The joy of being an End of Day Trader using automated trading strategies – Part 2:
As I mentioned in my previous article the joy of being an end of day trader is that I can practice this profession from anywhere in the world.
I only need 15 minutes a day to do the following process;
- Download the daily price updates from my data provider
- Scan with my software for stocks that fit the criteria of my strategy
- The software provides me each day with the buy and sell orders
- I enter these orders in my broker platform
And voila! I am done for the day!
Well the second benefit of this lifestyle is that I can be completely mobile. Mobility is something that is very important to me. It gives me my freedom to travel whenever I want without the risk to interrupt my trading.
So, it turns out that currently in Argentina there are 2 issues. It is winter right here and although I am of course a big ski lover, this winter is a tough one and we recently ended up with close to a meter of snow at my home. This was a lovely experience for my children as 2 of them are originally from the Caribbean coast and up to 3 years ago they never saw any snow in their life!
In the evening we were even cut of from electricity but with candles and a nice bottle of Argentinian Malbec with my dear wife we enjoyed it all.
Here are some pictures of what it looked like;
Though a lovely view, I was in for some warmth and sunshine.
As you know I do consulting for clients one on one by phone, but on rare occasions I also deliver onsite consulting to hedge funds or private persons that would like to get the “job done” and get me in person to teach and implement it all.
I do not do this too often and it needs to fit in my schedule but this time it came right at the perfect time.
I travelled from the South of Argentina to Las Vegas to meet with my client.
Now, talking about a contrast, this was quite amazing of course going from a strong winter with lots of snow, high in the Mountains to a desert city Las Vegas in plain summer was quite a climate shock. Not even to speak about the difference between a quiet mountain resort and a town built in the desert to gamble and party.
I am not that much interested in the casino or party scene anymore but I do like the high end restaurants with exceptional food accompanied with a good glass of wine. That, of course is all there so it was, as usual when I travel, a nice experience.
The best of all is that my trading just continues the way it goes, I always take 2 laptops with me and set things up in my hotel room in a minute and do my daily routine.
Here is a view of what this looks like, from my hotel room in Las Vegas;
Probably having the privilege to travel, the flexibility and mobility is what I treasure so much about my life.
This brings me to my next point.
Argentina is currently in big trouble. The economy is very bad, not even to speak about politics and the country technically has defaulted which is a phenomenon that happens here every decade or so. It is getting worse every day. It appears that the government follows the Venezuelan model which has caused a disaster and I rather want to prevent going through this since I have the possibility to do so.
So, in the last 3 months I have travelled twice to the Southern part of Spain and we have decided to relocate there very soon. We all, my wife, my kids and me look very much forward to this step and I know that it does not influence my stock trading results ( I am up 14% this year) as I just need to apply the same routine as always.
I will soon write a new post about some other travels I have done and stay tuned because soon I will also release an interesting trading strategy that you can apply immediately yourself.
Until then!
-Laurens
Laurens has written a report especially for Q Wealth called “The SP500 Rotation Strategy – How to earn Double Digit Returns working just 15 Minutes per Week!”
This report is available to all of our members. Members can log in here
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About Laurens: In his younger years Laurens worked as a ski instructor in Austria and a white water rafting instructor in Austria, Costa Rica, Turkey, Israel, Chile, Dominican Republic and Mexico. Working in these different countries helped Laurens to become, besides his mother tongue Dutch, fluent in German, English and Spanish.
A life in which calculated risk taking with tourists was a daily routine for Laurens. Running down class 3, 4 and 5 rapids in the tropics taught him the principals of discipline and performing at peak level. It was during this time when the roots got set for becoming a successful trader, although at that time unaware of this.
In the year 2000, Laurens started to manage the pension funds of his family. Their money was invested at one of the high-profile investment banks in The Netherlands. They used a simple buy and hold strategy on a basket of stocks and initially it made all sense as the returns during the big boom markets in 1999 and beginning of 2000 was very good. Suddenly, it was April of 2000 and stocks started to fall which caused the portfolio to drop about 30%. Laurens convinced his parents to liquidate the whole portfolio which turned out to be a very good call as the stocks in the portfolio would have suffered losses more than 70%.
During subsequent years, Laurens worked 7 days a week to acquire more knowledge and read more than 300 books about investing, trading and risk management. Returns started to get better and although the results were not high, the drawdowns were low as well.
It wasn’t until 2008 when Laurens started to develop a system which contained a suite of non – correlated systems when he started to make consistent double digit returns. He made a hypothesis with a set of fixed rules for entry, exits and risk management and paid a programmer to write this code in a software program which proved the edge and profitability of this system that suited 100% his personality with a custom made position sizing algorithm tailored to his risk tolerance and profit objectives.
Laurens hired an employee to take care of the daily trade management, order entry and monitoring, and he only needed to revise all trades and positions after market close which did not take more than 5 minutes a day.
The combination of a 100% automated system with a clear edge, the leverage of an employee that takes care of the operational part gives Laurens the freedom he likes to work on the fun part which is development of new systems.
In 2013 Laurens started his own money management firm in which he offers through a managed account structure the possibility to trade his strategies for high net worth individuals and institutions. Currently with both private capital and other people’s money his fund trades multi millions of dollars with clients from all over the world generating market beating returns with low volatility and low drawdowns.
Laurens invests for high net worth individuals and provides custom trading strategies for institutional investors through his money management firm Alpha Equity Investments (www.alpha-equity.com).
Additionally he provides one on one mentoring to a few select, very committed traders through his mentoring company Trading Mastery School (www.tradingmasteryschool.com)