The Part-Time Trader (11 page)

Unless you are a company like Apple, or Google, or some of the more tech-savvy organizations out there, it seems to be a rule of thumb that the bigger the company, the more outdated their hardware is. Twelve years after its initial release, there are still plenty of large companies that are running on Internet Explorer 6. That's right, a browser that Microsoft no longer supports, and is probably compatible with only a quarter of the existing web sites out there, or at least that has been the case from my own experience. I find that browsers that are far more developed, faster, and web site friendly like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox are ignored in large part by Corporate America.

Obviously, it is important to have a respectable computer setup. The more control you have over this, the better. While I do not recommend laptops for full-time traders, they are ideal for part-time traders in the workplace. They give you all the needed flexibility for staying up on your trades, whereas a desktop computer limits you to having access to your brokerage account only when you are in the office (smartphones and tablets will be discussed later). Here is another aspect of Corporate America that I simply do not understand: laptops are comparable in costs to desktops, yet most companies still act like having a laptop is some sort of luxury item.

Where I come from, the information technology (IT) department, which handles all PC issues, made us fill out a five-page form to justify the assignment of a laptop to us—seriously! We had to state how much business travel we would be doing on average, explain why we needed the laptop while traveling (because I am not going to bring my own computer!), why our position required the laptop, and just about every other duplicative question that can be asked but only answered the same way each time.

Essentially, you need to fill out this form with as many buzzwords as you can possibly think up. I used expressions like “synergies gained with increased flexibility,” “cross-function efficiencies,” and, my personal favorite, “an integrated solution to my workplace environment that will provide ideal communicative abilities with organizational stakeholders that we seek to deliver customer value in a results-oriented operation.” Please feel free to use these on your own questionnaires in attempt to get that golden laptop. Who knows, management might be so “turned on” by your grasp of the corporate vocabulary that you may get a raise out of it.

Oh, and of course, there is the management approval that is required with just about everything associated with your job outside of urinating and breathing. For some, the boss man will be hard to convince. He will try to question your grasp of the buzzwords you used in your justification form, out of fear that somehow you might have a better handle on the corporate vocabulary. That is why going with what I laid out above will overwhelm them to the point that they will avoid engaging you too much on the matter out of fear that they appear inadequate on the level of corporate-speak that you have shown them in the justification form.

Ideally, the management approval will be more of a formality before it is sent on to the IT department.

Another advantage to having a laptop over a desktop is, of course, its portability. I remember numerous occasions where I would get called into an unexpected meeting. Well, what would you do if there was a position you had on at that moment? The job, of course, comes first and you have to go to the meeting (unfortunately).

With the laptop you can take your trade with you. Also, it looks impressive to a boss when you sit in a meeting that most of the time (at least in my case) you have no reason for attending, but you look the part of someone who is hard at work. The fact of the matter was that I was in a meeting that had no direct ties to me, but because people were so obsessed on being a team, I still got dragged into it. In particular, the broad project meetings where you had some 30 different job functions present giving a “status” on their work often led to my immediate zone-out. I could care less what 29 other job functions were doing. Why would I be the least bit interested in what they are doing when I can barely stand what it is that I am doing in my own job function?

I could not leave the meeting because, of course, that would show publicly the disinterest for everyone else's status that I privately harbored. So having a laptop handy allowed me to get through these grueling “team-building” moments. Using a laptop during meetings, as long as you are not expected to chime in at all, looks productive, like you have pressing matters that must be addressed and you are squeezing every bit of efficiency out of meetings and the time at work you have to do your job.

On the contrary, if you were in a meeting, you were doing your job because that was where they wanted you to be at that point in time. If they wanted you to continue with your workload, they should have left you in the office, which is what they chose not to do. So I am completely at peace with whipping out the laptop, in the moments that I'm not needed to be cued in to what is being discussed so that I can watch the market, find new trade setups, or simply check the latest scores on ESPN, because most people in these meetings are simply wanting to be heard without any true intrinsic value attached to what they are actually saying. There is always that one person (or two, or three, or fifteen) who is far too comfortable with the meeting, and those in the room, when called upon to talk about issues, seem as though they are opening some kind of diary, or better yet, reading the status updates they published to Facebook over the past week.

The whole purpose of these meetings is futile to begin with. If you truly have a pressing need, you are not going to wait until the meeting at hand to announce it to everyone; you'll e-mail or address the people at their office. So you get 30 people in there and the meeting lasts an hour and 20 minutes, you have collectively wasted a week's worth of productivity equal to one person among your entire group. That is asinine.

Now you know why I like the laptop and why it is so crucial to the job. If you do not get a laptop and you are stuck in these senseless meetings, do not go whipping out the smartphone in an attempt to try and do the same thing, because more than likely people will think you are clearly doing something nonrelated to company work—either playing
Farmville
or sexting with Anthony Weiner.

Other advantages to having the laptop include travel. If they have you traveling, you have a perfect gateway to getting them to procure you a laptop. The ability to take the laptop home and do any work that you need to get taken care of, whether work related or stock market related, is a huge advantage.

My last reason is that most companies often will give you administrative rights on your computer, which can go a long way in allowing you to install software (if it doesn't put your job at risk) that might make your limited time as a trader at work more effective. Ideally, installing your brokerage software and their trading platform is a huge advantage to have as a part-time trader. Because you are mobile having the ability to install all the needed software is a great option to have.

In the case that you are relegated to just a desktop, and most of the folks in the corporate world usually are stuck with some clunker of a desktop that has not been upgraded since dial-up modems were a fad, you are going to have to plan accordingly. Successful trading as a full-time worker requires being fluid with the circumstances that you are faced with and even adjusting your methods and strategies where it is needed.

Sometimes after trying to do everything in your power to get rid of that desktop and upgrade to the laptop, you have to move forward with the desktop. That means, not using a brokerage, that you cannot regulate the amount of streaming that takes place. It also means you may not be able to trade in such a way that requires on-demand system access and trading at a high frequency.

Every boss is different, of course, but if at all possible, constantly be in the ear of your boss and try to get components of your desktop swapped out if there is no chance of landing a laptop. It is hit-or-miss whether your boss will allow for upgraded components on your computer, but the area of upgrade you should focus on is the amount of random access memory (RAM) in the computer (I would aim for at least 8 gigabytes of RAM), which speeds up the efficiency, expands the memory of the computer, and results in faster processing. The next area can often be a harder area to receive an upgrade in, but that would be the processor itself. I'd stick with Intel processors, and try to get as close as possible to the best that there is.

If there is no support on your end to provide you with a computer that works for you, simply let the computer die. Do not maintain it, do not keep it up. All computers die anyway; if they are making you work on one that is on life support, then pull the plug and let it die a natural death.

When I was trading off of my desktop at work, I was relegated to a desktop that had a performance of less than 300 MHz on the processor. That was incredibly slow, even for that time. While those types of computers cannot even function in today's computing environment, even just 10 years ago, that computer was severely hampered in its performance capabilities. I was new on the scene and no one really seemed to care that I was using a computer that was absolutely useless. Not only that, but they still expected me to perform on the same level as the person in the next cubicle over, who had the latest and greatest computer. That simply is not possible to do in today's digital age.

Instead of doing normal performance maintenance that is quite normal on the computer, I was reluctant to defragment the hard drives, look for malware, and so on. Usually, I would turn off the sleep mechanisms and just let that computer run around the clock. Eventually, that computer would die out and as a result I would get a desktop system comparable to that of my peers and be able to work with as much efficiency as they did.

Often, the desktop platform restricts employees from installing their own software, which essentially eliminates a number of your higher-end trading platforms. Most companies will not give you administrative rights on your computer unless it is explicitly approved by management. As a result, you'll find that there are a handful of platforms that are strictly software based that you will not want to use for your trading system because you will not have sufficient administrative rights to install them on the desktop.

That means you will want to use a Web-based trading platform. I use TDAmeritrade's platform via ThinkorSwim. For most of my trading career I have been with TDAmeritrade in some way, shape, or form. I left their platform after not being overly happy with their fills, among other things, so I switched over to Thinkorswim, which was later acquired by TDAmeritrade (which I obviously was not overly thrilled about). I have stuck it out with ThinkorSwim, despite their being acquired by the brokerage I left originally, and I remain content with all that they have to offer, not to mention that you can negotiate your commission rates with them.

The reason I bring this up is that when I was using them while in Corporate America (and long before they were ever acquired), they had a great software platform, but because I had a desktop computer I could never use their software due to the administrative rights issue with installing it on my desktop.

What they did have, though, was a Web-based platform that performed just as well on the fills and real-time quotes as their software version. As a result, I was able to get around the administrative rights issue and simply log in to an online portal and still trade successfully without compromising my trading strategy.

This has become one of the best developments in technology for traders, and that is not just for entertainment purposes, either. For the working, part-time trader there could not be a better trading asset than the smartphone and tablet. Apple, no doubt, has pioneered this brand new world for traders, which made trading possible, easy, and convenient for the first time in the palm of your hand. In my opinion, this was just as significant as the advent of online trading.

While it is largely agreed that you do not have the same computing power as a desktop, the smartphones and tablets are quickly catching up, and PARTicularly when you compare their capabilities to a laptop. Regardless, these handheld devices open up a world of new opportunities. Because of the size of the screen, it is not as easy to place an order on a smartphone as it is placing it on a desktop per se; however, you cannot take a desktop to a meeting, and you cannot take it on travel, and you can stay connected with your mobile device no matter what kind of corporate roadblocks are put in place.

I am a huge fan of Twitter and its ability to keep me abreast of the latest market developments and market activities. I am constantly staying updated, and with mobile apps, you do not need to access Twitter or other social media sites on your computer. Instead, the functionality on the mobile devices is comparable to what you have using a desktop browser.

I highly recommend that you follow some of the financial names out there, particularly my own, which is @shareplanner, and others, too, such as @zerohedge, @stocktwits, @slopeofhope, @drudge_report, @­foxbusiness, @bloombergnews, @cnbc, and there are many others as well worth following. In regard to traders and those who provide solid actionable trade ideas, there are a number of those, too, including @sp_trades and @fuinhaz.

In my experience, I have not found there to be a lot of applications for trading when it comes to Facebook, LinkedIn, and other popular forums, but besides Twitter, I also am a huge fan of StockTwits and the real-time social collaboration among traders that, like Twitter, limits the character use, but provides a mobile platform that is extremely useful for developments within stocks, actionable trade ideas, gauging market sentiment, and breaking news for the market at large and individual stocks in particular.