Sunday's always a good day to plan your week ahead. So I've spent a bit of time setting out my goals for this week.
Before sharing those goals I want to mention a couple of the tools I'm using as part of this journey to keep me on track.
I recently started using Trello (
https://trello.com) as a task management tool. It's free to use and if like me you prefer to go native, there are apps for my laptop (Mac) and phone (Android). Windows and iOS are covered too. By adding my tasks for the week ahead I don't have to stop and think what to do next, I've already thought about it and can just get on with it.
The other tool I'm using is Evernote (
https://evernote.com/) which is a note taking app which like Trello, is free to use and has native versions. I've always been a big fan of nvALT (
http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/) for quickly jotting down anything I think I might want to revisit later, but given the complexity of the journey ahead, I decided that Evernote will be a better option to organise myself, as it offers saved searches, tagging and multi-media features that nvALT just doesn't have. I think it's going to really help to make my journal updates easier to manage and better structured, as I can create posts in draft and over time flesh them out.
So I learnt last week, that progressing without a plan results in little real progress. I didn't set myself any specific tasks, so I ended up doing a lot of googling, and whilst it may have been fun to listen to some algorithmic podcasts, watching a few YouTube videos and reading a bunch of blog posts, it really add up to anything. I'm sure many would-be traders, fall into this trap, quickly realise there's a mountain of information out there, don't know where to start and either give up too quickly or seek solace in the comfort, and cost, of a 'training programme' that promises to be their guiding light and will most probably fail to deliver.
As a great believer in the less is more approach, let's make sure this week is a productive one by focussing on a few tasks that I know are fundamental building blocks for moving forward. As NVP pointed out earlier, I can't let the programming and nuts and bolts, get in the way of the trading strategy, so I need to progress on both. Here's my plan of attack:
- Trading Strategy: Read the first two parts of 'The Financial Times Guide to Options' by Lenny Jordan - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Financial-Times-Guide-Options-Successful/dp/0273736868. I got hold of a copy of this in early December, and I really like Lenny's straightforward and concise approach to explaining options trading and strategies. It's essentially a rebranded second edition of the author's previous book, Options Plain and Simple, which was recommend by @RogerM in the Best Thread: T2W Guide to Trading Options all the way back in 2004! The first two parts consist of 14 short chapters and there are Q&A exercises to complete for each.
- Programming: Get QTPyLib (https://qtpylib.io/) up and running, and paper trading a very simple automated MA-crossover strategy in my IB account. Last week I spent some time looking around for algorithmic trading platforms and libraries which could get me up and running quickly, which can support paper and live trading with IB, back testing and support options trading; and this open source library seems to fit the bill nicely. The author of the library, Ran Aroussi, has created a four part webinar series on Treading with Python (you read that right) available on his website here: https://aroussi.com/#tag/recording. I've watched the first one and it was excellent. You get to see how easy it is to prototype trading strategies with Python using Jupyter notebooks. I plan to watch the rest of the webinars when I have the time to follow them, step by step. For now, I prefer to get some actual trading under my belt!