We received this question from the trading community, which we will pose to our trading community for your comment:
My question is about training during the off-season. The month of August is typically known as a slow month. As a result, next month (August 2010) I’m going to be away from my desk, I’m taking a trip down to the Dominican Republic / Haitian border to do some missionary work for the month of august. I strongly feel that giving back to others and sharing our blessings goes hand in hand with our privilege to trade. During this time I plan on reading some trading books, articles and reviewing my videos.
It’s my understanding that athletes like Payton Manning and Alex Rodriguez do not take breaks. They actually work, plan, and prepare during the off-season, this helps give them an edge over the other players that are doing nothing. It would be very interesting to get your approach on the so called “August Off- Season” and “Off-Season” training ideas for traders.
Can’t wait to hear from you.
Questions for the Trading Community:
1) Do you take off from trading? If so when and for how long?
2) Do you work on your trading game while taking time off? If so what do you do?
2 Comments on “A ? 4 the Trading Community- Off-Season Improvement Plan?”
yes, time off for the brain as is important as time on. it is about balance. you go at 1000% in any one direction and will lose the value of the effort some where in there. and these athletes do take vacations, i have been around a few. don’t buy that stuff, just makes good stereotypes for a story. they chill out and relax like the rest of us. on a smaller time off scale – David Wright was given the night off two games ago for no reason but to rest while the team played. Last night, first game back, he hit two home runs v Arizona. Just a coincidence likely, but everybody needs to shut it down once and a while. — mentally as much as physcially.
Pro sports can have 3-6 months of an off season. A trader at most might get a few weeks. And this time generally needs to be sent recharging. So I am not sure this a like analogy.
As traders we get better by finding what works for us and doing more of that with more size. We are always looking for new set ups to add to our playbook. Our improvement comes everyday as we work on trading certain set ups with more size and trading new ones.
There is a lot being written about lately that taking an extended break at your profession leads to tremendous growth. I wonder if some reading know of traders who take off extended periods to study new trading set ups that they wish to implement going forward. I would be interested to read about this.