-Hi, my name is Shay.
I'm a Taiwanese Canadian day trader living in Vancouver.
Early in June, I wanted to fly back to my motherland
in order to see family, but there was just one small issue.
Due to the global pandemic, Taiwan has imposed
a mandatory two-week quarantine for all travelers
entering the country.
After a 13-hour flight from Vancouver to Taipei,
I checked straight into this quarantine hotel.
Two weeks in isolation by myself in this room is going to be
a challenge.
Will I starve?
Will I die of loneliness?
How can I still trade the US stock market
given that the local timezone is exactly 12 hours
ahead of market time?
Well, you'd be surprised the sacrifice I'd make in order
to eat some delicious Taiwanese food and see to my family, of course.
Welcome to a day in my life in quarantine.
I usually wake up around 7:30 in the morning,
if my jet lag has mercy on me.
I try to make my bed first thing in the morning.
Since there's no room service while in quarantine,
I want to keep things clean and organized.
I'm still not a fan of wearing a lot of makeup,
but given that now I have a little bit more time
and I have a few conference calls throughout the day,
I try to put in maybe five minutes of effort.
After brushing my teeth and getting ready,
it's time to pick up breakfast right outside the door,
but first, I must have my coffee.
Just like back home in Vancouver, I cannot start the day
until I have my coffee.
While I boil the hot water, it's time to do some morning yoga
and wake up my body.
Now that I'm done with yoga and the hot water is ready,
I can finally make coffee and drink it with my breakfast.
While in a hotel room, they give you these two in one
and three one coffee packs, which is really sweet.
I don't really like drinking them, but thankfully,
my mom brought me these premium drip coffee packs,
which inside there's actually a filter,
and it's pretty cool and it tastes pretty decent as well.
On here it says, [foreign language]
which in English translates to a miracle.
Let me show you how it's done.
I'm just going to open this pouch here.
Then you can see inside, there's this little tiny packet filter.
Now, here, you just got to open the top part.
Open it gently along the line.
Once you're done, you can open this little filter like so.
Look at this.
Then you just hook it onto your mug.
Let me see how perfectly it fits.
Isn't this cute?
This tiny, tiny cup of quarantine coffee here?
You can just put hot water in here, you can just let the water
slowly drip down and one of these tiny milk packs
that my mom gave me.
Once that's done, you just collect this pouch
and voila, here's a perfect cup of quarantine coffee.
We have the sandwiches, one of these classic Taiwanese sandwiches
where they cut off the edges of the bread.
There's a box of salad.
There's a box of apple juice.
I'm probably not going to drink this.
They gave me like five boxes of these already,
but what I will drink is this one we call it [foreign language].
Every Asian little kid grew up drinking this.
Then there's also another apple because you got to try to be healthy,
right?
Tuna sandwich.
Very good.
Very Taiwanese.
Now, it's time to drink this baby.
Taste like childhood.
So good.
Each day, while in quarantine for two weeks,
I'll get an automated text message from a Taiwanese CDC
essentially checking on my health status.
Here are four responses.
Number one for everything being completely normal and I'm healthy.
Number two, for having symptoms such as fever, coughing,
fatigue or difficulty breathing, or number three
for all other symptoms that's not COVID related.
My response has been number one in the last few days, thankfully.
What I really need is response number four,
which they don't have right now and that is becoming a fat ass.
While living in the quarantine hotel, they deliver your meals
straight to your door, breakfast, lunch, and dinner,
and sometimes even snacks.
That's literally like celebrating Christmas three times a day
so I'm definitely getting fat.
All jokes aside, I'm very grateful for this experience.
Thank you Taiwanese government for organizing
such a comfortable stay for everyone entering the country.
If just a tiny bit of inconvenience for me can make sure
the greater public and my family stay safe and healthy,
I'm very happy to do my part.
It is now almost nine o'clock, usually, this is when I host
a Zoom conference call for all the traders
on my discord trading community, where we review all the charts,
the movers on the day before and preparing
for the watchlist for tomorrow because 90% of the work
in trading happens outside of market hours.
You got to do your homework, you got to do your trade planning.
You don't just show up on Monday morning
and buying whatever looks hot on your Robin Hood account.
That's not trading, that's gambling.
Usually, around 11:00 AM is when I have my conference call
with my friends.
My friends Diane, Belinda and I, we've been having regular Zoom
and Netflix meetings since mid-March.
We've been binge-watching tons of Netflix shows.
This is a perfect time for us to catch up on any gossip
and all the other happenings back in Vancouver.
Usually, I'll have my lunch that's delivered while we chat.
After lunch and a Zoom party, I'll take a one hour nap.
Since I'll be trading from 9:30 PM local time,
I want to make sure I'm rested so I can stay awake
for as long as possible.
Due to the fact that I'm still jet-lagged,
my body clock is all over the place.
It is now about 3:30, I'm just going to take some time
to answer some emails and do some work on my laptop.
I'll also do some planning for my YouTube videos
and replying to comments and some very bad jokes
on my YouTube channel.
It is not only was five o'clock.
Usually, this is a time where I stop working
and do some exercise in the hotel room
because all the food deliveries are so dangerously delicious.
I don't have kids yet but at this rate,
if I don't work out,
I'm going to walk out of this hotel with a food baby
or maybe two or three.
I'm going to clean up the space now
so that it give me some room to work out.
[music]
All right.
We just worked out for about an hour to an hour and a half.
I'm going to [?] off
and take a shower
but we got to be quick
because the market opens in a couple of hours.
After a shower, it's time to set up my trading computer.
The biggest issue with trading remotely
is the lack of screen real estate.
I really miss my home setup,
where I have four full-sized giant monitors
to see all the charts.
My travel setup on this trip
consists of one gaming laptop
that's hooked down to two separate USB monitors.
I also brought an HDMI cable to hook up to the hotel room TV.
I do all the trading executions on my gaming laptop
and I have my MacBook Pro
to do all the scanning,
news analysis,
and chatting with traders on my discord trading channel.
The US stock market opens at 9:30 PM local time in Taiwan.
Being exactly 12 hours ahead of the market timezone,
that gives me plenty of time to review stocks in play
and doing research
during the day and in the evening.
With all the volatility in the markets right now,
it's even more important to do your homework ahead of time
because failing to plan is planning to fail.
usually, at night, I don't really have that much time
to eat before the market opens,
but I'm not that hungry, anyways,
so I usually just eat something really quick
at a bar here.
Let's check out what's for dinner tonight.
We have an Asian bento box
with meats and veggies, looks pretty good,
and usually comes
with a cup of soup and a bowl of rice.
Also, my mom dropped off some homemade [foreign language]
looking forward to eating this.
The market's about to open,
it's time to focus, and let's get to work.
It is now 1:20 AM and I'm exhausted.
I've been trading since about 9:30 PM when the market opens.
A lot of hard work and planning went into this,
hours before that.
I didn't just show up at the market opening
and start punching in orders, no.
There's no easy money in trading, it's a lot of hard work.
I think I'm about done now.
Traded a couple [?] today.
Let me show you.
We traded Zoom, ZM,
and a couple other smaller names
such as BBI and EDSA.
Since I'm traveling, I'm just using a lot smaller share sizes,
only a couple hundred shares.
Small wins they add up.
There's no need to go for home runs and banking all that time.
I'm just taking my small base hit.
They add up pretty decently for trading remote.
I'm pretty much done now.
I'm just going to brush my teeth,
change, and go to bed.
We'll do the same thing again tomorrow.
[music]