Hey Tackle Traders, 

First off, I hope that you are all doing ok and taking care of yourselves and your loved ones. A special shout out and thank you to all the essential workers that are working tirelessly through this crisis. It’s been approximately 30 days since my state closed schools and began their recommendations for folks to stay at home and I’m sure you guys like myself have stories galore on what your experiences have been like. The first 2 weeks felt like a vacation. There was that sense of we all needed a break from our busy lives and staying at home is exactly where we needed to be. Looking at it from my kids’ perspective, they were overjoyed! Spring break came early for them so that meant going on TikTok to make videos and chat with their friends. 

I joined in all the fun, we stay up late and slept it. Showers were optional, attire; pajamas and a blanket to accessorize. 

Then things got real when the stay at home order went into effect on March 30th at least for kids anyway. That’s when the “what if” questions started to arise. They started to ask more serious questions related to the virus. They were paying more attention right as the news was getting worse in terms of new cases and deaths granted their news source was still TikTok. For us adults regardless of where our source of news comes from, it was getting real for us as well as economic and health reports took a turn for worse. With businesses shutting down, unemployment claims soaring to the millions, people we know dying from the virus it was starting to take a toll on us on. As much as we are all doing our best to remain positive while we do our part to flatten the curve and stay healthy, it’s clear that some of us are having a difficult time adjusting to this new normal. I am a glass half full, everything will be alright, find your happy place type of person. I’m also a social butterfly, the person who smiles at people, will have a conversation with a stranger and by end of it we are exchanging numbers and hugs. Those of you who can relate know that the struggle has been real! I mean no one can see you smiling with a mask on, no hugs, no hi-fives. So it was no surprise when I woke up to my version of the movie Inside Out in my head. Joy woke up only to get a knockout punch and she had no idea who threw the punch. Was it sadness, disgust, anger or fear? Either way, I was a woman down and the next thing I knew 5 days had gone by while the extrovert and introvert parts of me were battling it out. 

What does all this have to do with trading you ask? Everything! Our emotions are real and the market does not care about our feelings. We’ve all learned the important lessons of position sizing, stop loss, the risk to reward ratio, etc. albeit the easy way or the hard way. The same can be said about trading when you are emotional. Now, I’m not talking about the emotion you get after you’ve gone through all the proper steps to enter a trade and you are now wondering whether or not you should take profit or cut your losses short. I’m talking about you are in a bad place mentally, like you are off your usual routine, death, divorce, health issues, job loss, worrying about our kids and parents type of stuff and you deciding that it’s a good idea to trade. Coming into the market when you are feeling blue is not a good mix since the only colors of the market are red and green. Yes, all these things are part of life and most days we do manage to control them but for those days when they are controlling us, it is ok to sit it out especially if you are:

• Not taking the time to prepare properly 
• Lack of communication or participation 
• Feeling and tired, low energy, lack of motivation

If you decide to close up shop and go fishing, do make sure the house in order before you leave. 

• Turn on the cameras – If you plan on leaving some trades on, let’s say in your IRA, consider creating an alert when a major support is broken or add put options if you don’t want to be bothered while you are on break
• Clean out your fridge – Cut your losses short and adjust your stops on your winners or take some profit. Otherwise, it would be like coming back from vacation having left fresh milk then you pour a glass only to find out it’s spoiled. YUCK!!!
• Empty your trash – depending on how long this hiatus will be, get rid of any pending orders that have not filled. The last thing you need is for trades to trigger and you aren’t aware.

Eventually, the sun will come out and you will be back to trading in no time but I got a good reminder from Coach Tim that it’s ok to phone a trading friend when we aren’t feeling like our trading self. So my challenge to all of you is to decide who your phone a trading friend will be in case you happen to find yourself in the blue zone. 

Here’s a little reminder of the traders code Matt wrote a few years back.

The Traders Code

This video is just for laughs. Introverts vs Extroverts during social distancing

Until next time Traders!

Coach Em

Coach Em

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Emily Muiruri

Emily Muiruri was born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya before her family moved to the US and settled in Maryland, Emily began her trading journey in January 2015 after 17 years of Property Management in the Self-Storage Industry. Like many new traders, Emily started off with directional trading strategies such as long calls, long puts and very little in cash flow strategies. Over time that has changed and now her core trading strategies are cash flow based such as are Covered Calls, Naked Puts, and Iron Condors. Though she is still a student learning and enhancing her trading skills, she has a strong desire to teach women to take control of their finances and become traders. Writing blogs is one of the ways she’s is looking to spread the word and get more women involved. Emily knows that with the right education and trading system women can be successful traders.

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