Thoughts

What did I learn the past year here. 

Work Life

-Trading is still my main goal. 9-5/7-3 aint cutting it for me.

-I work harder than most people.

-I am selfish. My extra time here is spent on trading, not on day job.

-I am truthful. I realize my mistakes/errors/bad judgement will come around to bite me in the ass.

-I will withhold truth. 

-I am ok taking a hit. I do not care if co workers do not fully understand my decisions. If they ask me, I will explain, if they assume I did X because of Y, fine. If they do not ask, I dont have an issue not telling. 

-I am quiet, 19/20 scenarios I handle myself. I do not always reach out to ask for guidance.

-When I am clueless, I ask for guidance, at the beginning as a newbie I had dozens of questions a day.

-Now that I am at a intermediate level, I am on cruise control. That fiery spirit is put into trading. Not in expanding knowledge of railroad. 

-I dont say no to anything. Only once maybe twice I have and only because I genuinely had too much to do. 

-Most do not understand me. I am simply built different.

-I am a spreadsheet freak. Spreadsheets for everything.

-I am a data collector. Pretty much knew this already but it expanded into railroad subjects.

-I hop back and forth.

    -I have an odd way of clearing my desk when it is full. Sometimes I will have 10 things to do all at once, ill do a little bit of 1 then 4 then 7 then 3 then finish 1 and skip to 9 then finish 4 etc. Other times I will do 1 to completion, 2 to completion etc. I dont know what this is. I dont think its harmful. I dont really make mistakes here. Maybe once a month I get myself into a situation that could have been handled better, an oversight, miscommunication etc. I dont think its something to worry about but it does lead me to think deeper about how this can relate and interrupt my trading habits.

-Miscommunication is the #1 reason errors occur at this place of work. 

-I miss journaling.

-I LOVE doing front end work, to avoid back end work. I will step out of my way on the front end if it gives me an edge on the back end. 

-I do put day job first. But I only put it first so I dont feel guilty about putting trading first. 

-I miss my family life everyday. I crave it. Everyday I get here in the morning, I think I can walk away from this, go home, and be totally fine with it. 

    -So this begs the question, why am I here? 

    -Insurance? Security? Extra cash?

    -I have a lot of money at my disposal. Its enough to sit on for roughly 3 years without an income. 

        -My investments are income, my day trading is not income. More on this in 2nd section. 

-Being a father has become the most enjoyable thing in my life. It makes me better in every way. 

-It takes stepping away from things to realize how important it is. You cant miss something if you're around it all the time. 

-My mindset reaches everything. The freak mindset. Kobe, Tim Grover, Rich Piana. Its in everything I do.

-Morning workouts will be with me for the rest of my life. I see no way out of it, nor do I want out of it. The morning is the best time for me to get it in. 

-The day after I wrote the above at work, I walked outside and the first thing I see is a Semi Truck with a giant SUPEREGO drive by. Sometimes God lets you know. What do I take that as? I try to stay humble. I try to stay in my lane. I like to get confident in what I do. I said above I am selfish. But is that a bad thing? No, I dont think so. Ultimately I am selfish for my family. I want money. I want trading to be my main large source of income. I want it for the freedom to be with my family. I want the money for the time. I want to homeschool my kids. I want to be there with them and guide them. I cant do any of these things if I am not selfish. 

-There is a balance between arrogance and humility. Too much of either is dangerous. I like to think im arrogant when I need to be, and humble when I need to be. Applying that to trading is key to success. Be arrogant, confident, overconfident with your size when your best setups are there. Be humble and stay away when you know it is not your best times to trade.

-Teamwork. I am not the best here, clearly. I make mistakes and errors come back to bite me later. This is kind of where my inward/outward selfishness comes into play. I want to be part of the team and learn and be better at my job, but only for the sake of time management to get more trading work done. The less time I have to spend clueless on new problems here, the more 'free' time I have to spend on trading. 

    -But this had made me realize having people better and smarter than you around as a resource, can only propel you higher. It is so hard to have this in trading. 

Trading Life

-In the last year I have created 2 foundational spreadsheets that lead to better trading decisions. They are all based on what the market is actually doing and measuring. 

SENTIMENT TRACKER

-Jan 2022 created sentiment tracker and in October 2022 expanded it dramatically to take a deep look at individual sectors, measure performance, and see trends within the trends to answer questions.

    -Which sector is best performing? Who is not? Who is stuck? Who is breaking out? Who is doing things it hasnt done in months? Who is showing signs of a turn? A failed break? A strong break?

-Its fun and my baby and I love using it every day. Color scheme very important to recognize changes in trends.

-When I found extra time at work, I had ideas on this sheet and I blew it up. I started creating tabs that you see at the bottom. 

-These look deeper into the sectors. I look at performance of FANG names, then the largest 20 marketcap stocks. Then the largest 20 tech stocks. All give cues.

-Other tabs are sector specific then I rank them in order of performance. At the end of every day I have a clear picture which sectors are leading and which are lagging. It is very clear that when markets are underperforming that defensive sectors lead, and when markets are hot, tech leads. When market is unsure, energy and finance lead. 

WATCHLIST TRACKER

-This is my big bad boy. I blew TF up with this idea. 

-It was finally time to let creativity shine. I had ideas, I needed to follow up.

-Wouldnt you like to know which stocks actually deserve to be up 200%? Which stocks have no business being up 200%? Which stocks are top tier in there industry? Which stocks in certain industries have best performance in the last few years? Or What does MCD earnings growth look like the past few years? Or its valuation metrics? How does KO compare to PEP? Which one is factually better? Which is objectively worse? 

-This is my fundamental analysis gone wild sheets. I have 650 stocks that are on this main watchlist and each of them have over 300 possible points to give me a score so that I may rank them. 

-If you want to trade RIVN long, wouldnt you like to have large funds on your side too? Looking for a bargain buy before it takes off? It adds fuel to the fire. What if I told you RIVN financials were so garbage that after looking at them you would never invest in them. But a day trade is fine. An investment? No way. And if the financials dont support longer term investments, why would hedge funds either? Now you know that your long idea should be short lived not long lived. And big money doesnt have a reason to back up your long.

-Opposite end of things you want to long MA? Well MA is one of the best companies on the planet. If you find a long you have every possible wind at your back supporting your idea. 

-These watchlist sheets tell me objectively where smart money would be smart to put there money. Because it gives you objective facts that are calculated into a score. This tracker is 5D. Its chess on steroids. Its not just a financial statement. Its an algorithm that compares a stock to its peers, its performance, its financial growth, its valuation, its valuation growth and Technicals. 

-I wont deep dive into every tab I have, but if you want to know, go ahead and ask me. I love to share.

-At the end of the day, or the beginning of the trading day, this gives me conviction in my long or short ideas. It tells me its ok to risk big on a certain name, or to only treat it as an average trade. 

-It took me about 4 months from creation to get this to a point where all my 'should I add this in?" ideas have been added in. 

-The initial reason I created it was for investment purposes. I had money I needed to park somewhere. I dont like the idea of just throwing money at names I like, what do financials say? Would that be a smart investment? What else is out there? 

-These sheets are at a point where you can give me a ticker and in about 5 minutes I can tell you if its worth it or not. 

-The learning curve on this was so much fun. I learned tons about new formulas and how they can work. 

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This brings you up to speed. I am still working in the railroad industry, but it isnt going to last much longer. I miss my family. I am giving time to another family and I will never get my family time back. I have savings to last me just fine for a good year or two. The big concern is always InSuRanCe but I have money to cover that too. I may come back to the working world again but for now I want to enjoy my little dudes time as much as I can. My family needs me more than my job needs me.