Dear Financial Voice Reader,

The answer I gave to these hungry-for-knowledge folks is that trading is not like every other business, there are no “standard operating procedures” on how to trade and what’s the best setup to do so. There is no one answer to whether 2 or 4 screens are needed or a laptop or a tablet is all you have to have. Trading offers you the freedom to adjust your tactics and your expectations around the time that you have available and you can combine it with your everyday schedule.
So the real question one needs to ask himself is what kind of trading does he want to do. If he wants to actively trade the markets, focus on small intra-day opportunities to get in and out of the market quickly and make a small profit and then repeat it time after time then definitely this requires time and focus. It requires being in front of a monitor for the better part of the day to find these opportunities, take advantage of them, manually manage these trades and try to end the day in profit.
However with the advances of technology and the amount of resources provided by so many providers out there trading can definitely be done on the road as well, via an iPad or even from your mobile. You can have different ways to take advantage of everyday’s price action, you can set your trades in the morning with their pre-set levels and let them play out during the day, you can have intra-day signals coming to your mail that you can execute from your tablet or mobile phone and you can even focus on economic events and try to trade during these volatile minutes after each event.
You see the important thing with trading for yourself is to understand that it should be done in a way that fits your own, unique lifestyle. A busy businessman has a totally different day from a stay-home mum or a college student and thus their approach to the markets needs to be different. One thing that I always found disturbing with several seminars or courses I have being invited to in the past is that they all tend to teach everyday people to “trade as professionals”. This can’t be further from the truth.
This is due to the fact that professionals dedicate a full working day to nothing other than trading, they arrive very early in the office and stay until late, stuck in front of the monitor to make sure that they capitalize on every opportunity they find, no matter how big or small. Everyday retail traders however don’t have this opportunity or luxury because they have other things to attend to everyday.
And this can be good because a bit of detachment from the market action gives you precious clarity to understand the general theme and not get “analysis paralysis”. So my advice to these people and you is to find your own comfort zone, your own unique way to approach the markets and benefit from them. The resources and the technology are out there so all you have to do is mix and match and create your own trading style.
Sadly most people have not realised the full opportunity. They still think you have to be in front of four screens in your home to make the most out of trading. No longer.
Alpesh Patel
www.investingbetter.com and www.alpeshpatel.com