You Know You’re a Trader When…

Traders can be spotted a hundred miles away. From their unique vernacular to the pale expression on their faces from staring at squiggly lines all day, it’s usually pretty easy to know when you’re dealing with a financial market enthusiast. Below is a list of 12 reasons you know you’re a trader.

You know you’re a trader when…

You look at the night sky and see chart patterns instead of the Big Dipper.

Traders not only examine charts, they LOVE making them as well. For that reason, traders are more likely to see a hammer formation or head and shoulders pattern by looking at the night sky. Big Dipper? What Big Dipper?!

You tell yourself your lackluster trade is really a decent long-term hold.

Denial is a powerful human emotion that probably has some kind of evolutionary benefit. For traders, it helps them justify lackluster positions that go nowhere. This wouldn’t be nearly as funny if traders didn’t exit the same position moments before it rebounds.

You have a preferred charting platform and snub the rest.

The internet has democratized pretty much every product and service in existence, including charting tools. There is an untold number of charting programs available on the internet, but if you’re a trader, only ONE of them is suitable. The rest are absolutely awful.

You know more central bankers than you have friends.

Janet Yellen, Mario Draghi, Haruhiko Kuroda, Mark Carney, Stephen Poloz… the list goes on and on (and you know everybody on it). Central banks play a vital role in the financial markets, and for that reason command a lot more of your attention than keeping track of friends’ birthdays.

You convince your spouse that you should sell your home at least a couple times a year.

Home builder sentiment is going down! Housing inventories are tight! The market is heading for correction! You get the idea… each housing market indicator elicits its own response. And your poor spouse has to live through it all.

You care more about durable goods orders than your son’s report card.

Jimmy’s report card is important and all… but so are orders for manufactured goods meant to last three years or more. As a matter of fact, these are far more important to the health of the overall economy than Jimmy’s grade in chemistry.

Your days are broken down into North American, European and Asian sessions.

Whereas most people have morning, noon and night, your day consists of North American, European and Asian sessions (and their critical overlaps). You also refer to late-hour trading sessions as “overnight sessions.”

You’ve thought about starting an Italian restaurant with Fibonacci in the name.

Whether you use Fibonacci or not, you’ve probably at least had one semi-serious discussion about naming your restaurant after it.

You’re not really into texting… unless it’s a trade alert.

There’s an app for just about everything, and as a trader, you probably spend about 1/3 of your waking day on your phone checking quotes or receiving trade alerts.

You’re subscribed to about 7,000 mailing lists, with half of them warning you about the impending market crash.

There’s a lot of fear mongering in the markets, and you pay attention to every single source. You do realize that you can opt out of all those mailing lists, right? I mean, the source is legally obliged to delete your email if you click “unsubscribe me” at the bottom of the email. Think about it!

You’re the only American who knows anything about Canada.

Americans know very little about their neighbours to the north. For traders, Canada is where loonies and oil come from.

You have your own theory about how the labour market should be measured.

Unemployment? What kind of measure is that! If you really want to measure the health of the labour force you should… yeah, we get it. Unemployment isn’t a complete measure of the health of the labour market. Please, Nobel Lauriat economist, tell us a better way to measure it. And don’t forget to ramble on for 20 minutes while you’re at it!

Sources:

Adapted from:

Andrew Nyquist (April 7, 2012). “You Might Be a Trader If…” Minyanville.

Andrew Nyquist (May 23, 2012). “You Might Be a Trader If: Part Deux.” See It Market.

Daniel Lindsay (September 12). “21 Signs You Have What It Takes To Be A Forex Trader.” Mahi FX.

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