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Folks around town, meaning people with whom cordial rapport is beneficial, understand "retired from CBOE", they hear it a lot and it facilitates conversation. Almost always, in Chicago, you will get...Oh do you know so and so?
Outside of Chicago area I usually say retired. I'm 52 and have been saying that for over ten years. People ask retired from what? Finance, will bring more questions. Stock option finance arbitrage gets fewer questions. The shut down response is I developed credit default swap leveraged arbitrage...though not true, nobody has ever wanted to tell me about aluminum pipe sales or patent law practice after that...we usually move to children or bacon.
If the questioner is someone that I want to talk to I usually say that I volunteer with a charity that feeds children in poverty or disaster stricken parts of the world.
When people want the "long story shortened" about my strategy. I tell them to read up on RSI, Stochastic, Momentum, Keltner Bands, etc. The idea of studding math shuts down most conversations. Then I start to describe the 10 trading rules W. D. Gann used. By the time I finish the 10th rule, the conversation has moved on. My third line of defense, which has never been needed, is to talk about the history of futures.
Most people don't care what I do, they would rather tell me what they do.
I am too young to say I am retired. It would draw too much curiosity. Trying to think of something creative.
Maybe I'll tell people I do "Derivative Liquidity Risk Management" for a living lol.
If they ask how that works I'll just say I work to help discover and stabilize prices in the financial system, so the economy can function and run better.
Then change the subject or if they ask anything more I'll just say its really complicated and would rather not talk about it.
So last night was a big birthday for one of our oldest family members with lots of people I haven't seen in years or since I had a "real" job so the question what do you do for a living came up about ten times. And I always started with I manage money in the indexes and that would always turn into do you trade? Then that would turn into you know your gambling right and people who gamble always lose. And I would just smile and tell them they took a gamble by getting in there car because there was a relatively good chance they could get into an accident or worse case possibly die and the response was always well I'm a good driver and i would say no you have just accepted the risk that comes with driving. By this time during the conversation I could tell the only thing they will ever know is a 9-5 being a slave for someone else and that's fine for them.
Trading is a hell of a thing to do and you've got to be a little strange in the head to think you can conquer and other people who normally have more money then you... but it also boils down to who cares what people think about what your doing they will probably end up with to many regrets to count.
One of my child hood friends who I've know for 20+ years just called and asked if i wanted a job laying concrete since im doing nothing but sitting on my ass(this is word for word). At first i wanted to jump through the phone and beat his ass like it never has been beaten before but that really got me thinking about a handful of things in life.
1) we value what others think about us to much, one of the reason i disliked my last job so much was that i got to the point that it became who i was and it felt good to tell people what i do and rant on about shit most people don't know about, but in reality we shouldn't let ourselves be defined by "what we do". Don't get me wrong i love trading but trading is not me and i need to make sure that this doesn't turn into the way of wearing my "job" on my sleeve
2) this is one of the hardest things in the world to do, I don't know any other profession where 95% fail and of that 5% really only 2% make it big big ( not big big yet but soon)
3)fuck the haters
-P
"Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is, and you must bend to its power or live a lie"-Miyamoto Musashi
This is one of my favorite posts, because we can all relate to it. We're ostracized as traders, because it doesn't come with the security of a day job. It's not conventional, or "normal" enough. Most people are inherently scared, and always turn to security; they will never take risks and live a mundane but secure life. It blows my mind when someone that doesn't know anything about trading tries to tell me what's wrong with trading, but yet it happens so frequently. They'll often try to correct me, or even argue; usually with good intentions, but annoying nonetheless. Seems everyone nowadays knows someone who lost everything trading something; it's not even worth my time anymore to try and explain that futures and bitcoin are not the same thing. There's no need to pay these people any mind; like P said, we shouldnt let a poorly formulated opinion affect the perception of ourselves. Be a proud trader; when confronted, let them ramble on and smile because you know what they can't understand. Anyways, sorry about the rant, but I enjoy hearing these stories, so keep em coming.