Dealing Floor or Kitchen Floor

Theres no contest: you need to give yourself the best possible advantage - that is impossible from a home environment. You are cut off from the markets. You need the vibe to get the edge!
 
thanks bullcar, i agree. on the whole if you can get into a professional environment there are lots of advantages. Not least speaking to traders around you, plus of course the potential for good information flow from brokers and news wires. Good organisations have analysts and economists on hand too
 
Trading from home does definitely have some advantages - no travelling, by being set-up at home you can work more hours more easily and take advantage of global markets and their time-zones. Also not everyone wants a noisy, energetic environment.

However each person is different and trading from home can be a particularly lonely business and being able to talk to other traders about ideas,good/bad days or even what you did at the weekend can have a positive effect,i.e. it's not all about having analysts and economists on hand but a bit of human interaction.
 
$spreader, did u try trading from home? I tried it for 2 months - neither felt like at home or at work in the end. Your points are highly valid though. Personally i like to be at work when i work and at home when not working. Where i think people go wrong is if they work from home for financial reasons. That proved to be a false economy (in my case at least)
 
When trading from a dealing room full of colleagues, when you lose they call you "stupid", when you win they induce you to give them a treat and help you spend your money on them.

When trading from home, no one other than your broker knows your trading results.
 
If so that will be even worse! You can see the trader's wallet suffer the side effects of a super fast diet!
 
bullcar said:
$spreader, did u try trading from home? I tried it for 2 months - neither felt like at home or at work in the end. Your points are highly valid though. Personally i like to be at work when i work and at home when not working. Where i think people go wrong is if they work from home for financial reasons. That proved to be a false economy (in my case at least)
Click to expand...

I traded from an office from between the beginning of 1999 to mid-2000 then set up at home for a number of reasons - no more commuting seemed like a huge bonus and I felt like I'd missed opportunities while away from the office.I do agree with what you say though that when trading from home you never really escape the markets and when the screens are only in the other room it's easy to spend an unhealthy amount of time in front of the terminals.

I actually now have the best of both worlds - I rent a space in an office about half an hour away and it is connected to my set-up at home so I can go in a few days per week (usually the latter part of the week) and enjoy the pros of going to an office but can also trade erratic hours if need be.
 
Last edited:
If you can get an office nearby, that sounds a great solution, especially if you can share it with some like minded individuals.

I hated trading from home (my other half thought that me sitting in front of the screen half the day with my feet up wasnt work at all - so why the hell cant i help get the shopping in, walk the dog etc etc).

So now its trading from the office, and relaxing at home.

Is your office in Chicago? Doyou work with other traders?
 
Yes,the office is actually in the Board of Trade building and there are a lot of traders,some working purely from the office,others like me splitting their time and some just come in to see what's going on from the agricultural floor(still open outcry).

I know what you mean about that aspect of trading from home,and if I had to decide home or office it would be a tough one but like you say trading from the office and relaxing at home sounds pretty good to me.
 
Hi $s,

i wonder how UK arcades compare to Chicago? We were forced to go electronic first, but now we are used to it things are getting pretty good.

At first firms just threw people behind screens and mostly they lost money. Now some firms have really cracked on and got professional. Refco and Futex now have dealing rooms to compare with the great trading houses. They had to in order to compete professionally.

Whats the experience been like in Chicago?
 
In most cases,the best pit-traders were not adaptable to the screens and yet the quite guy in the corner who would've been completely traded through in the pits you suddenly hear is trading eurodollar in 500 lot clips without thinking twice!

Electronic trading here was delayed as long as possible and you can still trade open outcry - the financial contracts do hardly anything but the agricultural contracts are still busy.

I first started trading on the APT machines,filling orders on LIFFE contracts in the 90s,but also trading a backed account for myself,mainly bunds and BTP(a lot thinner then)so when Eurex swiped the bunds and the electronic phenomenon took off I was one of the first to trade here solely via screen.Most of the traders here are self-backed - I know that a lot of traders in the UK are now 'trained' with no experience but it is still early days here and the guys that have battled through the initial losses are starting to turn things around though not nearly having the P+Ls that they're used to.
 
For those traders thinking about setting up at home,something else that you really need to consider is that you in effect run your own little office - you need to buy,keep upgraded and maintain all the computers and electronic equipment - if a monitor breaks and you don't have a spare then you're going to have a problem(speaking from experience).You can't just call over the guy from I.T. to solve what may be a simple problem.You have to live with power-cuts and line slowness at times.Without a little bit of I.T. experience,it's not easy to organise all this as well as trading.
 
Trading on your own is exactly that trading on your own.

If you have feelings that you miss something at the office then perhaps trading really isn't the game for you.

To be sure it is a very solitary pursuit less you are part of a hedge fund or like.
 
Not many people can trade in a vacuum and that is what trading from home is.
Also within an arcade environment it is possible to chat bounce ideas and get reminded when a figure is about to come out etc and also get a feed on other markets, contracts and opportunities.
Most people benefit from the social and interaction aspects a trading room provides.
Also if you are isolated and trading alone it is very tempting to trade for the sake of it and alot who have tried found that their P&L suffered greatly from the overtrading associated with the boredom factor of being isolated.
That said the more technical traders and in particular options traders tend to be the ones who succeed in a home environment.
 
Interesting
Having tried both I can honestly say I find trading from home brilliant.
However my set up helps I believe
I have my dealing room (spare bedroom converted) with a lock on it.
The door is not locked to keep anyone other than myself out.
To enter my dealing room I need to turn the key (a psychological barrier) and to exit the reverse.
It may sound silly but this manouver allows me to divide home from"office".
Unlike a previous poster I find I am a lot more patient in the selection of my trades.I have been (still am ?) competetive by nature.In the dealing room enviroment I would find myself making a trade in response to profit made by another trader.Now I trade when I am ready.
I seldom suffer from the boredom factor I provide myself with distractions so as not to.I have cheap second hand backup for my main system and a mobile for use only to deal.I vary my hours according to my positions and market volatility.I make phone calls to contacts (friends) to discuss markets etc.My wife having suffered me under both circumstances definitely prefers the present set up.
 
M&P, one of the best pieces of advicece i ever read:
"The door is not locked to keep anyone other than myself out."
One should always bear that thought in mind when boredom takes hold of the trader at his desk, lest he trade because he has nothing better to do!
Thanks
BB
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

E
lower floor freehold sharer put up ugly sattelite dish
Replies
4
Views
1K
edgetrading
E
B
Floor collapses at weight watchers meeting
Replies
5
Views
2K
Gumping
Gumping
O
Desk Space Available in forex Trading Floor /Barbican -380 Month.
Replies
1
Views
2K
JoWa11
J
C
floor traders in the pit, floor traders on NASDAQ
Replies
3
Views
2K
Depth Trade
Depth Trade
B
Floor-traded contracts
Replies
5
Views
3K
Directional
Directional
Top