronically, but we have to wait 2 days for the money to settle? Really? Good gravy. It’s a blasted cash transfer. It’s seconds, if not quicker.
But whatever.
I might experiment on margin here and limit myself to $1000 as a max investment. We’ll see. So much less pressure to hold out for a better return when you get the money back to play with immediately. It’s a lot easier, emotionally/psychologically to take the small gains as they come because you’re right there ready to play again without issues.
Anyway, don’t know if that makes sense. I’ve been learning a strategy from Ross of Warrior Trading. I like the approach. If I’m disciplined, it checks all my boxes for a trading strategy that would provide the income without sucking too much life away. He trades for maybe an hour or two a day and makes really good money.
We’ll see. If I can’t get what I’m hoping, then I’ll just walk away from trading. I’m not looking for a new full-time job. I’m looking to use my money to make money in a way that doesn’t take much time away from my non-profit goals. If a morning, in/out and done-for-the-day strategy doesn’t provide what I’m hoping, then… nope. We’ll look for something else.
The stress level has been far too high to this point to be worth the gains, even before the big loss from a couple days ago. I don’t want to be thinking about pending positions all day long, hoping stocks are going up, afraid they’re going down.
No. That’s not what I need. What I want is in, out, done. Go on with the rest of my day. So… I’m learning related strategies, and we’ll see. I’ve made some money with that morning strategy when I’m able to stay disciplined. It’s when I try and push the envelope that I lose. Discipline. That’s… huge.
Speaking of the rest of my day, only two cars today. First job was a Ford F250 6.7 diesel that they’d been driving with the brakes metal on metal for like four days. They did that until the brake pad backing plate was ejected from the caliper bracket, the caliper was ruined (the pistons popped completely out and floppy, and even the aluminum wheel damaged when the ejected backing plate got got between the rim and the caliper.
Good gravy.
Suggestion/request: 1. Have your brake pads checked at every oil change, or every 5k-10k miles. Some brake pads don’t come with warning sensors, so you’ll never get the high pitched screech before the metal-on-metal grind. So… just have them checked. #2. If you brake pads do have wear sensors, then as soon as you hear the high-pitched screech, get your brake pads changed. Failure to do that in time will result in needing to replace your rotors as soon as they go metal on metal, and if you go that way for very long at all, then you need calipers, too.
It’s… expensive. Had they been on top of their pad wear, their bill today could have been around $200-250. As it was, it was over $1100.
Ouch.
Please, folks, stay on top of your brakes. Had they gone much further, they could have lost all their brakes, blowing brake fluid all over the road, and that with a trailer behind them.
Nope. Not worth it. Get your brakes done as soon as you hear the squeal when you’re coming to a stop, or if you don’t have wear sensors, meaning that you won’t hear any sound, then change them as soon as they hid the red-level thickness (a couple millimeters, or so, of pad left).
Anyway, tangent.
After that, I tried to get my Missouri business stuff taken care of, but their online process wasn’t… well designed, so there was a spot where they wouldn’t let me go forward anymore in the application process, and that particular page didn’t have a back/previous option, so I had to just close out of the whole thing because I couldn’t go back to edit the previous page I’d filled out.
All the other ones had back buttons. Not sure why they didn’t allow it on that one. Anyway, so that was a bunch of mostly wasted time, but whatever, no biggie. Second job was installing an ABS sensor and fender liner on a Toyota Yaris… 2016, I think.
Time for bed. Past 12:30. Must sleep. Up at 5:45 tomorrow.
On a positive, I’m really grateful that I’ve managed to take the stock trading loss really well. I’m not sick about it (I was the first day when I was down a lot less than what I ended up being down in the end). I’m not trying to overcompensate by jumping in and making risky trades to “make up” for my losses. I’m just going forward. It happened. It’s over. It’s done. It happens. It’s just money. Life goes on. I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing and will just keep trying to improve, and we’ll go from there.
Oh, update. If I didn’t already mention it, another day, another Match.com person I messaged who hasn’t replied, going on 2 days now. Hard to stay motivated when people don’t even reply to me. I’m naturally shy, and it’s hard to reach out and risk like that, and when I’m already feeling beaten down for so long, when I’m in a place where my resilience is nearly nill, it’s hard to keep… making the effort, knowing that the people I’m interested in getting to know more almost certainly won’t even acknowledge I messaged them.
I showed my profile to a female friend of mine today, and her first response for why I’m not getting replies was because the women are crazy (something like that. I forget exactly what she said. It was complimentary to me). I pushed her a little bit, wanting blunt, direct, brutal honesty, and she said that I need different pictures, more light, and that my profile is too nice–that for some reason, the girls just want a little… bad whatever (the old cliche that girls always go for the bad guys). She’s like, they’ll love the nice, but it won’t be what first gets their attention.
She laughed at my reaction. She knows that being the edgy sort of bad guy is totally not me. I’m the sensitive, caring, nice guy. Which… as the cliche plays out so frequently in my experience as well, nice guys don’t get the girls. The “bad” guys do.
Funny women. They seem to go for the bad guys and always complain about there not being good guys (don’t mean that to be offensive. I know that’s a huge generalization, and everyone is an individual with individual, unique experiences and lives, but I think that represents my own observations and experiences in my own life, and also fits the cliche you regularly hear about).
Anyway, so… before I send my next message, I’ll change up the pictures, de-niceify my profile, while still leaving it… nice. 🙃 And… we’ll see what happens.
Love to all.
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 