Thursday, June 01, 2006

New Job!

I recently landed a job as a day trader in Vancouver. This week, we've been doing training. There are times that I get really excited about the job and there are other times that I get anxious and nervous. I know my hand-eye coordination is a bit slow. I'm hoping that I can make up for this with strategy and smart trading. I don't think I'll have any trouble sinking into the habit of loss minimisation and profit-taking. I get the concepts and I believe that psychology is not going to get in my way.

So, I was only unemployed for a month. That's pretty good. I turned down two other jobs. One was a sales position with an insurance company. The other was a temp call centre position with a software company. I had already landed the trader job when this came up.

One thing that worries me is the hours of this trading job. I realise that the utter inadequacy of Translink is going to bite me in the ass. The earliest bus from where I live is at 5:40 AM, which is too late for me since it takes 40 minutes on the bus to get to the office (at least) and I need to be there by 6 AM. I figure I need to walk 45 minutes from where I live to the stop where the busses leave earlier. I'm not looking forward to these daily walks at 4 AM. At this point, I can't afford a car and I'm not moving until my prepaid rent runs out in August.

I was working on an application to McKinsey, but then I got this job. I'm wondering if I should make a concerted effort to finish my application. I'm really interested in getting into analytical work, but I doubt I could get such a position without an MBA and/or CFA designation. Well, I suppose those are things I can aim for as I try to extract profits from the hostile stock market.

R