Sleep, the importance thereof

I've reached a critical juncture in my life, where I'm chomping at the bit to leave my corporate job and become a full time day trader. This sounds like a bad idea and probably is, but this year, I've been making okay money. Nothing comparable to what I earn from my regular job, but then again, I'm not able to focus solely and completely on trading.

One of the things with trading that I accepted was that sleep needed to be a priority in my life. To get up early and trade pre-market before doing my regular job during regular office hours, I need to wake up alert and ready to go. Like at 6 AM, up and at 'em.

I finally gave in after many years – decades in fact – resisting the eight hours of sleep needed by most humans. A night owl by nature from a family cursed with the same condition, I've struggled in the era of gadgets to get into bed at a reasonable time.

For the past few weeks, I've done a good job of being eyes shut by 10:30 PM and my life has improved quite a bit. I've been able to devote time to daily practice and have been calmer, more relaxed and better able to make quick decisions during trading sessions. Am I profitable? Nope. I've been very conservative of late with trades, jumping in and then jumping out as soon as green. Going into last week, I was up $1500 over the past couple of weeks, way down from early summer. A new broker, a new platform and a weak pre-market has meant being super cautious, even paranoid. This is not a good trading style as I've left so much on the table. Exiting trades only to watch them shoot up in profit minutes later...

When I rolled out of bed on Monday, I took a trade and, per usual with my bad trades, didn't cut the loss pronto and call it a day. Nope, I dug in and watched it crashed. This is something I nipped in the bud earlier this year. With the power of margin, you get what amounts to an instant settlement, so if a trade goes bad, you bail quickly with a small loss and move to the next one. You get green by leaving quickly and going to the next good trade. This works for me now if I let it.

In my earlier trading career, the lack of margin meant it was psychologically harder for me to cut a bad trade and move on to the next one. Cash settlement, two days to clear, etc. Trade on Monday, come back on Wednesday, at least until you built up enough cash. This puts restraints on new traders and helps them become more disciplined in theory, but in practice, it leads to them holding to bad trades, hoping for some breakout or, worse, salvation after the open because they have to wait another two days to trade again. Banking on a breakout at the open or at 9:45 AM is a recipe for failure as a trader.

This particular setup though was very, very similar to an earlier one where I made $4500 in the space of an hour. I narrowly missed making $12,000 in fact, being slightly slow in closing a position. The setup was so unique and so new to me personally, but I traded it well and walked away with confidence. This setup last Monday was a dud. I knew it was a dud by reading comments on social media. So even though the outward setup was the same, it wasn't. There was a little bit of poison in the pie. This is what makes trading challenging, engaging. Your dull office job pales in comparison to the ambushes by bears, snakes and bulls at in the wilds of the marketplace!

I had sleep, but even with enough sleep, there's the quality of sleep. There are causes and conditions which can elude conscious reflection and probing. Why was I technically good to go but still felt off?

Sleep is important. I've reflected on the stories of monks who sleep four hours per day and walk around exhausted and fried all the time. I don't see how such a manner of living would be conducive to practice. I was struggling for several weeks with staying awake during sits until I pulled the trigger and got my sleep schedule under control. Doom scrolling and watching streams until 1:00 AM causes a lot of misery. Had I been meditating instead, I would still have been miserable.

This is to say that you owe it to yourself to boost your quality of life by going to sleep at a regular time and getting plenty of rest. Common, banal advice but very rare from what I've read on sleep habits of modern techno zombies.