“Start a part-time business and make as many mistakes as you can while you still have your day job” – Robert Kiyosaki
The more I work with part-time traders the more I am reminded of the struggles I experienced on my own journey of becoming a winning trader. It was a long and tough road. However, part-time trading is a struggle worth fighting, because once you make it the payoff is big: freedom.
The freedom is not only financial. The freedom of lifestyle that comes from trading can’t be measured in dollars and cents.
How does trading lead to freedom? For some, it means traveling the world, while for others it is setting their own hours and not reporting to a boss. For me, it means living where I originally planned to retire (San Diego) and spending quality time with my kids.
How did I get here?
First, I took Mr. Kiyosaki’s advice a little too literally, because I made every mistake in the book.
The big picture beginner trading mistakes were:
- Jumping around from strategy to strategy in search of the mythical holy trading grail.
- Accumulating a vast amount of trading knowledge, otherwise knows as trading trivia, without actually learning how to trade.
- Blowing up two trading accounts because I did not manage my risk and positions size, micro-managed my positions, while continually cutting my winners and letting my losses swell.
- Not adapting my setups to the market; not understanding sector rotation and money flow.
Second, I persevered through all those mistakes and used deliberate practice to gain a deeper understanding of how to trade.
Third, once I gained that deeper understanding I created a simplified process for part-time trading while at my full-time job.
It was not easy. The demands of my day job and raising a young family required that I streamline my trading process to a simplified routine that took less than an hour per day. What you see below is the result of years of trial and error that lead to finally fine-tuning a winning part time trading strategy.
Here is the 5 step process I used as a part-time trader on his path toward trading full-time.
- Daily Habits
- Evening
- Run sector scan
- Run breakout and overbought oversold scans
- Review watchlist and build the next day’s focus list
- Add entry, stop and target levels for reach stocks on the focus list
- Morning
- Check futures before heading to work
- Watch the open
- Intra-day
- Monitor the market, focus list and positions 1-2 times per intraday market session
- Make trades from focus list
- Evening
- Simplified Process: Tracking Money Flow
- Market Analysis
- Two-step process for analyzing market trends and breadth
- Sector Analysis
- Top-down approach to analyzing sectors and stocks within the sector
- Market Analysis
- Simplified Process: Preparing to Trade
- Build Watchlist
- From sector analysis and breakout scans
- Setup Toolbox
- Toolbox of setups that are used in accordance with market and sector analysis
- Daily Focus List
- Build from the watchlist, market analysis, and setup toolbox
- Build Watchlist
- The Entry Plan
- Focus List
- 5-15 stocks on watch for entries
- Plan
- Every trade requires a strong setup and risk reward ratio
- Execute
- As entry level is hit and market conditions are favorable
- Set it and forget it
- Post entry, sit back, and watch without micro-managing positions
- Focus List
- Trading Around Your Job
- This simple systemic process is easy to implement around even the most demanding full-time job. Here is an example of an ideal part-time trading work schedule, although it can be adjusted to fit your needs:
- 30 minutes in the evening or late night
- 10-20 minutes in the morning before work
- Two or three 10 minute breaks during work hours
- Implementing this trading approach requires an hour per day for a disciplined part-time trader
- This simple systemic process is easy to implement around even the most demanding full-time job. Here is an example of an ideal part-time trading work schedule, although it can be adjusted to fit your needs:
How the Swing Trade Report Helps:
I’ve designed my swing trade report to help those who are new to part-time trading avoid the hurdles that held me back for years. First is the education. As I mentioned above, it’s easy to collect “trading trivia” that feels valuable on the surface but is functionally useless. The strategies that I use and teach have zero fluff. If something isn’t useful in the real world of trading, I don’t include it. As someone engaged in part-time trading, you must focus your limited hours and mental bandwidth on what is most useful, and my report will help you do that.
One of the biggest mistakes I made as a new trader – and it’s one that almost all new traders make – was not managing my risk properly. It’s important to understand that the way a day trader and a swing trader manage risk aren’t identical. When you are part-time trading, you can’t sit and watch every tick of a stock. Some stocks that would be fine to day trade are simply too volatile to swing trade safely. I curate my watchlist with this in mind, leaving out the craziest momentum stocks, while keeping huge movers like $FCX (19% gain, 3-day hold), $UCO (27%, 2-week hold), and $NUGT (24% 2-week hold). When I alert a stock from my report, you run little risk of missing the entry and chasing, and you won’t have to be worrying that it will make a drastic move overnight.
The swing report will help you gain confidence as a trader. Rather than trying to piece together something that works from a random collection of books, forum posts and blogs, you’ll get one concise, cohesive report that gives you everything you need. No more jumping around from one system to the next. No more blindly following the latest social media buzz. You’ll earn your confidence as a part-time trader one successful swing trade at a time.
