The plan to be full time by the end of this year is nicely on track.

I recently had some hours cut at work. This meant that  I was around £90 down each week. Its been easy enough to made that up with the trading and finishing work at 3 rather than 5 has also been a blessing in disguise.

I noticed straight away that as soon as I HAD to make the 90 quid that I was thinking about the trades differently. I don’t tend to take many risks anyway but I found that as soon as the hedge figure reached £25 or £30 I was taking it whereas before I would think that I ought to leave it a little longer to get another tenner at least. Obviously there are matches where  everything goes smoothly. You get in at just the right time with the appropriate stake. The match goes more or less exactly as you anticipated and you can often find yourself with a 3 figure green with little stress. But I’m talking about the bread-and-butter trades. With little risk you can take anything from £10 to £30 and move on. I’m hitting the hedge much more readily.

Another thing I have been quicker to do is to take  the red hedge.  Sometimes I would wait a little too long to get out of a trade knowing that I have a strategy that is well practiced to manage any switch of sides and also a maximum loss figure if the trade looks like going beyond my control. Often now I will get out at the first hint of danger. Ofcourse it will often happen that the perceived dangers don’t become reality and you have given back any green you may have had up to that point for no reason. The point is that I am dealing with smaller red figures which reduces the stress levels that I imagine full time trading bring.

Not having the 9 to 5, or the 7 to 3 in my case, is bound to ease up some time pressure. At the moment I have the full time job, run a forum and chatroom and trade a lot. Also having around 600 members of TradeSharkTennis who have many many questions takes up a lot of time  ( not complaining as that was one of the main reasons for setting it up!).

I try to reply to emails as quickly as I can which naturally gets harder as member numbers increase. Time management has always been good since my days in retail management but often my replies aren’t as in depth as I  would like. I feel bad if I don’t get to an email in time to give the advice requested even over the past few difficult days where family matters have rightly taken priority.

Which leads on to another point. How often is it nice to go to work to get away from issues at home? I suppose that depends on how many issues you get at home and what you do for a job! They are usually caused by people outside my immediate family but we seem to move from one “crisis” to another. If I am at work I usually won’t be dragged into it until I get home but what if I am just upstairs?

Since having reduced hours at work I have explained to my wife and daughter that we had to treat the trading as my second job. I can be interrupted in real emergencies. Is it an emergency that one of the cat’s has crapped on the sofa? Err no.   Is it an emergency that my daughter’s hair dryer doesn’t work and her boyfriend is coming for her in 10 minutes? Errr go away I’m at work……..No you’re not and I can’t go out with wet hair……..Close the door………You never help me……….where did I put that Uzi……..Damn! Break of serve!

I think I just need to keep my feet on the ground which is something i don’t have a problem with. I’ll set a minimum average target for the day ( around £50 ) and concentrate on reaching that first. Whether I withdraw money daily or weeky I haven’t decided but I am favouring daily.

I’m trying to make the transistion as stress free as possible by using this year to build up some back up living expenses. The theory being that I want to be able to think about my trading pretty much as I do now. You don’t need any extra immediate pressure.

I’ll try to keep you updated of how things are going as regards turning full time. I know the forum and chatroom will be very helpful in keeping me sane (ish )