Show notes
Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we're going to be talking about nonstop, relentless trading. And this is really kind of a dovetail from the previous daily call that we had about why we don't filter trades for Trump tweets, but it seems like there's always going to be a reason for you not to trade. No matter what the catalyst is, a lot of people get sucked into this fear hole of not trading because of some external factor and it always changes. And over the last 10 plus years of doing this at Option Alpha and kind of showing what we do and blogging and talking about it, I always see that it changes. It used to be because of the market crash stuff, and then it was housing, and then it was tech or the FED, and then it was the election, and then it was Trump, and now, it's Trump's tweets, and now, it's tariffs, and I mean, the catalyst always changes and it's always a reason for you not to trade, but I would suggest and I would push to be as relentless as the waves when it comes to trading, that you continuously trade all the time in every market environment. Yes, you scale back when you need to scale back. Yes, you scale up when you need to scale up, but you don't ever quit trading because what we know to be true from the research and our own experience as well, is that the more you trade and the higher your trade count goes, the more stable your total expected outcome is going to be. You're going to go through periods of drawdowns. You're going to go through periods where you have amazing trading months and that's just part of trading, but you have to keep it up, so that you get to the point at which you're making hundreds and hundreds of trades over the course of your career which helps stabilize your win rates, your expected outcomes, etcetera.
Be as relentless as the waves. Waves come at you constantly. They never end. You can sit on the beach for hours and days. The waves never end. You have to weather the emotional highs and lows of trading and continuously place trades towards your goals. Nonstop trading makes market direction, timing, Trump tweets, tariffs, all of it meaningless. We've talked about this a number of times before, but it's worth repeating. If I were to give you just one single day that you could place all of your trades for the next 10 years, how important does that one day become? It becomes everything. It becomes everything and it's the most important day in your life for the next 10 years because if you get lucky enough to place trades in the right environment, at the right time, where the probabilities just happen to fall perfectly in line, then you end up doing really well. But what if that one day becomes just the one day before a black swan event, the one day before another Trump tweet and tariff is announced? Then that one day sets you up for failure for the next 10 years. This is obviously an extreme example, but it proves the point that if that one day becomes really, really important, then does giving you two days help reduce the importance of that one day? And the answer is yes. If I gave you two days in the next 10 years to make trades, well, then each day becomes a little bit less important because it's spread out over two days. What if I gave you five? What if I gave you 20 days? What if I gave you 100, 300, 200, 500, 1,000 days? As you start trading more and more, market direction and timing becomes meaningless because yes, you could mess up and have just a random day where you just made a trade at the wrong time and the market went against you, but if you've made 1,000 trades, does that one day really matter in the grand scheme of things? No, it probably doesn't. That's why you have to be relentless with your trading. Hopefully this helps out. If this does, let us know. I'd love to hear your feedback on social media, everywhere at Option Alpha and until next time, happy trading.