42 Tips to Help You Scale Your Trading Business

Written by Michael Bigger. Follow me on Twitter.

 

 

A week ago, while traveling in Portugal, I took a sheet of paper, a pen, and some Sharpies and I jotted down the concepts that we have used to scale our algorithmic trading business from 20 stocks to 300 over a one year period. The traders interested in scaling their "One Good Trade"  framework will have an interest in this.

 

I was flowing, so the material is not organized in a logical manner.

 

1. Sandbox: be a kid. Play, experiment, and tinker. Drift aimlessly. Waste time. (Frank Oppenheimer).
2. Free your trading thoughts. Let the bits flow. Put it out there. Watch the ants pick it up and help you add value. They will help you grow as a trader.
3. Embrace the network.
4. It’s all about expected value per trade, repetition and processes, not about the outcome of one individual trade. (Mike Bellafiore)
5. Iterate in small increments: you will break through the big trading challenges. (Jeff Bezos)
6. Listen: build a listening station and listen. Listen to people and listen to the market.
7. Capture that trade that has worked for you! Repeat, repeat, improve and repeat.
8. Learn from the laws of nature: Nature optimizes resource usage.
9. Everyone is a genius for at least five minutes a day (I’ve forgotten who said that). Capture that moment. Make the best of this information.
10. Promote greatness wherever you find it.
11. Tools are important. Our tools change us. Vice versa. Embrace the coolest financial tools.  Better yet, develop your own.
12. Recipes can make you an insane amount of money. An algorithm is a recipe. You hate the word  'algo'. Ok, forget that. Instead, use technology to create a potent recipe.  
13. Get to the essence of a thesis.
14. Catalyze: promote your catalyst.
15. In a fast changing world, find the constants: manage to your constants. (Bezos)
16. Find out how much Big Mac is in that trading thesis of yours.
17. Delight!
18. Remove friction.
19. Experience creative flow.
20. Go where the competition is low. (Charlie Munger)
21. Take a walk in the dark alleys (Bezos). Sometimes “Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens.”  Follow the lead of Frank Oppenheimer.
22. Compound money, knowledge, and meaningful relationships.
23. The best teachers are mistakes—make plenty of them—and mediocrity—improve on it.
24. Invert, always invert (Munger).
25. Ship: blog posts, e-books, projects, trade ideas, algorithms, etc. (Seth Godin). Last week,  I published an e-book globally on the Kindle platform. It won't be a bestsellers, but I get the  chance to promote the great work of John James Butler. It is a speculation classic, a money  maker  for anyone who dares to listen to what he had to say. Must read. You can get it here.
26. Listen to your web outreach: what resonates?
27. Be curious about other people’s methods.
28. Seek the exceptional. (@derekhernquist)
29. Find your One Good Trade framework. (Bellafiore)
30. Monitor frictionless channels on the Internet: sales channels, chat channels, etc.
31. Listen to customers more than management when building your trading thesis.
32. Experience the customer experience.
33. Practice.
34. Embrace minimalism. It allows a trader to feel more comfortable taking risk. (@evbogue, @chicagosean)
35. The power of Y: simplify, amplify, $y.
36. Mashup recipes, ideas, and other stuff. The e-book I created is a mashup. The interview  @chicagosean did with @evbogue is also a mashup. Great work Everett and Sean.
37. Big positions have dis-economies of scale.
38. Use APIs....Make your trading platform API centric.
39. Promote greatness. Ooops, a repeat.
40. Ask so what?
41. Simplify. Yup, repeated, it is that important.
42. Twitter, more specifically on StockTwits.

 

Want to learn more about a particular bullet point? Search for the specific topic on this site. I most likely wrote a post about it. 

 

Also...please don't forget to share this article. Other traders could benefit from the information.

Comments

[Seattle DUI Attorney]

Nice information, many thanks to the author. It is incomprehensible to me now, but in general, the usefulness and significance is overwhelming. Thanks again and good luck!