As the year is drawing to a close, I am trying to think thru what I 've done.

Apparently, this year I did not achieve anything. Gone are my bonus because of the stupidity of my boss. Asked him not to do the trade but he insisted in doint it.... good lah, lost 200 over thousand USD... what the fish.... asked him to cut the position but he just refused to take the lost....

I just hope that my own trading can make up for my bonus... now that my wife is expecting, need to make more money for the sake of my unborn child.

If I can consistanlty make the amount that I am making tis month, than I am on course to make enough money on a monthly basis so as to be the same as my full-time pay. At that point in time, I can really care less about my job already. But I will still hold on to my job, of course. Why quit a job that pays me almost 8k a month for doing almost nothing? I cannot be making any more money even if I trade full time.... besides, I need the full-time pay in order to pay my bill so that I am not so stressful in my trading, and that is very important.

Received a brochure after I registered my own business, realised that there are compaines that rent out workstation for 1 person, charging somthing like 250-400 per month. Just thinking that next time if I ever go it on my own, this is not a bad idea as it is better than working from home. I need to fetch my wife anyway, so the petrol consumption for making 2 to-and-fro trip is about the amount that I need to pay my parking in CBD area. Moreover, need to be out there to socialise with people, if not may go crazy at home. But that will not (I hope) happen for the next few years, according to my plan.

I am really sick, I think.... sick of life, that is.

What is happening to me? I have a master degree, a CFA, worked in a Swiss Bank before, and yet, I cannot make it and a guy that I knew of with only "O" level is now setting up his own firm, trading for a living and teaching others.... and he is making more money than I do!

I am tired, but I have to fight on, and I have to continue to learn. What I need is discipline as shown in my own trading. I can make it, I just need discipline.

I made up my mind that I will one day go live in Japan for a year or two. And this need money, so as far as I sees it, the only way I can achieve that given my present situation is to make it through trading. As long as I can trade for a living, I can trade anywhere inthe world. So even in Japan, I can still have income.

Will GOD help me on this? I hope so.

Think I need to clean up all my trades and refocus on my goal. Come on.... I can do it.

It looks like I blow it again... yes again!!

I just cannot understand why it seems that when I "get it", I start to blow it again. I should have just stick to my method and forget the rest. I think I will be better.

Let's be focus and aim for the 2% per month and I will be on my way to financial freedom....

As usual, proposed the trade to my boss and he did nothing for the whole day. Than after I left the office, called me to ask what I think. How the fuck will I know since I cannot possibly remember what I read in the morning for the commentaries.

Just do not understand him. Do not know about option but wanted to act as if like an expert. Sigh.. if not because I need the job, I would have probably told him off already.

Do I need to put up with this? For how long? I do not know the answer, may be for a very long while..... stuck inthis hole again.

No, not again!

Just when I thought I got it, the act of self-destruction is in play again.

I should have focus on what I am doing right and just continue doing it. This is always the problem with me. When things are going well, I wanted to try other thing to make more money. The ending result is always the same, lost back all my making. When can I learn my lesson.

My Goal

For the past few days, have been reading and attended a lecture, where I see many fellow CFA professionals. Many of them seems to be doing quite well in their career, some being partner of the firm, some having director as designation.

I just feel that I should be doing better in life, but it seems that I having been performing under my potential. With the situation I am currently in, I am sure that i cannot go further. So what should I do? Doing own business is one way out, but the risk is there. The other thing is to do my own trading. This is a more viable route, and since I have been able to achieved consitant profit, I think I should do that.

Now, I want to put this on paper, and that is, I want to make SGD1 million in trading starting from now! or rather, I want to have SGD1 million, or CHF800,000 in my account as I will be putting more funds into the trading account going forward if I can keep doing this.

The other thing I thought of doing is to invest in a small cap company, build up a substantial position and become a subtanstial shareholder, so that I can appoint myself onto the board. But this is not very feasible as I need to pump in alot of money into one company.

Anyway, my goal is to make my money in trading so that I have SGD1 million in my trading account. This may take 10 years, but this is only my trading account, and I should have other investment so that I should have more than this SGD1 million if I do it correctly.

Need to fine tune my trading

Have been through a roller-coaster month with my trading.

I was up to CHF45,200 at one stage but now goes back to CHF44,377. The reason being that I was in 2 minds of what to do with the month of Aug when I am on holiday. So I thought might as well sell some puts for Aug expiry and take delivery of the stocks if get put on. While this sounded logical, the problem is that it upset my trading rhythm.

Furthermore, the trading of the FX has been pulling down my P&L as well. Again I am in 2 minds on this. On the one hand, I wanted the trading in FX to help to improve my P&L. On the other hand, I do not want the FX position to disturbed my option trading rhythm. So I think I ended up neither here nor there. I need to decide how I wanted to trade going forward. One of the considerations, while not related to trading of FX, is the base currency position.

While it is logical to hold multiple currencies so as to diversify the currency exposure, it created an unintended effect of affecting the P&L of my option trading which has nothing to do with the option position I took. Because, ultimately, I need to convert it back to SGD, and if CHF/SGD weakens, I will take a hit on the exchange rate, and therefore I wanted to diversify the currency base.

Reviewing my trades so far for this 6 months, while I think that I should be able to achieve the 2-2.5% target return per month, I still think that I should fine tune my trading method as there are a few times if I had followed the rules, I would have come out better.



Anyway, I must be grateful as now I am much better compared to a year ago. I am confident that I can achieve what I want, given enough time.

What a bad day!

What a bad day today.

Boss try to pass the bug to me for a decision he made! I told him not to the the GBP trade, but don't want to listen. Than ask him to cut at 1.9700, don't want to listen and wanted to postpone it. Now when the spot move above 1.9850, want me to make the decision.

What the crap is this.

What a difference!

i am now sitting in East Coast Macdonald, and I am just wondering what a difference in term of feelings now compared with that 10 months ago.

Then, I was out of a job, feeling so down, do not know what to do, lost. But now, I have a job. Even if it is not a great one, but at least I am being paid almost as what I am getting previously. My tradingis on track and I hope to maintain it so that I can make some money on the sideline to supplement my income.

Not that i need the money, but I need it for my retirement.....

Bored with my day time job

Another boring day. Not sure if I can take it much longer. I mean, this job is definitely much better than the previous one, the only problem is that I am getting bored.

I really hope that I am making the correct decision to stay on here. I missed those days whereby I can travel around for job purpose. Now, I just stuck behind my desk and waiting to get rot each day.

The only reason why I wanted to stay on is because I have other plans. And the plan is to build up my trading capital via trading options. The aim is to build up the capital with a 2.5% return per month such that the monthly profit will more or less equals my monthly pay. At that point in time, than financial independent will truly sets in.

Than I can afford to travel with the same frequency that I use to travel previously in my job, about once every two months. I really need to make it, failure is not an option.

The days whereby I am out of job for a few months really frightens me a lot. I definitely do not want to go through those days again. It had the same feeling when I quitted SP and prepare for my “O” level English. That few months just feel miserable. But at least at that time, I am just a student and need not worry about any other thing. Worst come to worst, I can just choose to become private candidate and sits for my “A” level. Ut this time round is quite different, I do not have such choice anymore.

I just wanted to have a decent job with a decent pay so that I can support my parents and also give my wife a better life.

March results.

The result for last month’s trading was out. Down CHF136. This is a setback for me as I aim to make 2.5% consistently.

The reason for this underperformance is due to the aggressive strike level I have on the call. When the market turns, the call started to lost money and I did not get out soon. If I had not have such aggressive call level, I should be ok.

The other mistake made is to sell the call to increase the margin available, which is illogical if the market is in a strong up trend. The strike for the call I sold is too close.

Thirdly, part of the underperformance is due to FX, which should reverse if USD recovers, which I think is likely.

Month of wake up call

It seems to be a frustrating month for me. A few screw up and now I am now in my trading – again….although I may still end the month with a small up, but this is cold comfort as I need to make 2.5% per month. I think I still can make slightly more than flat this month, but will need to take additional risk.

The mistake made in this month is that I did not get out of my short call option when the indicator turned. If I had stick to the 15% margin, then I should be fine. But I was more aggressive and I should have gotten out of my more aggressive position. Then I compound my mistake by being too aggressive on the short call again. If I had stick to my rules, I believe I should make more, although I may not hit my 2.5% target because of market condition.

I have to succeed in this trading business, as failure is not an option.

Looking at others like my wife, brother, brother-in-laws, they are all traveling for business. Me? Everyday sits in the office with nothing much to look forward to except my Japan trip. If I can make a monthly profit of 7k, than I can even afford to travel once every 2 months or even once a month. The other reason is that if I were to lose my job, I will really be in deep shit. I really need to build up this thing so that I can still earn a living regardless what happen.

I need to be financially free, to do what I want to do. Now, I have to consider, and consider hard if I want to go for ONJ’so concert…… this should not be the case!

I also owe it to my wife that I should give her a good life.

A new begining?

After stopping for awhile, I returned to update my blog.

It is really a terrible experience for the past two years. it is the darkest part of my life, I believed. But now, I hope to put everything behind me and start a fresh. While my new job is nothing to shout about, but at least it is giving me a decent pay, and at the same time give me ample time to do my own trading at time without interferring my day time job.

This is important as I needed the cash inflow of my day time job to foot my bill.

At least now I have devised out a trading system and plan and I can see where I am going. Unlike the past 2 years whereby I tried almost everything to try and make money, but instead ended up all in red.

So far, I have achieved 7% for first month and 2.7% for second month. My target is to earn at least 2.5% per month, or about 30% per annum. It is very possible, and I just need to focus on this goal and not be distracted by other things.

One mistake I made previously was to jumped into too many positions and one move against me in that other position wiped out all my preofit of the month.

While this month I am in the red, but I am confident that things will turn around as it is tested in history of the price movement. Even if this time round I make a loss, I still have the 7% gain previously to cushion the loss. All in all, I just need to stay focus on this one goal, to make enough money from trading so that I need not rely on my full time job. I believe I can make it, as shown in the pass two months. It will take me about 5 years, but this is a time acceptable, given the fact that I still have a steady income from my full time job. And this is the key, a steady stram on cash inflow is very important.

As for this month, I should not add on to any more position. Now have to wait for the oil price to pullback and then to cover my shorts on the put position. As long as all the contracts expire worthless comes 20 Apr, I should be able to meet my goal for the month.

I look forward to the day when I can achieve financial freedom. I believe I can if I stay focus, and I wanted to make this a new begining for me.