My Spinning Plates

Haven't been updating lately. Been pretty busy. I'm actually feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment. I constantly feel a tightness in my lung, not in a way where I'm in pain or anything wrong with me physically. It's probably just that I'm constantly thinking about the business and trading. Not to say that I've never had to worry about money, but I've never felt monetary pressure like this before. Plus we're building a pool right now, which estimate is about $70k that will most likely end up in the 6 figure area in my opinion.

I really should be doing a better job at managing this, after having gone through Dale Carnegie training and all that. In fact, I was so out of whack and not myself I called up JT for lunch. I kind of wanted someone that have no idea what I do and just chat for a bit. I'm not sure how to describe what I'm going through. The best analogy I can come up with was the circus act you see where they spinning many plates on a stick. Under the optimal condition, everything would be spinning and you just have to occasionally walk over to a plate and give it a little extra spin. Right now if feels like as if all of my plates are wobbling and about to come crashing down.

Trading hasn't been that well either. The volume is pitiful. On top of that I think I'm probably trying to make up for lost time and trading much bigger for the hours that I'm actually trading. It's just really hard to focus, at least for me, to take yourself away from the market for a while and then expect to jump back in and be completely in tune and able to read what the market is telling you. I've adjusted to trading a lot less and much smaller position size and it's gotten better.

I tend to have these little Mik Matusow-esque blow-ups. If I'm trading that entire day, I usually just do what I do and be up maybe a thousand dollars at the end of the day, give and take a few hundred. But from time to time, seems like prior to the close I'd jump ahead of the volume and might get whipped out or take a loser on a big size and just lose my mind from that point on where I feel like I need to make that money back and revenge trade or just not thinking clearly at all and getting into trades w/out clear rational reasoning and risk/reward behind it.

Expensive lesson... I really just need to leave all the baggage at the door if I'm going in to trade and stick to my trading style. We hear about some of the people that swings really big size here and in reality it's probably just a small minority of the traders and totally not representative of how people trade here. It's funny that when I feel the need to make money or when I'm trading to MAKE money that's exactly when I don't do well... I know it almost feels illogical but when I'm put myself in the position where I'm just looking for my set ups and not caring if I make money or not that's when I'm seeing the market well. That's when I actually make money. This echoes a little bit of what Mark Douglas writes about in his book I think.

I'm going to Dallas tomorrow to meet one of our customers. They represent about 20% of our sales revenue. I need to review some sales stuff and prepare questions and stuff for the meeting tomorrow.