So here’s what i really think about travel trading… it absolutely sucks.
We’ve all seen those day trading marketing ads selling you the dream of travelling the
world in luxury, chilling on the beach, and banking lamborghini money with just a few
clicks on a laptop or on cell phone.
And especially during the pandemic right now where travelling out of the country and flying
out on planes is very restricted and out of reach for most people… those sort of travel
trading ads is giving me some serious fomo.
so in June i packed up my bags and flew half way across the world out of vancouver canada
to taiwan. Where i have most of my family there, and guess what… life is pretty much
normal here. Local spread of the virus has pretty much been contained at zero since early
june.
I get to finally go outside and not be afraid of interactions, and all all the businesses
are running as per usual. All that is great and all… but how is this affecting my own
trading?
In this video i’ll be sharing my honest thoughts on travel trading, what the pros
and cons are, and the best trading strategies and actionable tips that is suitable for trading
remote or trading part time. And whether you are currently travelling or not, this video
will definitely provide you some insight into how you can improve your trading, and how
to focus in on whats been making your profitable and push to the next level
So make sure you gently tap the like button
Let’s start with the pros of travel trading first. And obviously that would be all the
experiences of going out and you would otherwise never had if you were just stuck at home all
day trading. Which as many of you know, was pretty much my most of my daily life… even
before the pandemic hit. Liek, im a loner didnt have much of a life.
So taking this vacation and getting out of north america has been an amazing break for
my life. The food here in Taiwan is a-aaaazming. Not just the street food or the world famous
night markets but of course all the cultural cuisines in the mountains, where they still
raise the chicken free range in traditional methods and grow their own local vegetables
and spices.
If there’s one thing you need to know about taiwanese people, is that we love to eat.
I know this isn’t a food or travel channel but i just want so share these insights with
you. So Im going to eat almost every day, and i go on day trips and weekend strips with
my family and travel around the whole island. Good food, good people, good culture and sceneries,
you have it all here.
The second pro to travel trading is that it provides you a mental reset away from focusing
on the market 24/7. Which was essentially what i was doing. I’d wake up to prepare
premarket at 4am local time in vancouver, have the watchlist ready by 6am, trade actively
from open to 9am, take an hour nap or so, go back to trading afternoon and power hour
till close, and then continue reading up on news and reviewing the market and helping
other traders out in my own trading community on Discord.
I was living, breathing, and pretty much eating day trading all the time even before the pandemic.
Which for the most part this kind of hypr concentration and zoning in on the market
is great for my trading performance, but i had lost a lot of humanity and human connections.
And my personal relationships suffered greatly. So this vacation and travel trading has been
great for my mental health.
Of course, travel trading is not without sacrifices and some set backs. Lets move on to some pretty
realistic cons of travel trading.
The first is the lack of focus and decrease of mental concentration for your trading.
First of all you have to understand that trading is 90% a mental and psychological game. Like
i’ve often talked about on the channel before, how you carry yourself in your daily lives
will form a trickle down effect to your trading performance.
So if your day to day life is hectic, your personal relationships are a mess, or if you
are currently undergoing a lot of financial stress and are worried about how you’re
going to pay rent or put food on the table for your family…
All those are extremely stressful and will affect your trading. You might not able to
wait patiently for your set up and get into trades too early, or you may not follow your
stop losses when the trade is going against you. Because losing any amount of money, however
small, while you’re financially stressed, is simply hard to accept. And unfortunately,
holding on to losers and not cutting losses for too long… is what will turn a small
loser into a big unrecoverable damage.
And ever since im on vacation and going out and about with my family here in taiwan, my
life has been extremely hectic and busy. So you can only imagine how much there is to
take in mentally and physically for me. Trying to take in all the sights, the time with my
family, and take in all the food into my stomach… all of that can definitely be draining on
the mind… which would affect my trading.
Like i mentioned earlier trading is very much a mental game and requires 100 and 10 percent
concentration. And i did find myself somewhat distracted coming back from a day out and
about, and trying to sit down around 6:30pm or 7pm local time and trying to pull my mind
back and re-focus it back to trading, and getting ready for the open at 9:30pm local
time.
Im not sure if this is going to make sures, but i find my mind and thoughts to be like
a wild stallion unleashed for the first time. If theres lots of things going on in my life,
my thoughts are just running around bouncing from left to right up and down processing
all the information at the same time and its hard to calm it down.
Maybe thats why i talk so fast, and its just literally impossible to slow me down. Seriously,
the playback speed function is there on the youtube player, extremely useful. I just can’t
slow down, it would kill me. Maybe i have a minor case of adhd, maybe.
And in trading, we need a calm and collected approach in order to trade well. But thankfully,
i already knew about this inability to concentrate while travelling would happen before i went
on this vacation. And i have taken appropriate measures, which ill share with you later on
in
the video.
So on top of my own inability to calm down my mind after a day of going out, there’s
also the distractions at home. Which probably wouldn’t happen if you were travelling by
yourself or living on your own in a hotel like i did for for two weeks. But now that
im out of the quarantine hotel, i'm living in my parents home and… well there's just
some distractions.
Food segment: Here’s a segment called HUmbled Eating.this has been a highly requested topic
by literally nobody.
Now the second con of travel trading is that you’d be trading on a lightweight mobile
trading station, which is usually subpar in comparison to trading on a home set up. And
that also means the lack of screen real estate.
I have made a video on both my home trading set up, as well as my travel trading computer
set up. And i have to say…. I miss my desktop pc trading station so so much. I have an extremely
fast PC gaming tower at home, which is connected to 4 full size monitors, and a full size RBG
mechanical gaming keyboard optimized with all the hotkeys. In additional, i had a full
size table with plenty of space for me to write notes. So i'm definitely missing my
own space a lot.
My travel set up is decent. My gaming laptop nitro 5 is a beast and i never had never speed
or processing issues. But like i said, the lack of screen real estate is an issue. Even
with 2 mobile monitors all the three screens are still only 15 inch. I could only observe
up to 5 or 6 stocks at any given time. Whereas at home I could watch up to 20.
And like i’ve mentioned many times before, 90% of the trading is simply observing and
waiting, not clicking buttons. So since i can only watch 5 to 6 stocks, that affect
my trading drastically.
Just last week when i was trading 4 stocks around the same that were showing amazing
set ups… well i could really have used to full sized monitors to manage those positions.
Two of those stocks were MRNA and NVAX that turned out to be really big winners, but unfortunately
the other two NKLA and IMRN did not. NKLA ended up being a small winner which was fine,
but IMRN turned out to be a big loss.
Im not trying to make any excuses, i did the best i could followed my risk and managed
the positions, i really shouldn’t have been trading all those positions at the same time
while trading remote… but if i had bigger monitors and more screens, I would have been
more equipped and prepared to take full advantage of all of those set ups that was presented
to me.
On top of that, im so sick of trading in a cramped space. When i was in the quarantine
hotel for 2 weeks i did have a table, but it was barely enough for me to fit two laptops,
and my very important lamborghini cardboard box took up a huge amount of space.
Now even though im set up in my dad’s home office, im still pretty cramped for space.
I did have to say goodbye to my loyal cardboard box because of that. Thank you for all your
service, you were good for two weeks. In place of the box i now have a pile of books i gathered
from home.
The third con to travel trading is more specific to the current pandemic situation. I did get
a lot of comments in my travel trading set up video, why would you fly during this time.
And that’s true, flying 13 hours from vancouver to taipei was not fun, especially with all
the personal wear protection. I had a full N95 mask, a pair of glasses, and another full
facial mask in front of me, and a full protection suit.
So to travel during this time, you essentially had to give up breathing during the flight.
And be willing to quarantine for 2 weeks in isolation in a hotel room by yourself. Which
i was perfectly fine doing. But most people, can’t. I have a full video on a day of my
life in the quarantine hotel, how I was living, eating and trading if you’re interested
in checking that out.
But here are some key takeaways from my so far a little bit more than a month of travel
trading experience, and some actionable tips for you if you ever decide to take off travelling
the world for a few months and continue trading to supplement your income after the pandemic
ends in 20 years.
First i would focus one just 1 to 2 high probability set ups that you have traded time and again
in the past, and ignore all the B and C set ups. And the reasonings are obvious, by focusing
on your bread and butter set ups and stocks that you know inside out, you’ll be able
to trade more effectively and most likely save you the headache.
At the same time, it won’t require as much mental energy. Because like i said earlier,
you’ll most likely be distracted and the focus just won’t be 110% like if you were
trading back home.
Second I would downsize your share sizes by at least 30% to 50%, if not even more. Again
this goes back to reducing stress and the amount of full focus you’ll need. If you’re
on vacation or travelling you don’t want your trading to affect your mood. Sure that
might mean less profits at the end of the day, but trust me, you don’t want your trading,
whether green or red, to have a huge psychological impact on your ability to enjoy your trip.
Its been following these two rules, that i’ve still been able to enjoy my time with family
during the day here in taiwan, and come back and trade the market at night after 7pm. Despite
the fact that the month of travel trading means a lot less profit due to the fact that
i'm making less trades with a lot less size, i'm still able to maintain a really positive
month with very few red days, and still get to enjoy time with my family
with relatively little stress. Which is all i could ever ask for.
Well, i did say relatively less stress.
So anyways I really hope this video gives you some insight to some very real problems
with travel trading. Its not always sunshine and roses where you go chill on the eiffel
tower and come back to bank lamborghinis. Real life doesn’t work like that.
If you enjoyed this video, and some cameo from my family, please make sure to drop a
like. Otherwise my mother will continue yelling at me.