Human beings love to reminisce. We enjoy day dreaming about “the good old days” and times of old when things seemed much simpler. While I prefer to spend the majority of my time living in the now, thinking back to my early days as a trader is an important practice from time to time. I am going back in time, Marty McFly style to 10 years ago. I am checking in on myself on a normal day where I am watching the market, with little to no real clue what I am doing.

OmahaCharts ETFs - If Only I Knew Then What I Know Now

That picture above describes me at 23 years old pretty well. Tense, high strung, and on edge. I always had too much risk on. I traded with the mindset that I had to make a lot of money this week, or even today. I was chasing “unusual option activity” the CNBC talking heads were spewing. They always seemed to win, I always seemed to be in the same trades as them and lose.

Nearly all trades, whether they were stocks or options were entered by way of a market order. Can you imagine?

My charts were full of the typical indicators. The more the merrier right? I was Mr. Analysis Paralysis when it came to market analysis. I was pairing PE Ratios with moving averages and saying that stocks that were $100 a share or more were expensive.

My screens were littered with 2x and 3x triple levered ETFs without any clue as to how those things are put together. Yes, I tried holding them long term.

If I had a 10k trading account, 10k of it was in OTM Option Premium. The good days were good, the bad days were devastating.

My risk profile was all in, all the time. I was playing the game as if I got 25 pitches no matter how far away from the plate. I’d swing at the pitches that were perfect strikes as well as those targeted directly at my face. It was all the same to me.

I was a member of 10 different trading mentors’s rooms at the same time. Following trades blindly on the account that “he’s the pro here he ought to be able to fortune tell where this stock is going and how long it will take to get there” with great accuracy.

I bitched at him when he was wrong and cancelled his service calling HIM the loser. Responsibility for myself wasn’t even a glimmer in my eye yet.

If a stock was once $50 and was trading a sub $1.00 levels, I assumed it was automatically (and quickly) going back to $100 and bought it.

I chased stocks up 10,15,20% on the day.

I was studying CFA manuals and buying trading books faster than I could read them. Some of them I still haven’t gotten around to…

The 23 year old Omahacharts is dead and gone, nearly unrecognizable now.

Just like I hope my today’s self is unrecognizable 10 years from now.

OC