Traveling and Trading and Travelling and Trading and Travelling and Trading

[Baker 10]

i know that a large number of traders dream about travelling the world and trading and id have to assume that a decent chunk of traders on this site actually get to do this. anyone have any stories of travelling the world and trading?

[SIUYA 11]

I exit most things when traveling - except on short trips....I have tried in the past to travel and trade and realize I would rather enjoy the travels without having to think about the trading.

[TheNegotiator 13]

Yeah, I don't think it's especially realistic for most to trade whilst travelling and still have fun. My view is that if I'm away, I want to enjoy my time as much as possible and recharge so that I can be at my most effective when I am meant to be trading.

[wrbtrader 10]

i know that a large number of traders dream about travelling the world and trading and id have to assume that a decent chunk of traders on this site actually get to do this. anyone have any stories of travelling the world and trading?

 

It depends upon why you're traveling. If you're traveling because its a vacation...you're defeating the purpose of going on a vacation and will probably pssst off those you're on a vacation with.

 

Yet, if you're traveling because you're on a business trip or traveling to something that's trading related...its ok to travel and trade. Usually when on a business trip or doing something trading related...you'll already know you're going to have access to a decent connection but bring you're laptop with your trading software even though it won't be your typical trading environment you had from where ever you've left.

 

Today's technology is a lot more suitable for traveling and trading in comparison to 10 years ago. For example, most decent laptops today (powerful and lightweight) come with HDMi for connecting your laptop to other devices, decent security software for securing your WiFi use and many other things that was a problem 10 years ago. Just make sure where ever you're going that you'll have privacy or low level of distractions.

[Obsidian 10]

I don't leave any positions unattended so if I am going somewhere, I close all open positions. If I am on a vacation, I leave technology at home

[MightyMouse 12]

i know that a large number of traders dream about travelling the world and trading and id have to assume that a decent chunk of traders on this site actually get to do this. anyone have any stories of travelling the world and trading?

 

I had nightmare situation trying to leg out of an option trade on expiration day while at an aquarium with my family a few years ago. I couldn't pay any attention to my kids and my wife was steaming. I thought I would have been out of the position before we were planning on going. F my wife she is always steaming about something.

 

I have long term trades which I am able to vacation with, but no more short term stuff.

[Qiman 10]

One of the main reasons I got back into trading after a long hiatus was the desire to be able to work from a wide variety of locales, including when I am exploring other countries. Down the road I plan on being able to trade a few hours a day and then use the rest of the day to fulfill other purposes, like further developing qigong, wilderness, and herbology skills.

 

I just got back a few days ago from a 10 day trip to a wilderness area, it was very refreshing and empowering, and I was able to do my trading in the AM via my wireless modem, and then I was out tracking bear, cougar, turkey and collecting medicinal plants in the afternoons till about sunset. I got plenty of exercise on up to 8 mile hikes in the afternoon at near 10,000 feet, and even did an olympic ring workout hanging from some trees, which is a real test at that altitude.

 

When i came back, several people remarked at how refreshed and vibrant I looked, even younger. So it was a success on all levels, I just had to compartmentalize my day and keep my focus. I eagerly plan to go back soon, probably right after labor day when there will be very few people out ,except a few elk bow hunters.

[b4gt 10]

Right now I am with my wife in beautiful island doing our summer vacations. One of my dreams was to analyze my charts in the morning drinking coffee by the beach. I did that yesterday. Believe me it is not worth it. The sun was too bright, the table too low, too small and uncomfortable and I, instead of relaxing, I was paying attention to my charts.

 

Even in the hotel room it is very brutal to pay attention to the markets. While on vacations there are so many activities to attend, swimming, sight seeing etc, that don't allow much time to work properly.

 

Right now I manage to steal few minutes from time to time to manage my positions or to read my mails and that's it. But I still feel that I don't do a decent job with my charts.

[Aston01 10]

Probably one of the biggest issues I have noticed is being able to get a decent broadband connection if you do any kind of short term trading. I have slowly been trying to work out the kinks, but there are definately certain things you take for granted and only really notice when you are somewhere else.

 

One of the other things is screen size ... I use 2x - 24" IPS monitors at home and then have to adjust to using just my 15.6" notebook screen.

 

And also what type of mouse you travel with ...you take for granted that surface you normally work on at home, but a lot of places use glass tops and any number of other materials ... I have both a Logitech Anywhere MX mouse and a Logitech Performance MX mouse that both work on glass.

 

...stupid things I know, but its amazing how it can create issues you weren't expecting.

[4EverMaAT 10]

Right now I am with my wife in beautiful island doing our summer vacations. One of my dreams was to analyze my charts in the morning drinking coffee by the beach. I did that yesterday. Believe me it is not worth it. The sun was too bright, the table too low, too small and uncomfortable and I, instead of relaxing, I was paying attention to my charts.

 

Even in the hotel room it is very brutal to pay attention to the markets. While on vacations there are so many activities to attend, swimming, sight seeing etc, that don't allow much time to work properly.

 

Right now I manage to steal few minutes from time to time to manage my positions or to read my mails and that's it. But I still feel that I don't do a decent job with my charts.

I could imagine if your strategy has many hours of "chart time" or screen time

, then it would be difficult to travel and trade. I use a vps, so that the desktop stays on 24-7 when testing and trading live. I only have to use RDP to connect. You can do this from any windows/mac/linux, smartphone or tablet (preferibly android/iPhone.

 

Probably one of the biggest issues I have noticed is being able to get a decent broadband connection if you do any kind of short term trading. I have slowly been trying to work out the kinks, but there are definately certain things you take for granted and only really notice when you are somewhere else.

 

One of the other things is screen size ... I use 2x - 24" IPS monitors at home and then have to adjust to using just my 15.6" notebook screen.

 

And also what type of mouse you travel with ...you take for granted that surface you normally work on at home, but a lot of places use glass tops and any number of other materials ... I have both a Logitech Anywhere MX mouse and a Logitech Performance MX mouse that both work on glass.

 

...stupid things I know, but its amazing how it can create issues you weren't expecting.

 

I would agree somewhat. If you are more of a backpacker, it would be best to test different spots first. Usually major cities have high speed internet with little issues.

 

You can bring a spare flat panel LCD monitor either in your carryon if it is less than 19", or in your check-in bag. Pack it well so nothing breaks. As for the mouse, bring/buy a mousepad to be safe.

[kardisa 10]

I started trading in 2008 and moved to Asia in 2009. Since then, I've lived in 3 countries and have travelled to many more. My trading suffered quite a bit at the beginning, mostly due to a poor internet connection and a desire to explore my new environment instead of focusing on data and charts. The 14 hour time difference between NY and Taiwan also didn't help.

 

It is possible to adapt though. Because I was travelling so much, I could no longer work with several monitors and a desktop. I ended up downgrading (upgrading?) to a Macbook Pro which I sometimes hook up to a 24" monitor. I also moved from day trading to swing trading. It's easier for me to make rational decisions when I don't have to stay up all night. Now I do the bulk of my research during the day while I'm at my other job and enter/exit positions during the first couple of hours of the US markets.

 

I've also started taking advantage of other technology for trading on the go. For example, when I went to the Philippines last month and Thailand earlier in the year, I traded off my Samsung Galaxy 2. It's not ideal, but I can still do basic research and analysis even if I'm sitting on the beach.

 

So yeah, it's definitely possible to travel and trade, but you have to change your strategy/expectations accordingly. I'm no longer pulling in the massive returns that I had when I was daytrading. However, I also don't have as many losses and am MUCH less stressed overall.

[Splint 10]

After 15 years of discretionary stock trading, time constraints have forced me down the automated trading path. I now exclusively trade commodities. So far this has proven to be a good move. My time requirements to trade are now quiet insignificant, I just check my iphone (remotely viewing and controlling my computer located at my home) whenever I feel like it to make sure everything is doing what it is supposed to be doing, which it almost always is.

 

I could trade and travel, but the biggest issue for me is if my computer at home crashes or does something which I can't resolve remotely. I could possibly switch over to my laptop and work from that, but that is not an ideal situation either. I am trying to find out more about cloud computing. If I could run windows on a cloud server, I should at least be able to call someone to help me sort out any issues which I cant sort myself.

 

The concept of being a perpetual tourist, not staying in any country long enough to incur an income tax obligation is in some what appealing, not sure if I would really actually do that though. Automated trading is something which lends itself very well to such a lyfestyle.

[i-tom 10]

You have made a lot of incorrect asssumptions. Professional traders rarely travel and trade. Trading while on vacation makes no sense, you are recharging your batteries, getting away from trading for a while.

 

Secondly, 99% of the people here do not trade for a living, and have no clue how that would be done. Since I have traded for a living full time since 1996, and I come here mostly for the comedy relief, it is easy to spot the huge amount of fakers and wanna be neophyte "pros".

 

I have never met a professional trader, and I know dozens, that screw around with forex, or trade options. Not a single one, since 1996. Yet, look at all the "professional" here that trade options and forex. I tell you, it it hilarious stuff to read. These same imbeciles are giving advice to other wanna be traders. It's like watching a house burn down, or seeing an accident by the side of the road; you really

should not look at other peoples misfortune, but it is hard not to, and in the case here, it is tradic comedy show.

[Bam-Bam 10]

I do contract work for a few months a year. When on a contract, I travel to the client’s site. When not on a contract, I travel for personal interests. With such frequent travel, having a home became more of a liability than an asset, so I closed up shop and went mobile about five years ago.

 

When on business trips, I have my laptop with me. I may trade in the morning or in the evening depending on time zone. For personal trips, it depends on the length. Less than a couple of weeks, I don’t usually take a computer. If I will be gone a month or more, I will take a computer and may trade.

 

 

Trading when traveling almost requires a separate trading plan. Everything that is in your base trading plan should be revisited and updated for trading while traveling. A few things to think about:

 

Technology:

 

• You’re going to be trading from a smaller screen. Does your chart layout work on that format? How many windows and how much information are you used to looking at? Try trading from home on your laptop before taking your show on the road. Most hotels in the US have flat screen TV’s these days. If you carry an HDMI cable, you can use them as an external display.
   
  
• A good broadband connection makes a big difference. A 4-star hotel in the USA doesn’t necessarily mean a good connection, and an $8 a night hostel in Chile doesn’t mean a bad or no connection. In the US, I travel with my mobile broadband. More often than not, it is more reliable than the hotel’s network. If you have a slow connection, will you still try to trade? Can you trade your strategies on a slow connection that flakes out if things really start moving?
   
  
• Will your brokerage software connect through the hotel’s firewall?
   
  
• Have a backup communications plan if you lose internet. How will you contact your broker to close out a position if your internet dies? I was trading the morning session in the US through the WiFi of a bar in Koh Phi Phi, Thailand. About 2 or 3 in the morning, they shut down and turned off their router. In that case, how do you close the position?
  

 

Focus:

 

• If you are going to allocate one or two hours in the morning (evening, whatever) to trading, can you hit the off button at the cut-off time? If you plan to trade between 8 and 10am local time, will shut off the computer at 10am even though you see a perfect setup coming, or will you stay logged on waiting for the setup and instead blow a day of your “Off” time?
   
  
• If you plan to trade one or two hours per day, how will you deal with the pressure to make a trade during that time block even if a setup isn’t exactly right? Will you try to make something happen and get burned?
   
  
• Are you able to leave the market behind when you turn off your trading platform?
  

 

 

My recommendation would be if you travel for vacation, enjoy your vacation. Get refreshed, renewed, reinvigorated. There will be plenty of setups waiting when you get home.

 

On the road,

 

Bam-Bam

[4EverMaAT 10]

After 15 years of discretionary stock trading, time constraints have forced me down the automated trading path. I now exclusively trade commodities. So far this has proven to be a good move. My time requirements to trade are now quiet insignificant, I just check my iphone (remotely viewing and controlling my computer located at my home) whenever I feel like it to make sure everything is doing what it is supposed to be doing, which it almost always is.

 

I could trade and travel, but the biggest issue for me is if my computer at home crashes or does something which I can't resolve remotely. I could possibly switch over to my laptop and work from that, but that is not an ideal situation either. I am trying to find out more about cloud computing. If I could run windows on a cloud server, I should at least be able to call someone to help me sort out any issues which I cant sort myself.

 

The concept of being a perpetual tourist, not staying in any country long enough to incur an income tax obligation is in some what appealing, not sure if I would really actually do that though. Automated trading is something which lends itself very well to such a lyfestyle.

 

I was supposed to write an article on the right equipment to use when implementing automated strategies. You are on the right track though. Essentially what you need is a VPS or dedicated server that stays on 24/7. Your home connection is not ideal for several reasons; you already identified the main one (home computer crashes) or internet in the area goes down. When you use a VPS, it is hosted in a datacenter that should have 99-100%+ uptime. CNS VPS and server services have practically mastered this; and they have solutions specifically for traders. Not the cheapest, but they do answer support tickets within about 20 minutes during the trading week. I have personally left up server for 6+ months with no forced reboots. They have budget vps from $30, but to run Windows 2008 R2 64 bit (equivalent to windows 7), you will need to do some small upgrades that will take you to $45-ish. With hardware virtualization, there less of a need for a dedicated server. A properly setup shared hosting with dedicated resources does the job just fine. It was some of the budget VPS companies that were overselling their resources that gave other vps a bad name.

 

You basically log into the remote desktop via RDP and its like having an extra desktop screen right in front of you. When you close out the RDP window (not logoff, but simply close out the RDP window that creates the 'monitor' for the desktop), all of your programs are still running. There are plenty of advantages to this setup and almost no disadvantages (besides cost). But instead of buying a new computer and trying to connect locally, the VPS is much better investment. I'll go into that later in an upcoming article.

 

You have made a lot of incorrect asssumptions. Professional traders rarely travel and trade. Trading while on vacation makes no sense, you are recharging your batteries, getting away from trading for a while.

 

Secondly, 99% of the people here do not trade for a living, and have no clue how that would be done. Since I have traded for a living full time since 1996, and I come here mostly for the comedy relief, it is easy to spot the huge amount of fakers and wanna be neophyte "pros".

 

I have never met a professional trader, and I know dozens, that screw around with forex, or trade options. Not a single one, since 1996. Yet, look at all the "professional" here that trade options and forex. I tell you, it it hilarious stuff to read. These same imbeciles are giving advice to other wanna be traders. It's like watching a house burn down, or seeing an accident by the side of the road; you really

should not look at other peoples misfortune, but it is hard not to, and in the case here, it is tradic comedy show.

 

If you have automated the process of trading, either completely or a good portion of it, then you can trade much more often than normal. The closer to 100% the strategy is automated, the more often you can trade it / scale it unattended. I'm not sure what percentage of traders here trade live, or for a living but it doesn't matter. We come to exchange ideas and stories about trading and hopefully get information that can get us closer to [whatever] goal. A professional trader may trade whatever he is good at trading. What interests the trader combined with which instrument he thinks will give him the highest returns. Not sure why forex and/or trade options are not viable instruments to trade.

 

Maybe you are the one making incorrect assumptions?

[Splint 10]

4EverMaAT, thanks for the info on the VPNs, I shall investigate further.

 

i-tom, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a professional trader, but your comments regarding forex and options has sparked my interest.

 

I know that there is an exceedingly high failure rate of commodities traders in their first year of trading. I've heard the attrition rate of newbies runs at around 80 to 90% in commodities. Is forex and options higher again? Is it the level of leverage/under capitalization which causes traders to fail in forex? What about the options, is it the decay factor which kills off the profits?

 

Just curious to hear the thoughts of someone who really knows the score. There is a huge amount of forex marketing, often promising "too good to be true" results. Very little hard facts and reality.