I Am One of Those Traders!

I am caught in a fight with $NFLX for my free time and losing badly. Embarrassingly, I am late to $AMCX’s Mad Men and furiously making up for missed episodes. There is inspiration from the show that can help all of us recognize our goals.

Peggy Olson is a supporting character in Mad Men trying to make it a man’s world, with the added challenge of that being the 60’s definition of a man’s world. Playing the advertising world astutely she advances from secretary to copy. For these times this was a Wow. And…. from Brooklyn Catholic girl to imminent NYC girl.

“You want to be one of those girls?” quizzes her befuddled and disappointed mom, as Peggy tells her she’s rented her own place in the city.

Her reply is our inspiration:

“I am one of those girls!”

Perhaps your new year’s goal is to trade profitably. Perhaps, you envision walking into a tall building in midtown Manhattan stopping at a floor with hundreds of computers and monitors abound- where you trade. Or perhaps your career dream is to sit in your home office decked with connections to markets and compete with the world’s most sophisticated traders powered by your internet. Perhaps you daydream of having drinks with trading peers talking QE Europe, the bottoming of oil and/or those jacka$$ HFTs. Perhaps it’s to sit in quiet late at night back-testing a new trade strategy you just considered.

We remember Carl Sandburg here, “Nothing happens unless first we dream.”

But mostly when asked by someone important to you, ” So…..you say you want to be one of those professional traders?” You aspire to answer matter-of-factly,

“I am one of those traders!”

Think about how it would feel to give that answer.

And remember that feeling each night while ripping through charts, doing a backtest, crunching your trading stats, archiving a PlayBook trade, building custom trading filters and preparing with daily reading. I can see dangling with inspiration a sticky note on the monitors of many aspiring traders, motivating you to do the work necessary to be profitable, by way of Mad Men:

I am one of those traders!

Mike Bellafiore is the Co-Founder of SMB Capital and SMBU, which provides trading education in stocks, options, forex and futures. Bella is the author of One Good Trade and The PlayBook. He welcomes your trading questions at [email protected].