238: Public Service Announcement

And risk. This is the Hey, what's going on everyone? Quick break here from regular programming. There is something I would like to share with you. Let's call it a public service announcement, if you will. Now this is not an easy decision. In fact, far, far from it. But I've done quite a lot of contemplating as of late. And sometime later this year, I'll be moving on from host of chat with traders. Not immediately, not right now, so please chill, but later on in the year.

Does this mean the end? Absolutely not. I know this podcast has helped many traders over the years, and I know it's been greatly beneficial to the trading community at large, so I'm pleased to say Chat with Traders will live on. I'll address the future of the show in just a moment, but first let me lay out a few of the reasons that have kinda led to this decision.

The main reason is well I'm trading full time. Some of you may or may not be aware of this, but I have been trading full time for the past few years now. And full time meaning actively trading the Australian market on an intraday basis. The market here opens at ten AM and trades through till four PM each day. Plus I'm at the screens doing prep from about eight AM onwards, so a couple hours before the open each day. So there is at least an eight hour chunk out of the day.

Now, I've kept this quiet, so I'm fairly sure most will be unaware. I became a dad in March last year, so I now have a little boy. And of course, there goes another few hours each day. I also do cross fit or train in the evenings pretty much every day and I view this being physical exercise as a very necessary requirement for my ability to be able to trade well. So as I've demonstrated here, and as time management is not necessarily my strong point.

I quickly run out of hours in the day. I basically end up squeezing the podcast in first thing in the morning or later on in the evening. And I don't know how it comes across, but behind the scenes there is quite a lot of work that goes into producing the show. Trying to do it all on my own, there are definitely times where I feel a little burned out.

Which I guess shouldn't be overly surprising given I started the podcast seven years ago. Uh January twenty fifteen was episode one. And ever since I've been pumping out episodes on a regular basis. You know, it's funny when I actually first started, I had to explain to people what is a podcast. Now it's just common knowledge. So ultimately this is a long winded May of me saying it's time for me to double down on my own trading. But more importantly, what lies ahead for chat with traders?

As I hinted earlier, the show must go on. So what does the next evolution look like? Well from this point forward the podcast will have two hosts. Yes, I'll have a co-host joining me. Which I'm kind of looking forward to because it occasionally feels like I'm doing much of the same thing week in, week out. or more so operating on a fortnightly schedule as of late, but you catch my drift. So I think this is gonna add like a a nice new dynamic and energy to the episodes.

Then, as I become less involved in time, my co-host will take the reins, also bringing in a second person, bringing more life to chat with traders, more interviews with trading talent. Plus, I know my co-host has a few ideas on community. A stronger community aspect is something that I felt has always kind of been missing from chat with traders.

I've often thought about doing more on this front and I've toyed with several ideas but just never really acted on it. And I can definitely see the value in community because I often get emails asking about almost community recommendations or knowing if I do I know someone who lives in this kind of area or who trades in this certain way.

And when I'd host live events, I know that's been a little while, and meetups too, the best part for most people was just having the opportunity to meet and connect with others who have similar aspirations. And I totally get this because when I started the podcast way back when, part of my motivation was to get to know other traders. Anyway, uh there'll be more on that later.

So I guess the big question on everyone's mind is who is your new co-host? Most importantly, she is a longtime listener of the podcast. Folks, I would like you to meet Tessa Dow, and she is right here with me. Tessa, how are you? I'm doing great, Erin. Thank you. And thank you for the warm introduction. And most importantly, congratulations on recently becoming a dad with your Bundo of pure joy. I can imagine that you are in an exciting chapter in your life right now.

Uh yeah, I mean it's certainly not without its lack of challenges, that's for sure, but um getting through it. So Tessa, I'm not going to interview you as you are not a guest, but just putting myself in the position of a listener for a moment. Who wants to get bit of an idea on what you're all about, I'm gonna pretend like I don't know who you are.

Would you like to share just a little bit about your trading experience? You know, are you doing this full time, part-time? What sort of things are you trading? Uh, how long you been at this for? I'd just like to back up a little bit because you did mention that I've been a longtime listener and it is true. I've listened to the Chat with Traders podcast since the early days of it. Back then I was relatively new to trading at the time, just

starting to learn more about trading. And I can totally relate to what you said about not knowing anyone when first starting out. And there weren't many people I knew around me. when I started trading. So listening to the podcast for me, it felt you know, less lonely trying to navigate through the trading world.

It not only was eye-opening or should I say ear opening because I learned so much from listening to the different guests on the show who share, you know, their unique perspectives, experience, and their expertise. And, you know, there are great trading moments as well as there are challenging moments of trading and it really helps. Uh, me when I was first starting out. And so a little bit about me. I currently reside in the beautiful state of Washington in the Seattle area.

But I mostly lived and grew up in Southern California. And as far as career goes, um, my background has been in corporate finance. not really by choice, but by circumstance. However, I must say that I'm less of a numbers person and I I gravitate towards the creative side, you know, with um ideas and strategies, I've always had that, you know, entrepreneurial spirit. So I saw an intersection between entrepreneurs and traders. And so I started to learn to trade and started with trading equities.

And then I decided that I needed to really devote my time to learn and trade. So I ended up quitting my job at the t at the time so that I can do this thing. And thought if I just had more time to devote to it, I would make the money I needed and not have to worry about anything else. And You know, I was totally wrong. I I ended up blowing my account. Then I switched over to options trading. I was so fascinated with this type of trading because it involved a lot of creativity.

so many kinds of strategies that you could use. And because there are just like so many different moving parts to consider in options, it it just really kept me interested. But I've nearly blown up my entire account with um trading options as well. And then only about a few years ago, a couple of years ago, I started to turn my trading around and uh was able to stop the bleeding and started to see um improvements in my trading and I would attribute being able to turn my trading around due to

um, a number of things. It's not just one thing. It's just a combination of things. Like for example, I had, you know, gained more experience trading and was able to learn from my mistakes and um study my trades, which is actually not really fun to do because it's a a process and it's not as exciting, but it's really important. So that's I I incorporated that as part of my trading process and also learn how to manage risk better and then simplify my trading and just to trade less.

Um, because I realized that trading full time just did not work for me. There was just Way too much pressure on trading full time. So I prefer to diversify my income and having it come from different sources. I just don't like the pressure of relying on solely trading for income and therefore I have other ways to bring in income so that I take that pressure off me.

As you were talking there, one of the things you said was there's a lot of different things you can do with options, like so many different strategies. Can you just briefly uh share maybe the sorts of things you're doing with options? Like you just outright directional, or are you doing some sort of slightly more complex strategies?

Yeah, sure. I mean, in the beginning when I was learning options, I learned to do more simple type of setups, like directional. It's more directional in the beginning, setting up uh just with a a couple of legs. like a a call option or a put option, a long call or a long put, just really basic. And then over time I um

learned how to uh add more to that. So you can as you learn more about the different strategies, you can start adding more to the basic leg. I g they call it leg. Sometimes I use Four to eight leg legs of you know uh Right. Options. Yeah. Um it it sounds complicated, but um my strategy was to more uh neutral in in the direction. And I like to trade options around earnings, right before earnings, during earnings, and right after earnings.

Kind of my strategy, um, but it needs a lot of uh volatility. So um I I'd be happy to share more about that in detail at some point, but basically that is um kind of my strategies to trade around earnings. Excellent. When's earnings when's the next earnings season?

It's happening right now. And usually, you know, as I mentioned, I don't trade full time. My options trading strategy is such that it requires about ten hours a week to manage and the trading duration is about Two months out of every quarter.

Okay. So earlier I laid out a few reasons for my motivation of bringing on a co-host. Let me ask you, like, what are some of your motivations for being a co-host? Yeah. Well, aside from the fact that it's really cool to be able to co-host alongside you, Erin, co-hosting is also a way for me to contribute to the trading community in some way.

while I'm in my trading journey. Because I feel like I'm also on similar journeys as many of the listeners out there. I understand the challenging journey that many other traders go through. And I want to be able to help advocate, especially for beginner and developing traders like myself, to have more trading knowledge and

support to be able to develop into better traders and to trade successfully. And so this show is one of the ways to do that by continuing to help bring on different guests onto the show. uh coming from different backgrounds and different perspectives, um, different stages in their trading journey and across different markets. And I know that this has helped many traders on this show for the last seven years.

since this podcast was born and I want to be able to help continue that effort. And a topic that you touched on earlier that I am so happy to share a little bit more about is bringing some ideas to life about community. I am excited about helping to build the podcast's very own community on a platform that will be embedded in the Chat with Traders website. I think it's a great way.

to step away from the noises and distractions of the many social platforms out there and step into a community focused on chat with traders listeners. I think that in a world where isolation and loneliness are on the rise, I think Community is important now more than ever, and a community where we can bring together devoted listeners of the podcast.

whose desire is to deepen and bring more meaning to their trading journey by connecting and learning and supporting and and holding one another accountable. Something that's sometimes very hard to do on one's own. So so that we can make progress as a community of traders and Smash those discouraging statistics on trading and instead make progress, no matter how small, towards becoming better traders. There will be more details on on this in the coming months.

Now we just want to keep this episode brief, but just uh couple last things here. Quick disclaimer for you listening at home. Uh, for myself and for Tessa, uh, you know, we both have a little bit of podcasting experience, but it is our first time actually co hosting together. So Don't be too harsh uh on judging our first few episodes together. We're still kinda working things out, but uh we will get there soon enough.

And we've actually recorded one episode already, uh, that should be coming out next week, and that's with a young trader who goes by the name of Nicholas Bradburn. Um and this episode uh some of you may recall probably like It's probably been a at least a year since I did the last one, but I there was a few episodes in a series called My First Year Trading Full Time. Uh so it's another one of those type of episodes. It's kind of interesting because Nick.

He started trading, I think it might have been like twenty eighteen or nineteen, I don't recall exactly, but he started taking it seriously in twenty twenty when his income kind of came under threat. uh he was working in the um the dining industry and he he came into trading through the avenues of Wall Street bets and signal providers and that kind of thing.

And we sort of know how that story plays out more often than not. But he's like come out the other side and uh he's putting up some really nice um some really nice returns. Certainly not uh massive PNL, not massive numbers, but definitely on the right track and um just very consistent.

Yeah. And I thought it was interesting too that he started uh out trading options and then decided to convert over to trading equities, kind of opposite situation I was in. And I thought that was really interesting. And that he trades uh large caps over small caps? Yeah, that part was interesting as well because you often find that

I mean, just broadly speaking here, retailers kinda are more attracted to the small caps over the large caps, but he's found his edge playing um in the bigger stocks, so that's really cool. Just something a bit different. Anyway, let's wrap things up here. Until next time, folks, we'll uh catch you on the next episode.

Thank you, Erin. And I'm really happy to be here and appreciate you for having me as your co-host. And I look forward to it. And listeners, I also thank you in advance for your openness to having me on the show.