My First FOMC

Today is an exciting day. It's the first time I'm in the office when the Fed announces rate decision, which means that there will be not a whole lot of activity up until the moment the announcement is made. Sure enough, right as the news was about to come out a flurry of orders were sent out. I was looking at Goldman Sachs for a while and there were just so much activity I can hardly keep up. It felt like when you play tetris and you get to a certain level and the pieces are falling down so quickly you have no time to react whatsoever. "Holy crap, what do I do??" I can't wait to get out on the trading floor. I think at one point after the decision announcement the Dow was down about 100 points and soared to +100 points before finally closing at +35. That kind of volatility is great for us day traders but probably sucks for individual investors that have no idea what's going on.

We got through pretty much all the function in Gr8trade. I feel much better about what all the screens the traders look at now and not like such a big moron anymore. There are a few lingo we came across today that I'm not so sure about which I probably have to look it up later and read about them. We also filled out our short bio sheet and Billy took a picture of us for the employee profiles. I look like a dork, as always.

We closed out the afternoon with learning about Insight. It's a software that acts as a ticker if your desired premises are met so you can pull the trigger and get in that stock. It really is quite remarkable. I'm beginning to understand what HR means when they keep telling us about the proprietary software Kershner has and how they give the traders an edge.

I went into Chrissy's office today to give her my voided check for my direct deposit and met one of the former specialist that will be joining us. "Don't be afraid to lose money" is what he said to me. It reminds me of poker. You have to be willing to put your chips in the middle, but when to put your chips in and how much is up to your individual skills from weighing the risk/reward. Yes, you'll probably lose money from time to time, but that comes with the territory. If you don't hit on the flop and maybe you'll need to fold the hand, or maybe you stay in and try to make your hand on the turn or the river. If you win big pots and lose small pots you'll still come out positive. There's a lot of ways you can read into what he said, but at least that's what I got out of it so far.