My Conversation with an HPT

We had to move our whole pod to a different location today since we were expanding and running out of space. It's kind of weird because there's all this space between Pat and me now reserved for the two rookies that are coming out to the floor soon. It's kind of weird... b/c now I'm not the rookie on the team anymore. As in, starting next week I'm going to have people asking ME questions. Snap!

I've been feeling like I'm plateauing lately. Some of it might has to do w/ the fact that February has been kind of slow. The other might have to do with the transition into more share size. It's not rare for me to take a 1,000 shares of EEM at times now. I think I took 1,500 shares once today and I shorted 1,000 shares of UNH today. Thank god I didn't get burned on that UNH. Even though I felt like it was really going to die and shorted strong into it I didn't mean to take that many shares. The thing dropped a point but then bounced hard for two and a half.


I wanted to talk to more HP traders (HP = $150,000+ in the past 12 months) and it was natural to start with David, my coach's coach. I should do this more than I have in the past. Maybe like one HP per month, just take them out to lunch or happy hour. There were quite a few things on my mind, mainly just frustrated with improving and usually Davi'd response was "it takes time." Not exactly what I wanted to hear, but maybe that's really it... there's no magic, no trick. If you put in the time and due diligence you will get what you deserve in return.


David's been trading MOO a lot lately and of course I asked him what's the kind of play he's making on that. I also happen to see someone had a spreadsheet of bunch of ETFs and looks like they're making plays off of their IVs. I think I'm going to try to do something similar.


Some takeaways from our conversation:


Once you have something that you do well, then either do it with more size or more often and you'll do better (for me that would be EEM right now. I'm kind of eager to see what Jane has to say from her analysis tomorrow)

If you put an order out and you're getting hit really quick then you're probably getting out too early

You do want to push yourself a little bit. Just slowly increase your share size to a little bit beyond your comfort zone but not so much where you're scared.