My Departure

I left my position on Monday. Got in after lunch and traded for a little bit. Up a few hundred bucks and basically decided right then that was that, final answer. Made the announcement to the team and handed in my key card. I've been going back and forth for the greater part of April even long before I made my previous post. It didn't quite hit me until the moment I took the keycard out of my wallet that this really is it. The point of no return.

There are so many factors at play here and maybe I'm making things more complicated than they are but I'll try to address them here, including some of the comments from the previous post.

Did I want to walk away from trading and Kershner? No. God forbid that somebody actually loves what they do for a living and the people they work with. It's exactly because of that complicated the decision process for me I think. There's this book by Malcolm Gladwell that is on my reading list (I'm reading Malcolm's Blink right now) called Outliers: The Story of Success, where he uses examples like Bill Gates and at one point I know he said that before becoming an expert you need to put in like 10,000 hours of practice or work. If you do the math, there are 6.5 trading hours a day, not counting pre and post-market action and 250 trading days to a year, 10,000 hours is the equivalent of 6.15 years. I still got a ways to go. I've made my decision based on current situation, current facts with the opportunity potential. It's not that I'm obligated to help out mom and pop. I could've chosen to be like my sister and do my own thing.

The main reason is the fact that my parents have entrusted in me to take the family business to the next level. We have a patent on one of our products and that's helped us tremendously for quite a few years now. Right now just seems like a good transition point and critical for us to position ourselves for years to come. I suppose it's because of the economy but there are quite a few changes in personnel in our clients and my dad feels this is a good time to introduce me to the new blood. We also wanted to solidify our relationships before the patent expires... not for close to another decade I think. Meanwhile when we still have this competitive advantage we want to grow into other markets like in Europe. A family friend works for the government and has been stationed outside of the country like in South America and currently he is in Saudi I believe. We're planning to do Christmas in the middle east this year and I'm sure we'll try to gain some contacts and pre-approach while we're there as well.

To me, this is exciting. I've been working for my dad in some capacity since I was probably 5 or 6 years old. There's no child labor law in Taiwan when we were living there, heh. From just sweeping the floor to being on call for the night shift; from menial repetitive jobs on the assembly line to reviewing contracts and handling accounts receivable/payable I've seem and involved in every process of the business. There are some greater details that my parents need to bring me up to speed on before they fully let go the reins but I envision us doing 2 or 3 times the business we've been doing.

There are certain facts my parents purposely withheld from my sister and me as we were growing up. They never wanted us to know how poorly or well we were doing as a family. God bless them for that. I know at least on two difference occasions we had to move b/c of rent issues that I was not even aware of until I was in college. I think they thought we might have self-esteem issues if we knew how poorly we were doing early on and lose our work ethics if we found out how much money we were actually making. I'll be honest with you, I still don't know exactly what our yearly revenue and profit numbers are like. I only have an idea or ballpark figure. Even if I do obviously I wouldn't be disclosing it here. They don't want me to think that I'm set for life and that the biz would just be here for me when I graduate and they'll just hand it over to me. They've even gone as far as to discourage me the idea of working full time helping my dad. But now everybody in the family believe that I'm the best person to take it to where we want to go.

I appreciation the time people actually takes to read what's on my mind. My impression is that people range from having no idea about trading/Kershner to 10+ years of trading experience or actually works @ Kershner right now. There are a lot of things happening behind the scenes that even us normal traders like me don't know about. I've been blessed that my coach is on Trader Council and would share with us information that might not be as readily available on the floor, but nothing that's classified. All that is another post at another time. I think mainly you continue to read this because you don't fully understand. Basically situations changed quite a bit with me and at Kershner from two years ago when I joined the firm.

Bottom line: the market is going to stay open and the opportunities and timing with the family business would not come again. I do have to take into account that the people who left comments on the previous post is somebody that just started at Kershner and somebody that didn't get a position. I still do very much love trading and I don't want to influence anybody's decision or pursuit of their passion just b/c of my situation. There's only 24 hours in a day and something's gotta give.