The Lawrence Chan Blog

Thank you everyone for sending in your kind words during our time of loss.

I may have missed some of the emails this week due to not being able to clean the inbox on time. Sorry if I have not replied to your messages.

This week I am still bounded with duties that will occupy the normal business hours that varies from day to day. My schedule will allow me time to do some work in the wee hours and in the late afternoon. I will coordinate with my programmer to complete the several real-time assistant signals for both Emini and forex.

I will try to post some morning commentaries whenever possible. You can expect more articles to be published soon.

Throwing myself at work, even at a slower pace, is going to help me going through this transitional phase.

One thing I will not do is trading, at least for a while.

I have this kind of experience before when my SO faced life or death situation in the hospital several years ago. Even though I can carry myself through the situation which lasted for a month, making all the right decisions for her (she was unconscious), the aftermath was that my mind was so overwhelmed by emotion that even prolonged meditation everyday can only recover my mind to normal daily activities. Once trading was threw into the mix, I had noticeable delay in decision making.

I have learned the performance issue was caused by my brain being flooded with emotion triggering hormones. The delay of the brain’s ability to react is similar to a computer’s CPU overheated. Depending on the level of overload, it takes days for the brain to get back to normal sensitivity. Many things can help speed up the process like doing exercise and meditation. Being able to have good sleep also helps. Forcing oneself to activities requiring high concentration, however, can worsen the problem.

I think it is good to share the experience I gained here even though it is very personal – knowing when to stop trading is as powerful as any money management techniques can offer you.

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My SO has passed away. I need to take care of family matters this week.

Please direct all questions related to DaytradingBias.com to sales@daytradingbias.com. Someone will assist you.

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Due to family emergency, I will need to spend most of my time away from trading and writing in coming few weeks.

I will not be able to reply to emails quickly so if there is something related to daytradingbias.com that you need immediate attention please email sales@daytradingbias.com for faster response.

I have just posted a very long article on the principles in engaging gaps. It is something complex and I was sitting on that for a while with adjustments made here and there. I guess it is better to post it first so that premium members can spend some time with the concepts and provide some feedback on the topic before the trading signals are added.

Thank you everyone for your understanding.

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Last week my trading goal for the year was reached. It happened so early partly because I have a modest goal this year. The main reason, however, was the swing play for the market correction worked out nicely. At this point, it is time for me to slow down with trading and spending more time on other priorities.

I will likely minimize my trading activities until year end which is what I do every year once the trading goal is reached. My focus will switch to updating and adding services for premium members. It is something I planned to do but never have enough time spent on the project. Will be good to see progress and improvements on the site before year end.

For those interested, there were Time To Slack Off 2013 and Time To Slack Off 2012 which discuss about different things including why it is important to reduce position size after having a winning streak.

In retrospect, I failed my goal of cutting down my trading time because I had the extra time and I choose to glue myself to the screen. I guess it is something I am comfortable doing while pushing further automation is something I can do but tedious enough that I keep delaying it. In 2015 further automation and reduced screen time will be of highest priorities.

This year and the one before I had more time for trading because my SO was in bad but stable condition. This window of opportunity gave me more time to focus on trading but it is coming to an end. Her condition has worsen much over the past two months so I have to plan my schedule accordingly.

Readers and members who know me for a long time already know about my situation. My SO has terminal cancer and has been fighting for her life for many years now. It is something I prefer not to discuss here because it is off topic for a trading website. Since it is going to affect my schedule in unexpected ways I think it is fair to tell everyone what the reason is.

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Today at the Toronto General Hospital there was this sudden alert sound went off. I thought to myself what kind of emergency that they need to catch everyone’s attention like that. Then a very serious voice came through the PA system.

I cannot remember the message exactly but it went like this:

“This is an emergency broadcast … all staff with outlook access … do not open the email with the invoice file. I repeat. Do not open the invoice file … this is an emergency …”

I could not help smiling. Definitely brighten my day.

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