(Heheh... that title makes me think of pirates.) I got to reminiscing today. Actually, have been a lot recently. A cluster of little experiences that point my mind at memories of Calgary. For whatever reasons, my time trading has come up several times in the past week; watched a doc on Enron, was reminded of the Go-Trading-Yoga connection, randomly discovered my old trading blog still exists. Also discovered some old Calgary photos I'd forgotten while preparing a presentation for my class. Then this evening in the span of 30 minutes, there was some very Calgary-like weather that struck Regina, followed by me running into a friend from Calgary online who had just got back from seeing a gig by an Australian band with a sound that totally reminded me of my roomies back in Calgary. It's exactly their kind of music (one was Australian afterall). It was the music that really kicked in the deep reminiscing. In some sense... it embodied what life felt like in Calgary. My experience of Calgary was kind of that Calgary is Canada's little Australia; it's all about the fun. You live and you work in order to go have fun. It's all about the people and the experiences instead of the form and function. It all made me a little homesick. And I find it quite interesting and amazing that I still feel that way. It's just over two years now since I moved away from Calgary, and I had only lived there a single year. I remember though... that the moment I drove into that city back in 2006 it felt immediately like home, and it still hasn't lost that. Regina is comfortable, but it will always remain "back home" instead of "Home" even though I'm living here right now. I don't know if Regina could ever quite be Home again. Often when I find myself in one of those patterns where I happen to think about Calgary a lot, I find myself also feeling something particularly unusual for me. I regret very very little about all of the millions of choices I've made in life and things I've done, but I really do regret leaving Calgary when I did. Almost nothing else in my life can I honestly say I would change if I had the opportunity to go back. But there's no doubt in my mind that I would go back and change that decision to leave if I could. It's not just the curiosity of what the other path might have been like, it's that I would rather be on that other path wherever it went. It broke me a bit, I think, to leave. I feel like I stole myself from myself. In the long run, I'm sure I will find sufficient good in it. I can find much now of course, enough to pacify when thinking about where I am and what I'm trying to do right now and knowing that much of it probably would not have come to pass if I had not left. And also knowing that that person would no longer be the me that is me, here and now. But... I still can't look on that decision with anything but regret. It is the single choice that signalled the start of the hardest year of my life. I hope that someday I will change my mind, but I'm not convinced of anything yet. I remember right when I got back to Regina though, I had a really good conversation with someone I don't see nearly enough of. He told me... to keep the connections, keep the good thoughts, because you never quite know what might end up happening around the next corner, or the next after that. You never know when you might find yourself with an opportunity to return to something you thought you'd left forever. He was speaking to one aspect of life, but of course that thought can be broadly applied - and broadly apply I did. It gave me what I needed to find some reason to be back here, back where I started. And so it also makes sense that I'm thinking of this so frequently right now. I'm trying to figure out how to accomplish what I made my self-justification for returning; my goal for the next few years. But I haven't figured it out yet because a number of things are just completely out of my control. I hope that my chosen door will stay open because I'm starting to see some of the light from the choices on the other side... but it might get closed for a while and this time, if it does, it probably will be closed indefinitely whether I like it or not. That sense of a lack of control... it is something very familiar. I'm not comfortable standing still, never have been. Some part of me craves that state of not being tied down by anything, having the freedom to just up and leave down some new path that calls me. Exploration leads to opportunity. But... opportunity leads to options. And as the advertising experts are fast-discovering, too many options can stagnate the decision. Choosing one means not choosing others. The more options, the more things you choose not to do too. An unpleasant reciprocal I've had a lifetime of difficulty facing. The foreboding sense of a lack of control is a symptom of a decision approaching. My wanderlust is what opens doors, but also what scares me away from choosing one. I crave the freedom to discover opportunity and am frightened by the closure that choice provides. I'm a pathfinder, not a path-chooser. This year has also really aged me. I feel like... somewhere in there I went from 22 to 32 all in the past year and a half. I feel like there is a lot less time. I feel a new weight... the press of time that I never really felt like this before. I don't like it. But maybe, like the pressure of an assignment deadline, it will ultimately be what spurs me to finally hurl myself at another choice instead of exploring the options. You know... those long bike rides I used to take early in the morning way back in high school years before the life-altering theft of my third bike, each and every one was a profound experience unto itself. I was only ever at peace on my bike, not knowing where I was going. They were never forced. I would randomly wake up very early and I would feel compelled to hop on my bike and let each moment guide the action of the next. I don't think that compulsion ever really went away... the bike rides just got longer and longer. I wonder if someday I will find my way off the bike.

It still exists...

Holy crap... I had no idea this blog still exists. I have not updated this in over two years. Everything worth posting has so far been posted at Strangequarks, so if you're reading this somehow, then go to:

http://strangequarks.ca

instead.

Quantec

Well, turns out I didn't spend very long unemployed. I had quit last Monday, took a day off to just chill, then started applying for stuff on Wednesday. Late Wed, I was told about a company hiring "people with my skills" and so I checked it out and applied Thursday morning. By Friday evening, I had the job. To avoid repeating verbatim, if you're interested in the full story then head to Strangequarks.ca and see my blog note at:
http://strangequarks.ca/node/1153

And if you're not already a member of SQ, well then poke around and see if you'd like to be. Newcomers are ALWAYS welcome at SQ.

Bright new ending

Well despite doing very well using this strategy on Friday, it failed miserably today. Ultimately, with it too, the weakness here is unexpected volatility. The strategy requires stocks to remain at least in a reasonable range. So picking a stock with typically a ten-cent range over a day is ideal. The problem is... volatility in the market as a whole is increasing which means these stocks are more likely to break their patterns. And break they do.

So today, once again, I saw the office flat overall. A very few people were quite green, and the rest of the office got scraps or took a substantial hit. Ultimately it comes down to this: Most of the best traders in our office are no longer pulling down a substantial income even though a couple are still well above the median; and I need a paycheque. So... as glad as I am that I had the opportunity to try, the market is just shifting too much from a day-trader's game to reasonably expect any kind of long-term stability. And so I write my resignation letter and return to the undesirable task of trying to convince employers all of what a physicist is capable of.

Strategy

For some reason... as I lay there in bed thinking about the day of trading as I tend to do... I was thinking about the range and liquidity on Ford and it made me remember a trading strategy I had come up with several months ago. The strategy, I was sure, was golden. But I basically only gave it a test over the course of one or two days, and most assuredly, it was on the wrong stocks to try it on. I'm not going to say the strategy out here, because quite frankly, it really is golden if you do it on the right stocks. And it won't work if everyone starts doing it. So... if it works for me, don't expect me to ever say how I'm making money.

The thing is, I need to be able to use more of my buying power. After these past few days, I am restricted now to a cap of 900 shares on any given stock at any given time. I need to be able to trade higher volumes.

This sounds like a complete doubling-back on what I have written on here in the past couple days... and in some sense I guess it is. But looking back on things... I am an absolute idiot for not having re-tried this sooner on more appropriate companies. Provided I can either get permission from my boss to occasionally go over my share limit or get back to my previous levels (which isn't really very far out of my reach at all) then I will embark on that immediately. Assuming I do not get special permission, then I will simply play very very conservatively... just getting a NET of what I absolutely need to go up a level and get more shares - and also attempt the strategy on a thinner scale.