Trader Habits is Born
Imagine you are trying to get to the other side of the forest. Your only goal is to get to the other side. The first time through it is very hard. You pick a path, because of your instincts. Instincts that are based on your experience and your reward system. After each time the path gets wider and easy to pass through. Eventually you get to the other side without much thinking. This is good and bad. It is good because a task that was hard is now easy. It is bad because after passing through the forest many times you have a new set of experiences. It becomes obvious a different path is more efficient. Once again you have to make it to the other side, it is hard again. It is even harder because you know there is a path very close by that gets you there. Trading gives you an opportunity to create a better path by learning about yourself, the market, and the interaction between the two. It take a long time to develop good habits, at times it is easier to follow the old path. Over time the hard path becomes easier and at the very moment you may be forced to start a new path. But now you have a process and processes do not break.
About Me
I literally jumped into trading. I got the money to open my first trading account from a bet involving the LaSalle Street Bridge and libations. I learned a lot from that moment about trading. First I negotiated the purse down from half the original amount; never give any of your trading account balance out of desperation. Secondly, never be in a situation trading when money becomes a factor. Most of the experiences in my life have helped me to shape my trading identity.
Playing college football has been the most significant force that shaped my trading identity. I am not one of those former athletes who say that if I had only not been injured I would have played professionally. Yes I did inherit my grandfather’s knees and after five surgeries there was not a lot of knee left. The truth is I was not good enough or more over I was not willing to do what was necessary to keep playing. That failure was one of the best things to ever happened to me. It was first time in my life that I wanted something and did not achieve it. When one door opens an infinite number open. After college, I moved to Chicago, it is probably similar to someone who does not know they want to be an actor moving to L.A. The truth is I moved to Chicago to work in the restaurant business and found trading in the best town to trade futures.
I stepped on the trading floor at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, it was amazing. It was like the first time I stepped onto the football field. The lights were bright, the energy was contagious, and I could see the emotion. Deafening silence followed by deafening eruptions, fear everywhere, not the type of fear from physical pain, it was more intense. I saw happiness, but that was bred from relief, I would understand later. The pain of losing, not money but their livelihood was everywhere. That should have scared me but it drew me closer. It was chaos but only because I did not understand it. It was like being in a dream. My initiation to the trading floor gave me a lot more information than I could grasp at the time. I was hooked; I knew that trading was going to be my singular focus. Unfortunately, it would all take a lot of time and cause me a lot of pain.
I was fortunate to be taken under the wing of some of the top traders at the CME. I later had an opportunity to pass some of that knowledge along to other traders as an educator. It turned out to be the perfect combination, trading and being able to teach others. I was able to give back, similar to the coaches that had helped me in my athletic career. Jumping into that river set me on the path to finding something that gives every fiber of my being purpose. Trading is not glamorous, it is not easy, it is scary, it can be taken from me at any time but there is nothing else I would rather be doing. If at any point you have any questions or do not understand something or question what I wrote please feel free to send me an email: eli@traderhabits.com.
