Hello Tackle Traders, for those of you that are familiar with the Environmental Hedging weekly adventures of Mr Robert Shannon and the title of this weeks blog do not exactly fit with the lifestyle of a free bird 30 year old retired Bob Shannon.  Nope, this is Cody Maki substituting for this weeks edition of Environmental Hedging.  As someone who has witnessed Bob’s trading style and mindset from afar I just hope I can keep your attention the same way his documenting his world travel does each week.

A few months back I mentored with Matt Justice on learning how to invest and trade the financial markets.  While I will not detail everything we discussed then and many times after there was a lesson Matt shared when he was a young trader still learning the markets that I was reminded of when I was on my Honeymoon.  The lesson is simple, when the market changes or your lifestyle changes you have to adjust to the new market condition or your life condition.  Failure to adjust means a profitable trading system is now a failed one.  This brings me to my honeymoon.

Now, before anyone gets the thought of “What on earth are you doing trading on your honeymoon?!”, let me point out that we took a 14 day trip to New Zealand (a 19 hour time difference). So my trading was done while my beautiful new wife was still sound asleep in bed. The U.S. markets opened at 1:30 AM and closes at 8:00 AM NZ time. Also, there wasn’t the smallest chance that I was going to let my portfolio ride for 14 days without managing it.

My experience trading on my honeymoon had some benefits, and I learned a couple of lessons along the way, such as: trade management, market timing aka avoiding the amateur hour and experiencing the true value of being able to work your business from anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection.

So we all understand the concept of being able to trade anywhere in the world, right? Well I thought I did, but it wasn’t until this trip that I truly felt the freedom of having the ability to do my daily routine, closing my laptop, and enjoying the rest of the day. (http://https://tackletrading.com/course/7-step-guide-successful-trading/).  If this is what it feels like to be a professional trader and enjoy this lifestyle everyday then sign me up to whatever it takes as it is by far the most empowering feeling!

As we traveled down the country from the north island to the south, we changed hotels a total of 6 times. Some were nice, upscale hotels and some were simple Airbnb’s. I was worried that one of these hotels might not have WiFi, and it’s not like a coffee shop would be open in the middle of the night. This worry caused me to be cautious and to place trades with more POP, smaller deltas and tighter stops. This, in turn, led to a more consistent profit. Lesson learned: The risk of a trade should be looked at more closely than the ROI of the trade.

This is why surrounding yourself with other traders that have more experience is vital.  I knew my lifestyle was going to change and that I was not going to have 100% access to everything I needed so rather than shut down and lose opportunity costs by not trading or continuing to trade the systems I learned from Matt with hard rules on Delta and Theta that may have not been profitable due to my lack of access to manage the portfolio, I remember what Matt emphasized and that was to adjust the system to my lifestyle.  By making the adjustments I did to a lower delta, I had more range on my naked puts and credit spreads that now did not need to be watched on a daily basis.  Stayed true to the system and really enjoyed the Honeymoon as the best feeling in the world is traveling the world to go to amazing places while you still make money.  It does not get better than that.

The second lesson I learned was to stay away from the first hour of trading. The so-called “amateur hour”.  I didn’t stay up and start trading at 1:30 AM. Instead, I would wake up between 4:00 and 5:00 AM to get started. This meant that the market had already been open for 3-4 hours and the massive volatility wasn’t there to bite me.  This gave me a better understanding of how the timing of your trade can benefit your strategy and design.

Lastly, I want to add a special thanks to Coach Matt Justice and the Trading Justice Podcast. Last summer around May 2016, I was listening to his podcast http://tradingjustice.com/ and Matt was talking about crypto-currencies, mainly Bitcoin. Bitcoin is more well-known now, but at that time last year, it was still a new and “scary” thing people weren’t too sure about.

In the podcast, Matt made a simple suggestion to the listeners. He said if you are curious, simply buy 1 coin and watch what it does in order to learn. I did just that. I bought 1 BTC in June 2016, as well as 40 Ethereum when ETH was still barely known and BTC when it was still under $1000.  A year later, I sold out of both and used the money to fund my honeymoon. So again, thank you so much for the advice that led to a trip of a lifetime.  Which brings me to my most important lesson from the very beginning.  If you want to be a trader or an investor, get on a team of other traders and there are none better than Team Tackle.

Thank you to all the coaches and team members here at Tackle Trading they are truly teaching a path to financial freedom and making a difference in all of their students’ lives!!

For any of my fellow nerds out there, yes, we went to The Shire from Lord of the Rings.