Trading Journal

As I mentioned in the ‘live trades’ post yesterday, I got hired this summer to be a TA (Teaching Assistant) again. This summer, I’ll be TAing both Intro Level Micro AND Macro Economics courses, I normally only do 1 course but since I’m the only available TA staying in Toronto this summer, I got both courses. Together, they add up to 177 hours. I’ve chosen to schedule all my tutorials / office hours on Monday, so I only have to commute to school once per week. The updated schedule is posted below but take note during midterm and final exam season, I have to mark about 200 exams as well. This still allows me to trade for 4 days a week as I see fit, so rest assure, the live trade posts will continue through out the summer.

In addition, I haven’t made youtube videos for a while now. I’ll start doing that again soon, probably get a few videos out this coming week. Need to finish revamping the old videos and then start working on new lessons. Technically speaking, the videos are provided for free so you can’t really “rush” me, I do them when I have time to spare. But don’t worry, now that things are starting to “settle” down, and everything is scheduled properly, I should have videos made consistently from now on.

Lastly, this schedule is valid until mid-August ish? I mentioned briefly before, my Masters in Economics program starts around that time. They have a mandatory math/stats review course that starts around the 3rd week of August I believe? I’m still waiting for their info package to arrive with more details, but around that time I’ll post a new schedule to reflect the changes.

For those of you that don’t know….  I ran the trial of the ‘Streaming Chart Learning Tool’ this week between May 15th – May 18th. Although I set my alarm for 4am, I would get up around 4:10am and have anything prepped by about 4:40am ish, at which point the stream on join.me went live and people were allowed to join in. So, yes I admit I was later than my “guarantee” launch at 4:30am. But, I did leave the stream online on most days until 11am ish with the exception of Thurs and Friday. Thurs I had a meeting with my professor in the morning so I only went till 7:30am while on Friday, I left it on till 2pm or something.

Recap of what I planned on offering:

• Guaranteed service between 4:30am – 7:30am EST
• Huge upside bonus of up to 12:00pm EST
• Annotated charts using Price Action, i.e., I draw S/R lines and trendlines AS I SEE THEM forming.
• This is from my perspective!
• This is intended to show you what I’m seeing and thus, what you’re supposed to be seeing from my lessons on the topic.

Summary of the Trial:

• May 15th: Launch 4:45am – 11am EST, Total of ~70 viewers came in but only a consistent 5-10 viewers
• May 16th: Launch 4:40am – 12pm EST, Total of ~45 viewers came in but only a consistent 4-8 viewers
• May 17th: Launch 4:35am – 7:30am EST, Total of ~20 viewers came in but only a consistent 2-5 viewers
• May 18th: Launch 4:40am – 2pm EST, Total of ~10 viewers came in but only a consistent 2-3 viewers

Based on the trial, I conclude the following things:

• The times offered are bad hours of the day
• The service itself is flawed either due to myself or due to people’s expectations being different
• Just simply, no one cares as seen through out the week, participants reduced as the week went by
• If the FREE trial didn’t yield that many participants, I doubt anyone would pay for this service
• Thus, this idea is now pushed to the sidelines once again!

I want to elaborate on the “flawed” aspect of the service. As I mentioned in the original post, this isn’t for lazy people. This is intended to provide a visual aid / learning tool in addition to what people have already watched in my video series. I don’t talk because WTF am I going to talk about for 3 hours straight. I’m not going sit here and repeat myself for every new person who comes in, that’s what the announcement area at the top is for.

In addition, I think there’s some false expectations from viewers. I don’t draw lines ALL the time, I only draw them when they form. You’re not supposed to be drawing lines every minute, you’re only supposed to draw them as they form which may occur once an hour or once a day etc. So, if you went in the stream and nothing was happening, it’s because I couldn’t draw any fucking lines because there wasn’t anything new yet!

But this is good because if I didn’t put on this trial, I wouldn’t have learned the pro’s/con’s of offering a service like this. Looking back at the service, I don’t see any difference between what I do in the service that I don’t already teach in my videos or my tutoring promo. It’s the same thing except I’m not talking in the service. This was supposed to provide an additional aid for new traders but seeing as how people can’t seem to appreciate the service, I find it unlikely that I’ll provide this service in the future. I may consider launching another week trial again in the future (within a few months) to test the waters again. But given the lack of participants, I’m not motivated to provide this service because it’s not worth my time, I could be doing something else with that time.

Lastly, for those of you wondering “Weren’t you planning to charge for this service?” Yes, I was. The final price was never released, but I was aiming for $1.5/weekday or something like that. You can do the math, if I guarantee 3 hours with a bonus upside of up to 7 hours a day. That’s between 21 to 50 cents per hour, since minimum wage is $10/hr, I would need a minimum of 20 to 47 viewers to make min wage. The trial didn’t even produce anywhere near those numbers. Thus, I’m both psychologically and monetarily unmotivated to provide this service.

If you wish to see this service provided in the future, please leave your requests/feedback below: