round number wrote:I'm assuming your father has had a consistently successful run if he's still harvesting profits over a 30 year period? if so, & the strategy is well established & profitable, then would it not make more sense to continue running it based on what's worked for 30 years & tap into his wealth of experience?
Perhaps delegate that part of the portfolio to either yourself or your fiancé & maybe try & incorporate the best bits of what your father has been doing.
My father did many other jobs in his life, and had a passion for the markets. He is self-trained and one of the main reasons you see me on the forum - as opposed to taking notes at his side - is because his view of the markets was created in very different times. He does not have a "method". Actually, he loves to play with numbers and created a lot of proprietary indicators...which I used for my university thesis and demonstrated that the indicators alone were no better than a coin flip. He took that very personally...
So when my fiancèe and I started on our own, we were confronted with a person who was profitable but could not explain why he would do things when he would do them. So basically we had to learn ourselves. Now, 2 years later, I'm able to understand what goes on in his head. His experience staring at bonds and options allows him to identify mispriced issues or good deals. He gets in, and will sit on stuff until the market proves him right (on bonds). Or, he will protect himself on the way down (with options in stocks) constantly reducing his price by bringing in premiums through option selling, when things go bad.
But WHY he puts on the positions and WHEN he puts on the positions is all in his head... And now i'm able to appreciate what he says and understand more of what he says, but it's only because I can now "read" a chart, and I have also studied inside out the funcioning and pricing of bonds. Still working on the stock/option sector.
round number wrote: You mentioned a couple posts back that although you were now a lot more satisfied & confident with the progress you're making, you weren't yet at your desired level of profitability.
I fear that taking on even more pressure by attempting to fast track another asset class before you're fully competent & established in this one could derail your progress & set you back even further.
This may be, but to be honest, i need to go through the process of following both to find out. I feel like taking this risk at the moment...
round number wrote:Obviously you both know your own limits & capabilities, but you've struggled a lot with trying establish a groove trading this approach, I hope you don't unravel all that progress by heaping even more stress onto your plate.
As you've noticed, we've been quite busy and we don't have any alternatives. But believe me: we've been through more stressful times. The fact that going through all this has led us to finally be "at ease" working in the same room as my father and speaking roughly the same language has taken a lot of pressure off. So we'll see what this last quarter of 2013 has in store for us.
I'll keep you posted but as usual, it's great talking with you...it's been quite the journey up until today and i'm al lot more excited now than i was a year ago...
