You may be wondering what a day trader would be doing writing a self improvement blog.
You might be asking yourself "Shouldn't he be studying the markets?".
What I would say is that this site is a way for me to escape the markets - to take a step back and take a little breather. I find that if all I did was study charts and study my trading for too long, I end up missing the important details and that my trading will ultimately suffer.
As you probably already know, being a trader is very stressful and very emotional. Most of the time it doesn't really get to me, but there are some days when I feel as though I don't want to look at another stock chart for the rest of the day.
You can say that this site is a way for me to bring balance to my life - to broaden my horizons and to genuinely help myself by exploring topics that I might otherwise not even think about. So far, I have found it very helpful in chronicling some of my difficulties and some of the things I did to remedy them.
For me, writing for this site is an attempt to discover myself and to take a closer look to see what needs improving. When I think about topics to write about, I cannot help but look at myself to see where my problem areas are and to see where my strengths are.
I also find that trading is a very solitary activity and many people (including myself) feel as though it doesn't really benefit society in general. This site is a way for me to feel somewhat useful - it allows me to give back to society and allows the reader to see the life lessons I've learned from trading.
I used to run another blog. It was a trading related blog and though it had some success, I found that it was more of a burden than anything else.
Why?
Well because at the end of every trading day, I would do a recap and there was no way around it. I couldn't plan or pre-write my posts and many times I felt as though I had to relive through all those bad trading days (which sometimes made it even more difficult).
Above all, my old trading blog just felt like work - whether I liked it or not.
What about this site?
What's great about this site is that there is no pressing need to have to publish a post every single day. When I feel like writing, I can punch out several posts in one sitting (which is of great help).
At any one time, I already have several posts all written and ready to go - all I would have to do is press the "Publish Post" button. Whenever I have ideas for a post, I just write out the title and several bullet points for me to write out at a later time.
I may have as many as 10 posts ready for publishing and 30 ideas for a post waiting to be written.
The setup I have for this site works much better for me.
If, on any particular day I don't feel like writing, than that's just fine - I have several other posts ready to go so there's no real pressure to write.
If, on any particular day I just have a writing bug, than that's just fine too - I just sit down and write up as many posts as I feel like.
So those are the reasons why I write and why I maintain this site.
It is my hope that by sharing the things I've gone through, that others can learn from my experiences.
