bigato's journal

[freedom86]

I started using pomodoro technique coupled with headphones to be able to be productive at work. Also started talking to colleagues about the talking affects concentration, and inquiring what we could do to convince the boss to let us work from home at least once a week. Kind of testing the waters to start a mutiny. The most senior colleague is very much on my side on this. Boss also hates the talking, but then he hates imposing himself as a boss. And is against remote work, but we'll get to that eventually. Good news is that the company is talking about substituting desktop computers for laptops and implementing coworking spaces, making remote work more normal, etc.

Hey bigato,

you should find out about the primary decider's desires & then suggest a test phase.

I did it his way:

"Hey [decider],

I think, that I could contribute far more to your [decider's primary desires].
Currently the work environment is holding me back,
because it's [noisy/ugly/whatever your problem is].

I think I can do much better, therefore I have the idea of starting a test phase, where I work one day per week from home.
I wouldn't need to commute, what would give me more energy & time to contribute to [decider's primary desires]
and I wouldn't have to spend energy to cope with [problems from above].

It's only a test phase, no risk for you & we can talk about which days I'll work from home."

At the test days, you have to show your peak performance.

[suomalainen]

Meh. People invest how they want to invest based on what appears to be their very deeply-set biases, and I've found there's not much point discussing it. Sell everything and go into gold! Sure, why not. I suspect many others are in the same boat where they are reading, but there's just no point in arguing investment theses over the interwebs. Everyone's an investing genius in their own minds.

[BookLoverL]

Sounds like an interesting person to meet, then.

[Ego]

Wow. That sounds like the kind of person who could open lots if interesting doors. Are you interested in what he teaches?

[classical_Liberal]

Ahh, the advantages of social skills . I couldn't help myself.

This Sunday I watched the six-parts bbc documentary called "The Ascent of Money", about economic history.

Would your recommend? did it change the way you view investing?

Edit: I just read this too

After the one hour or so of talk, he wanted to pay my tab, so I ended eating free vegan food in exchange for sharing info I'm excited about

WTF Bigato? for a self proclaimed on spectrum autistic, you seem to be rocking the social scene!

[Ego]

I was wondering where you've been. That sounds like a great adventure taking a 24 hour bus ride across the country.

[halfmoon]

On the other side, having the stream of money from the job can make that much faster. I may try to push for telecommuting after I finish the project I'm in, so that I have the option to move there sooner and possibly keeping the job for longer, at least as long as necessary to do all the restorations I want and maybe more if I keep liking my job.

I know nothing about Brazil, but many rural areas in the US have challenged internet speeds that aren't conducive to telecommuting. Aside from that: improving real estate is very often a great investment!

[Hazel-is-ok]

Fermenting things is a lot of fun! I started a ginger bug, and made lemonade for a while, till I decided to cut back my sugar consumption. I still make kombucha, and am experimenting with flavouring it with ginger.

The other week DH and I made sauerkraut. It's really good! I now have some kimchi on the go, and some beet kvass. It'll be interesting to see if we like them.

[horsewoman]

Sorry to hear about your investment losses but since it is an experiment it was to be expected, I suppose! I hope you get some valuable knowledge out of it.

Regarding wearing your head phones at work, I thought of you on Saturday. There was open day at my daughters school, 1000 chatting people, music, strange food, too much sugar, excited kids... pretty stressful! When we go home my daughter went to her room immediately. After I while I went looking for her, but she was nowhere to be found. My husband found her later, nestled into in a small compartment of her wardrobe with headphones on, listening to an audio book. One of my first thoughts was - bigato would understand this :) DH and me both found it a reasonable way to deal with the stress of such a day. I handed her a bottle of water and closed the wardrobe door again.

[rube]

@Bigato, as I am writing this I sit at a very noisy airport with my (active noise canceling) headphones on after a long day of interacting with a group of people. I like it, kind of, but only for a limited time and not too often. It is good I can work partly from home to offset those busy/noisy days.

I like your solution also, just go outside and lay down

[jacob]

Standard rule of thumb for a trader-in-training is that it takes 1 year (so ~2000 hours of focus) to stop losing money (that's your tuition money) and about 2 years (so ~4000 hours) to become consistently profitable(*) ... and about 1 in 10 has the required X-factor, which is pretty much impossible to select for in advance.

(*) Making money on 4 days out of every 5 days is a good benchmark for a professional trader.

[Zanka]

I am def not a daytrader myself but as a professional pokerplayer I know there are a lot of similarities between trading and poker.

First of all, If you have not looked at a probability calculator you absolutely should do that to get a grasp of how much swings in results you are likely to experience. (Think of it like throwing a dice, you want to roll evens, What are the likelyhood that you have rolled 50% evens after 10 throws? 100? 1000?). Most pokerplayers are suprised that you actually can be a great player but still lose over a period of 3-400 000 hands (yes). This is probably the same in daytrading to some extent.

Second of all, when poker was booming ”everyone” could claim to be a good coach since there we’re so much easy money to be made from clueless people, this could equate to the stockmarket performing well over a 5-10y period where it is very likely that tons of daytraders have earned a couple of % to high of an ROI and thus seems to be Good.

And lastly, it Will be a full time job for at least a couple if years if you want to get good enough to earn something doing this.

Just my 2c, and im not saying it cant be done of course:)

[jacob]

+1 on the connection between trading and poker. (Cf. value investing and bridge). People who are interested/good at one in any given pair tend to have an edge in the other.

I recommend: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Bets-Ma ... 735216371/

One way to calculate the "tide effect" is to use: Absolute profit = Sum ( Position * Diff(Price) )

Price is a time-sequence (list) of prices say e.g. tick by tick, minute by minute, hour by hour, or day by day .. or whatever you have.
Diff(price) is the difference between one price and the price at the previous timestamp (a lot of times this will be zero)
Position will be the number of shares. E.g. +100 if you're long 100sh, 0 if you're flat, and -50 if you're short 50 shares.

When you're trading, the position variable will change ... Now, you compare this to a situation where you're simply long all your capital all day long (the position is a constant positive number). Comparing the absolute profits of the two calculations should show whether you're actually adding any informational value to the market-process.

Trading costs, etc. should be pretty easy to calculate, e.g. if you pay a flat rate, it's simply Rate*Sum(Min(1,Abs(Diff(Position)))) or something close to that (I'm too lazy to think it through ).

Note that "volatility" is also an important concern... there are different ways to calculate that. The standard academic way is the L2 norm, but there are more realistic and practical ways. I suggest using maximum daily loss or something like that. It should reflect your pain tolerance rather than be a way to make the math easier.

These equations are flexible enough to modify to incorporate leverage (or beta concerns) as well.

[7Wannabe5]

Sounds like you are having fun with your endeavors. I like foraging and trading too. One thing you might notice is that foraging for personal consumption (household market) and day trading on the stock market are at near opposite ends of the "capital required" spectrum, although the level of skill applied could greatly vary in either realm. Obviously, your salaried work is found at other point on (Skill, Market, Capital, Time, Vigor.) It has been my experience that Market is an interesting variable to play with or consider.

Anyways, I can't day trade, because although my outlook is more trader than investor, and I am pretty good at poker, I can't stay focused for very long in a fast-paced environment, so I tend towards something more like Season Trader

[Bankai]

I wonder if you read any of the books below, and if yes, what are your thoughts? (Douglas, Elder and classic Livermore are more relevant to what you are doing while Mivervini and O'Neil just offer generally good advice (imo)). Personally, I prefer these kinds of books written by practitioners, over academic theorists.

Douglas Mark - Trading in the Zone
Douglas Mark - The Disciplined Trader, Developing Winning Attitudes
Dr.A.Elder - Come into my trading room
Dr.A.Elder - Sell and Sell Short
Jesse Livermore - Reminiscences Of A Stock Operator
Mark Minervini - Think & Trade Like a Champion
Mark Minervini - Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard
O'Neil - How to make money in stocks

[jacob]

Would also recommend https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1540052/ if you can get a hold of it---just to get an idea of the various "characters" you're up against. Note that it's already 10yrs old ... but compare perhaps to the Livermore book to see how the process works and how quickly the tools used are changing.

Also https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1905641796/ (if you want to be systematic about it)
And https://www.amazon.com/Way-Turtle-Metho ... 07148664X/ (for a system that famously worked)

But keep in mind ... all these books were written a long time about (10 years is a long time) and while the psychological lessons remain valid, the actual methods have been mostly deprecated. Actually, it's fair to mention that people made fun of me for reading so much as opposed to just sit and stare at the numbers to pull something out of my magic hat. There's something to the idea of treating the market like a [poker] game with unknown rules (and unknown odds) and simply figuring it out by playing a lot yourself rather than getting locked in by reading about others who figured it out.

It might be smart to delay the studying until you actually have figured it out yourself ... and then use the reading to refine your skills. I realize this is completely opposite of standard pedagogical advice. There is an obvious reason for this though.

[classical_Liberal]

In the event that they say no and I don’t get approved for the exit package this time, I’ll then cross over the hierarchies guiltlessly and talk to the executive I know and other managers to try and find another position that accepts me fully remote. Failing that, I can wait for 2021 or just quit at any time really.

Cool, good news, maybe it'll work out this time! If not, the above paragraph tells me you are in a much better mindset than last time to negotiate a better deal for yourself, or just walk if need be. Last time you wanted the exit package, but were pretty wishy-washy on what you'd do if it didn't happen.

Coming from the other side, with not fully FI financials, I can tell you it's well worth it. Getting control of your time and schedule is priceless. I have the option of going back to work any time I want, for as long as I want, earning gross about 10K USD each month. So far it hasn't been worth it to me, if that gives you an idea of how much I like it.

[mooretrees]

Fingers crossed that you get the remote option! But it sounds like you have a plan b and c, so you are in a great situation. Looking forward to hearing the news soon!

[classical_Liberal]

So you can probably tell by not that I’ll not so excited about learning day trading anymore.

Welcome to the dark side of rapidly changing obsessions.

[Frita]

How do you feel about your diagnosis?