Q&A: FX Trader: High Volatility Job, Low Excitement Life
Right, Assuming you have read the title, this is one of those "I feel sorry for myself" Saturday night posts, it's also a Q&A, because I'm bored. Now that that is out of the way, let me start with a short introduction, I am a trader on the FX desk at a BB in London (I am not going to disclose which one, but I'm sure you can guess). For the last three years I have worked in the same division, climbing through the ranks. I am <25 years old, went to a respectable uni, live alone in quite an empty apartment and own a fast car. Perfect right?, well read on.... My day starts at 4am when I wake, realise I have not died in my sleep, get dressed and consume a liquid breakfast. By the time I have driven to the office and get to my desk it is 5am. I catch up on the antics (or lack of) in Asia , then proceed to digest what ever the Bloomberg throws at me and my favourite news sites. By 6am I am up to speed and the fun begins. 1pm, marks the arrival of my lunch, which is consumed at my desk as this is when New York starts to get into gear. From now on the intensity levels increase, as does the opportunity to make some $. Between 1pm and 5pm liquidity is usually highest, that implies all hands on deck. By 5pm it is easy to tell who as had a good day or a bad one, although the seasoned guys don's how their P&L affects their emotions. Once 6pm strikes, things are reasonably quiet, most guys are on a call with the GF/wife/toy/accessory and getting ready to leave. I am not, if anything I am calling the car dealer to have yet another issue fixed. (Who said a Porsche is reliable). I go out for an hour walk and try to not to get pi$$ed off with outside life in general, I can be short fused at times, for no apparent reason, for example, a couple who decided to stop in my direction of travel on the footpath and embrace each other were treated to a rather loud "FFS" as I charged past, back to the office. I am back at my desk and settled in by 8:30pm at the latest after having something quick for dinner. Usually some form of steak. Now I begin to sift through the news again focusing on Asia. I monitor my positions until about 11pm and then I set off home, as the traffic is usually pretty quiet I am at home in bed by midnight, and wait to see if I will wake up in the morning or not. So this is all fine and well, apart from the fact I am completely bored outside work, have a short fuse at times and am quite lonely overall. Don't get me wrong, I have quite a few work mates, we do go for drinks (too many, usually) from time to time, but that is the extent of my social life. I don't have to work the late hours in the evening, I have been told this many time by my superiors but I do because I have nothing else. A fact which becomes evident at weekends. I catch up on sleep, get pi$$ed of that others are busy with their GFs or whatever to do anything. By the time 6pm strikes, I am opening my first beer of many and watch a movie, then fall into bed drunk. So for the last two weeks I have not bought any booze for the weekend, to see if it would make a difference. Result: I realise just how angry and pi$$ed I am at most things outside of my work world and wonder how I can suppress them so well. Basically, my life can be summarised as follows, I work almost all available hours, considered as "just another arrogant trader" by many and seem to make any girl I bring for dinner/drinks either not answer any text afterwards, despite being quite pleasant, and after paying a lot for dinner, or they stick around for two weeks at hours that suit them, cost me quite a lot of money and bugger off without any action of any sort. Conclusion, I like my job, I make money, but fck me I'm bored, grumpy, have a pretty fiery temper and have a "fck every else attitude" outside of work (generally), so yeah.
This is the part where the experienced guys start posting their epic advice.
An example from almost a year ago:
I get a call from a good HF client looking to sell 100 mil EUR/GBP. The price he wanted was a small push but it could be done, I just wanted to make some money through as it had been a quite morning. Anyways, this is a good client so I take a look at what the quotes for for the cross is. They are fluctuating slightly but remaining essentially net sideways overall. A look at the chart on my bloomberg showed that apparently a lot of smaller orders were coming in thick and fast in both directions. My first thought was that the algos were on scalping duty this afternoon. The lack of news today gave me an extra reason to believe this.
I had a look through our order book, and there had been very little action on the cross today. Okay, in my mind, the algos would have reasonably tight stop losses when scalping (confirmed by some guys from a HFT shop). I announce on the team chat that we are about to very heavy on Eur but not for long. Between myself and two colleagues we buy 550 mil EUR/USD and 40 mil of EUR/GBP. As soon as we we our orders in, boom, stop losses blown out on the cross, prices shoots up, by 0.00130 (such a distinctive number I couldn't forget), this is good, 50 more than my client wanted. I instantly get his order in by sending out 5 x 25mil ( to not to arouse too much attention, and to keep 25 mil for my own book) order through some ecns and to a colleague (an idiot, who has since left), that means I have made around 80k. We then offload all our EUR in a big hurry (think controlled fire sale). The cross takes a beating (I suspect I hit more algo stop losses that were on long EUR positions). The cross was now at trading at 50 lower than we sold at.
I called up my HF client, and before I could speak he just shouted, "DID IT FILL?", when I told him the price we sold at, his response was very positive. I won't say what because it is unique to this client I think (and hope, dark sense of humour)
I closed my short position on the cross, selling the GBP to one of the cable guys. My internal greed monster was satisfied, We had made a lot of money, and it was only 3pm!!
This is probably the most dramatic incidence I can remember playing the algos, but I can't really remember the numbers precisely (sleep deprivation at its best) only the 130 and that fact that our desk as a whole was up almost 2mil at NY close that day.
Alright- first of all- you probably don't need to work that many hours. Sounds like you're kind of an avoidant type who hides behind work. Which happens to all of us at some point so whatever, not bad but maybe something to work on.
Actually most of what you wrote makes you sound in general like an avoidant type. You stay at home by yourself, you don't go out much, you don't even like being in traffic with a bunch of other people!
My dating book says that this type usually attract the anxious type, so hahah perhaps just keep looking for the anxious girl of your dreams! (This is really a thing btw, people are either Secure, Anxious, Avoidant and Fearful-Avoidant in their dating life.) (I'm fearful avoidant HAHAHA no just kidding I'm not)
But seriously, when you go on dates, for god's sake don't talk about work the entire time. I've dated my fair share of finance guys and a good portion of them can only talk about work. That's great! But have you seen a cool movie recently? Heard a great song? Any thoughts on Kanye? Something is off if the girls just go out for dinner and nothing more happens.
But dating in general is a numbers game, so get out there more!! Chin UP!
Lift, eat healthier, less booze, & get a puppy. When with girls wear better fitting clothes, talk less about work, ask questions, throw in a compliment about her hair, and show pictures of your puppy. Take her home.
To get over your mild-depression go somewhere sunny like Madrid. I have friends there who love it.
Much of the work you describe could be done from home...why in the world are you sitting at work at 10pm reading news from Asia? That can be done from your couch on a laptop and you would probably be more effective at it. You also need to get more efficient and shave 30 minutes off your arrival time...in NYC I can understand getting in that early but 5am in London is just masochism. Line up some phone calls you can do on your ride in and leave 30 minutes later...if you don't have any contacts who will do this cultivate them through networking. There has to be some 25 year old in Asia doing the same thing that would like to chat with you about markets near the end of his day. Also don't just read for the sake of reading...be critical about your daily reading list and if something isn't adding value eliminate it...I do an "audit" of my reading list and regular phone calls often and usually end up cutting a good 30-40% of it each time with zero loss of value add.
The stuff about social life and women is purely on you and you shouldn't blame your job...you have no weekend hours and with a few simple tweaks you could sneak in a night or two of social stuff during the week also if you so choose.
Also steak most nights and no workout time is obviously a mistake...red meat is a bad mix with a strenuous job because it adds to hyper-tension and high blood pressure which you probably are getting enough of at work. One steak a week and make it a good one...I am a big fan of The Bull Steak Expert which flies a bit under the radar. ( http://thebullsteakexpert.co.uk/ )
Lastly, trading is somewhat of a lonely job that's just the life. Even if you were juggling three women and going out every night of the week with a great group of friends the emotions are still yours alone...no one, not even your girlfriend, really gives a fukk about your PnL and that's just the way it is...hell most people are actually hoping you fail! As Jesse Livermore said, "ive always played a lone hand"...if you are not comfortable with that you may be in the wrong line of work because it doesn't really change.
I can sympathize with this post I have a pretty similar lifestyle/ issues I will give a few things that helped me out a lot.
The most beneficial to me was this: find something to excel at outside of work. Doesn't matter what it is, could be gym, sport, hobby, a language or anything. Find someway to measure your progress or have a specific goal in a time setting and evaluate. Since the learning and success curve has flattened a lot at work, the quick progress to something whether it's a 160kg dead lift, cooking dinner for 15 people or doing a 360 on a wake board it's crazy how quick these things are to accomplish. Check out these recent posts for ideas on how to make that happen.
http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/use-thanksgiving-to-set-2017-goals http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/what-are-your-goals-for-2017
I'll list a couple others as well: 1. Exercise - even just a couple times a week find something you like and mix it up, sometimes a work out, sometimes run home through the park, sometime go on a massive walk, cycle etc Bonus tip saunas are a game changer for me especially in winter. 2. Cut down drinking a bit- I've cut beer pretty much completely and now only try for good quality alcohol and less quantity (very odd blow out) 3. Travel- I find sporadic trips are great but bigger trips plan and book early, if you're feeling attached to your pnl and generally annoyed knowing you have that Japan or Mexico trip on the horizon really helps 4. Hobbies- similar to above but less about improving and measurement, rock climbing, back gammon, shooting, basketball, football 5. Money- I wouldn't lecture you on how to spend it, but for me the most important is building and knowing your cushion so you can pull that rip chord at any time, are you doing this? If you don't and you have a Porsche you creating your own jail where you can't get out. 6. Charity- in person, getting back into the community talking with people who are from all different walks of life and ages really grounds your perspective (I did the inner city reading project which is only once every two weeks) 7. Reading- biographies/ history books are all amazing at giving yourself context and learning a lot you can apply in your life and even to trading
At the moment you're weighting all your happiness/ self worth against PnL which is sometimes completely out of your hands (well > customer flow anyway). It's crazy if you think about it, you need counterweights to balance your internal happiness calculus. Honestly take some of the advice above especially Bondarb on managing your time better and just pick one thing you want to accomplish in the next 3 months and do it. Evaluate pieces of your life and slowly add/ subtract things and it's amazing where you can be in two years, don't be afraid to ask for help or pull the rip chord on the job- best of luck mate.