In Which Rogue Traderette is Unemployed. Sort of.
One of the very first things that drew me to the stock market – aside from the instant wealth it was going to provide me in three and a half minutes – was the fact that I could have the life I wanted to have, sans employer. Jim, my gorgeous husband, works as a school Principal and has brilliant holidays and I could not, no matter how hard I tried, find a job that would give me 12 weeks paid leave a year without a teaching degree. Stupid employers 
So when faced with a choice of between -
1. Being unemployed forever (not entirely unappealing)
2. Going to University for four years to become a teacher (Studying is fine, but becoming a teacher? I’d rather live with 3 dead mice electrocuted in my oven and the associated smell for the rest of my life.) (And yes, that really happened to me in my kitchen last week.)
3. Getting a 12-weeks-paid-leave-less job, and have to go to work while the rest of my family go to Fiji. Or,
4. Find Some Other Way.
Find Some Other Way won. While being unemployed forever does have its appeal, I don’t want my brain to dissolve and I’ve heard that can happen when you spend too much time on the couch eating Tim Tams.
And Bends the Market to Her Will. Sort of.
So the markets lured me. They promised Ultimate Flexibility, and it is this very thing that can make the difference between an okay “it’ll do” trading system and one that’s a perfect fit.
There is no one set way to trade in the markets – there are an infinite array of possibilities that can be tailored to suit the trader and the way they need trading to fit into their lives. So when we are designing our systems it’s important we have a clear view of how we want our life to look. Or, even more importantly, how we don’t want our lives to look.
For example – I like to sleep. And if I can wrangle it, I prefer to sleep at night. Armed with that one snippet of information, I can safely rule out trading e-minis for the simple fact they trade when I’d rather be in bed.
We are very lucky as traders because we aren’t selling our time to our boss like regular 9-5ers so we can literally trade when we want to, when it suits us, in a style that is conducive to the kind of life we want to lead.
For me personally, I want to drop my kids at school without rushing off to work (or to trade, for that matter.) Once I’m at school, I want to have time to chat with the kids teachers to make sure everything is cool. This means I don’t want to have to be there when the Aussie market opens.
Then I want to be able come home, and play with my small son. I want to have time to do things that interest me, like painting or sewing or whatever is the flavour of the minute (blogging?!), with perhaps only a quick glance at the markets.
And because I designed the systems I use, I have these things in my life. I have no employer, and lots of time. (See why being unemployed wasn’t entirely unappealing?!)
Trading allows traders to design their lives. It can be how you want it to be. You just need to have a very clear view of your own objectives (which I will chat about shortly), a vision of how you’d like your life to be, and the willingness to put in the time and hard work to make it happen.
