What Learnings Have You Had Trading for a Living

The learnings that I’ve had by trading for a living is having confidence in the systems. Last year, the return is not positive, this goes for a lot of trend following momentum traders. For one and a half years I’m in a drawdown and that takes a lot of confidence, emotional pain, especially when this is your main income, and trading is my main income. I have some other incomes, but not generating consistent profits in the last, around 14 to 16 months had a huge impact on my confidence, personality-wise. Realising this, I say, “Okay, Joachim, take a step back. What can you do now? You can add different strategies like seasonal strategies and this makes your overall portfolio much more consistent.” And then just remembering, the time is not the best time for trend following momentum strategies, and this is part of the game. If you want to stay long-term, I need to get more different strategies and consider taking a job on top to not drain my trading capital.

These are a lot of lessons or thoughts I kept the last eight months, because it’s not only taking a job, it’s also impacting my whole lifestyle. I want to get up early in the morning and do my two-hour yoga session, which is very important for me. If I take a part-time job, and I say, “Look, guys, I can work from 10 to 15” it’s like you don’t get many results back. It’s good to have confidence and also maybe diversify your incomes, instead of just trade. Also, it’s good to start sharing your knowledge because you accumulate a lot of knowledge when you trade over eight years and there’s a lot of theoretical knowledge, but there’s also some experience which you cannot read. Lastly, sharing this experience with other people is also very satisfying, and you get different incomes, so you’re more resistant against the market fluctuation, which is also good.