Patience

I took a job as a car salesman for around a month sometime ago, I hated the job, but learnt something of a lot of value, Patience. As a trader, I noticed I lacked patience, I would jump in and out of trades, make stupid mistakes because I would jump the gun basically. So let me tell you how that job helped me up my patience levels. I couldn’t be staring at the screens and tracking stocks all day at this job, it required me to help out customers and answer phones…stuff of that nature. Also the boss looking over my shoulder didn’t help. So when work was slow, or when I could turn my monitor at a sneaky angle so no one could see it, I would try trade a bit. I knew I couldn’t sit there and monitor each and every single trade, so I would try to take only A+ setups, with good risk to reward ratios, which gave me the highest probability of working out. I would know approximately where my stop should be before I entered a trade. So even if the trade didn’t work out and I was away from my desk, I knew how much I would lose if the trade didn’t work out. I actually enjoyed not sitting around and fretting over $spy intraday action and over analyzing stuff. I remember trading before I took the job, I would fret over every $spy tick and any negative movement in any stock I was in. Also, before the job, I had this mindset that I HAVE TO MAKE trades, I just couldn’t sit there and watch. I would also worry about missing trades and would end up chasing. So after trading for a couple of weeks on the job, I noticed I was had fewer emotions about a trade and my P&L was actually better than trading fulltime, not to mention less commission costs. I don’t work there anymore, but its crazy to see how those 30 days have made me a better trader.