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In the last post, I did my first ever live pro trader interview with Bubble Boy Trader.  We were chatting a little bit after the interview and he gave me a piece of advice that blindsided me like a Japanese Bullet Train.

It was so simple, but I think I just needed to hear it from someone in his position.

That part of the conversation was off the record so I will just give you the general idea, but the advice that he gave me might be useful to you too.  What he basically told me was that if I have a lot of debt, I should get rid of all of it before trading with real money again.

And I do.  But all of it?

My Green Fairy experiences have really left me in the hole…big time.  I totaled it up and I am currently down about $65,000.  That’s no joke.

My first reaction

When he told me that, I was grateful that he shared his experience with me.  Then something strange happened after I closed my Skype screen.

I actually got mad.

This confused me.  Why should I be mad?  So I sat down and meditated a little to quiet my mind.  Then I asked the question again…why am I mad?

Was I mad at him for telling me that?

Obviously not.  He is a really cool guy and was very generous with his time.  On top of that, he was probably giving me some of the best advice HE ever received in his trading career.

That wasn’t the issue.

Was I angry at myself?

I felt like part of the anger stemmed from allowing myself to get into this situation.  It was not the source of all of the anger, but it did contribute.

How could I let the Green Fairies get the better of me?  I should be smarter than that.

Part of this self directed anger was due to the  shame and the lowered self esteem that it caused.  The debt was really a great weight to carry and I have been carrying it for too long.

But that was only a small part of the emotion I was feeling.

What else could it be then?

So I probed my emotions a little deeper and I still wasn’t able to get to the bottom of it.  At that point, I felt that was getting too deep into my Counter-Phobic Reflective personality, so I went for a swim in the ocean.

For me, that is always good for clearing my mind.   After I got out of the water, I sat on the beach to watch the sunset.  Then suddenly, I realized what it was.

It’s like being a dragon slayer with no more dragons to slay

I am paraphrasing a quote from the movie “Riding Giants” where Gabrielle Reese recounts what her husband, big wave rider Laird Hamilton told her it feels like when the surf is small. He and his big wave riding buddies tend to get depressed and moody.

For me, it would be similar with trading.

Only concentrating on the debt meant one very important thing…I would not be trading.   My inner child was throwing a temper tantrum!  Trading has been one of my passions from the very beginning and not being able to do it would be heart breaking.

Should I really put live trading on hold and do the right thing?

I am a good trader

Deep down, I know that as I sit at my computer writing this post, I AM a good trader.  I can be a great trader.  But for about a year now, I have had the sense that there is a big, fat, hairy gremlin sneaking around in my head.

I have had moments of brilliance intertwined with longer periods of mediocrity.  But at no time did I feel that I was trading really poorly or I was in danger of losing all my trading capital.

I’m sure it is the same for most traders, but the mediocre periods really got me down for some reason.

Then I realized why.  I was trying to solve all of my financial problems with my trading profits. The reality of it is that  given my large debt and the small size of my trading account, it is unreasonable to think that I could expect to make a dent in my debt by trading out of it.

Even with Soros-like trading performance.

The mental game

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense.  Trading is one of the few professions where psychology plays a major role in success .

If I continue to trade even small amounts of money, I am just throwing it away and not working towards eradicating the root of most of my problems.

Live trading also takes time.  That time could be better spent on making money to pay off the debt and doing more thorough backtesting…which I have been neglecting, by the way.

So is that the end of this blog?

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I have a couple of ideas that could actually advance my trading career and get rid of my debt at the same time.  I will continue to do backtesting and develop trading systems.  However, my paying off my debt will be my primary mission in life.

This blog will now include techniques that I am using to free myself from debt.

This is an important part of my trading journey and I will chronicle this part of it just like I have been doing with my live trading.  I will also continue to show backtesting results, review books and highlight points of interest in the markets.

My commitment

This is scary to say…

…but as of this moment, I commit to paying off every penny of my $65,000 debt before ever trading real money again.  It is not just a commitment to fixing my trading.  It is a commitment to the thing I value most in my life, finally having the freedom to live on my own terms.

How will I do this?

To tell you the truth, I don’t exactly know yet.  It is a monumental task to say the least.

I’ve been reading Adam Baker’s Man vs Debt blog and got some great ideas from it.  I can take on extra website/marketing consulting jobs, do freelance writing, I can find stuff to sell on eBay and who knows what else.

All I know for sure is that it has been done before and I am smart enough to do it too.  This new direction actually has me more excited than I have been in awhile. It is a singular, quantifiable purpose that has been the root of all my disappointment up until now.

If you are still reading, thanks for hanging with this long ass post.  I would love to hear any thoughts you may have, feel free to leave a comment below.

And thanks Bubble Boy…I need that.

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