The Part-Time Trader (12 page)

No matter your circumstances as a part-time trader in the workplace, it is not impossible to succeed. Modern technological advancements have made it where you can be as fluid as a river in your approach to trading. Regardless of the barriers that might be put in your way, succeeding as a part-time trader has never before been within your grasp as much as it is today. You cannot expect the organization that you work for to lay out the red carpet for you and provide you with all the tools that you need, but the tools are available outside of them, and you simply need to reach out and take the reins that leads to you trading profitably.

W
e all hate it when that early morning alarm goes off. If you are like me, I have to set multiple alarms because I am such a heavy sleeper. If it were a Monday, I was almost certain to clock in late. I could get pretty bitter about the prospect of returning to work on a Monday. In fact, Sundays would more times than not find me in a dour mood because it was the last day of the weekend, and that meant the beginning of another five-day workweek, which always felt like an eternity until Friday came around again.

I became quite the nighthawk simply because going to sleep at night meant a quick passage to the next day of work. Instead of going to sleep at a respectable time like 11 P.M., I would extend my evenings to 1 A.M. or later. That way, I was able to extend my awake time from work by a couple of extra hours.

One thing I learned as a trader is that I could not simply just “wing it” with my trading once I got to work. More specifically, I could not do all my premarket research while on the job (that is because I had far more important obligations I was required to address like my starting fantasy football lineups, the latest political scandal on the Drudge Report, and filling out my NCAA Tourney bracket). The time was not there for me to do my premarket research, and I needed to conduct that effort in a distraction-free environment. The confines of my home was the place to do that in order to make sure that I gave myself the best chance at trading successfully during the day ahead.

The premarket research is by far the most important part of a trader's daily routine. Not doing the required work up front is like taking a vacation without bothering to map out how to get to your final destination, or cooking a five-course meal without checking to see first whether you have all the necessary ingredients. In the corporate world it is equivalent to not filling out a “strategic guide plan” before you complete a “process improvement initiative” that allows for you to populate your “weekly activity metric.”

In essence, you
must
complete your trading research before you clock in.

Out of necessity, I got in the habit early on of waking up at 5 A.M. each morning to prepare for the market session that awaited me that day. I was blogging as well, and that often helped me with my research, to define market conditions in writing rather than try and store away the analysis in the back of my head.

After running through my screens and combing through my actionable trade setups for the day, I would find that it was often extremely difficult to get to work before 7:30 A.M.; having to be at work before 8 A.M. seemed to be some form of cruel and unusual punishment. The only thing worse would be an unpaid internship position.

I kid you not, it seemed that no matter how efficiently I managed my time studying the markets, I simply could not make it to work by that blasted 7:30 A.M. start time. Obviously, if I did not have to spend a couple of hours each morning putting together my plan for trading each day, I would be able to get there on time. But if I am really honest with myself, if I did not have to do the amount of research starting at 5 A.M. each morning, I'd probably just sleep in regularly until 7 A.M. and then struggle still to be at my desk on time. What is even more amazing is that they actually expected us to be working at full-tilt by 7:30 A.M.

The boss man and that cold-hearted employee manual they gave us when we were hired stated that coffee, water, and “chit-chat” had to be done before the start time. Furthermore, the computer should be booted up and running and we should be “in progress” with the day's current assignments. What were they expecting, though—for all of us to just file in like robots that cannot think, eat, or do anything but company work, simply because we are on company time?

In theory, I might make myself sound like an idiot with that previous statement, but in reality, companies in Western civilization with employees earning salaries with advanced education will face massive employee turnover year after year if they don't allow for subtle office comforts. That means not coming down hard on an employee even though he is a solid contributor, because he decides to check out the box scores on ESPN from last night's baseball games or maybe has a thing for the office secretary and enjoys dropping by her desk for some small talk with higher hopes for the future.

That employee manual was so hated that I could have become somewhat of a cult hero among my colleagues had I made a custom “peeing Calvin” sticker letting loose on that blasted, unsympathetic handbook and stuck it to my office door. But then my plans of seamlessly transitioning from the part-time to the full-time trader would have been thwarted.

Often, I would show up to work 20 to 30 minutes late. Sometimes my office location was right near the boss, and other times my office was in a different geographical location or just a different part of the building. Either way, I had my tricks of the trade. There was no way that I could literally wake up earlier, without having to practically go to bed as soon as I got home from work, and as you know from what I wrote about earlier in this chapter, maximizing my evening hours was very important to me. So there was no doubt a certain degree of lateness to my work arrival when you not only have to do all your research in the mornings, but still had to eat breakfast, sometimes get the little buckaroo up and fed, and not forget about getting my own self ready as well. Those two hours each morning before work tended to go by really, really quick.

When I pulled into the parking lot, there were a number of steps that I would take in order for the boss man to not realize I was arriving late on the scene. First, I would park in a location that was not in direct view of his office window. To do so would be sheer stupidity, but nonetheless a common “rookie mistake” often made by new hires in the workforce.

Let's face it, no matter what you do thereafter during the day, or to conceal your lateness, if you are seen driving into the workplace after the day has started for everyone else, you are done for—toast! Everything you do the rest of the day will be tainted through those lenses of your late morning arrival. Now I actually had some good bosses that actually did not care if I came in late, just as long as I did the job well and did not make them look bad. Those “Garys” got it. They understood how to strike a positive relationship and trust between boss man and employee. But most allow the power they wield to go straight to their head and will cut off their nose to spite their face. If you are a boss man reading this, do not be that guy.

Once you master this simple step, you then proceed to get out of the car. Here, it is important to keep your head on a 180-degree swivel. If you have to swipe a card to get inside the office building, it is important to be aware of any other latecomers that you can trail into the building. But do not make it obvious that you are trying to trail them in. And by trailing I simply mean letting that individual swipe in first, and when he walks in, you just follow in behind him. That eliminates any possibility that you will be electronically snitched on. Sometimes if I noticed a late arrival coming in behind me, I would drop to one knee and start tying my shoe until she passed by me. I would not follow close behind, but just enough so that I knew I would be able to catch the door before it closed on me.

The route to your office should be one that avoids all paths that could likely result in your running into your boss. Oh, yes, and another tip. Do not walk in with anything. I mean nothing. I understand that you may have coffee, bags, lunches, purses, and other personal items that are of importance to you, but do not walk into the office the first time in the day with them in tow if you are going to be late.

Leave them in the car, because the key here is to look like you were on time and since the boss man has not seen you from 15 minutes earlier when you were supposed to be at your desk steadily plodding away at the day's responsibilities, you have to give the impression beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have been there all along and he just had not run into you until now. So leave the personal effects in the car, at least until you've been seen by those who “matter.”

Now, if you want to personally touch it up some, do what I did when I went about it as I tried to win an Oscar for my dramatization of the on-time employee (by the way, add a little drama to my storyline in this book, and you have a great made-for-TV series ready for primetime viewing). Find the printer not in your department or outside in the hallways and go there first before going to your office. Grab a couple of sheets of paper off of the printer and start walking down the hallway with them in hand. You can also accessorize this look by actually bringing in the cup of coffee that you left in the car. But when you walk in, with the papers in hand, you will want to look deeply at those pages. It is preferable that you have some content on those pages as well.

Most of the time printers are chock-full of abandoned printouts that people forgot to pick up from days ago or they were simply just too lazy to go and get them. Target those as your props for appearing on time. If you can find some of those wide 11-by-16 printouts, it is even better. That is when people know you've really got your act together because you will probably have some crazy flowcharts and metrics and other material that moistens the tastebuds of upper management.

So with your coffee in the left hand and your printouts in the right hand, just casually stroll into your department, sipping on the coffee but not taking your eyes off of the printouts in hand. A little talking to yourself that registers slightly higher than a mumble really sells your “timeliness.” No one will think for a moment that you are just now walking in. Then, to just bring it home, drop your hand that is holding the pages down to your thigh so that the pages make a noise of their own, throw your head back, and say something to the effect of “Not again . . .,” “They still didn't add the quality inspection into the process like they were supposed to,” or my personal favorite (combo-style): “Dadgum, those slackers left it out again. I guess we are just going to have to schedule a status meeting to address this and make sure we have the necessary accountability metrics in place next time.” Instead of hearing a “You're late,” you'll instead hear sympathy in the form of “What now,” “How can I help,” and so on. Your response only needs to be, “No, no, nothing you can do, I just expect others to be as passionate about their job as I am.”

Let me just say that if someone hears you say that kind of stuff, or if you have a document in hand that you just happened to swipe off of the neglected pile of printout rejects, no one is going to question if you are late or that you spent the last two hours at home researching and planning your trading session that will commence in the next couple of hours.

Use technology to your benefit. Sell yourself as being sold out to your company, even though every bone in your body longs for the full-time trading career. In reality, this does not just apply to traders but to anyone looking to escape the rigors of the corporate world. Some people love it, and good for them; I applaud them for it. But I was never really cut out for all the nonsense that goes into a job where you are better known by your company as a series of digits on your employee badge rather than by your actual first and last name.

Despite that, I could play the game to my own benefit better than anyone. Had I truly taken a liking to my job and had a desire to move up the ladder with the Edwards and Debbies, I most certainly would have done well at it, but in doing so I felt like I would cheapen my own self-worth by humiliatingly having to be almost worshipful of the CEOs, CFOs, managers, and directors alike.

Despite my belief and our Founding Fathers' beliefs that all men are created equal, it does not play out that way in the corporate world. Do not fool yourself—most CEOs have such an elevated view of themselves that they feel the need to separate themselves from the crowd, with special parking spots, private dining rooms, and their own personal bathroom, just so they don't have to intermingle with the commoners.

I was definitely a company guy but for my own personal reasons. I wanted out. That was the long-term solution, but in order achieve that, I had to sell myself as the ideal employee in the short term so that I could realize my own personal dreams and desires.

One way I played the role of the ideal employee was through various and subtle nuances. If you think about it long and hard, there are plenty of ways you can do this in different forms and versions of what I write about throughout the pages of this book. Get familiar with the delayed e-mail. When the company let out at 5 P.M., and it was 4:55 P.M. and I was still typing up a personal e-mail, I didn't send it out at 4:57 P.M. No way! That just looked like I was just trying to get something out the door before I walked out of the office at the earliest time allowed under company rules. Instead, I would use my e-mail software, and set up the option to not deliver the e-mail until 6:04 P.M. Not an exact number like 6 P.M. because that looks too obvious. Instead I would choose times that ended in 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, or 9.

Before I would leave at 5 P.M., I would make sure that the e-mail I was working on right until the end was sent out later on. Ideally, I wanted this e-mail to be sent to someone in a position of authority. Perhaps it was a question about a project I was working on, or maybe a “status update” (buzzword!), or just a quick note about an assignment I thought the boss man needed to be made aware of. It didn't have to be every day; in fact, you don't want this to happen every day—just enough for them to think, “Hey, this guy is sold out to our company—what an incredible work ethic!”