Life as a trader’s partner

I wrote a light-hearted blog before, now it is time to talk about the heavy part of my life with a trader for ten months. In the last one and half months in particular, the market stopped to cooperate and MM has been losing money big time.

(How much? I don’t know. A part of me doesn’t want to find out. But in the single month of June we roughly lost my 10 months’ salary. We lost more in July.)

Only this morning the market turned around a bit. So we might finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Of course you never know. “The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent”, as Keynes said.

I pray it does turn around from now on. Otherwise I don’t know what to do--I feel I reached the end of my EQ wisdom since last night.

My EQ is something I am proud of. I have always managed to maintain a cheerful mood. Lousy things happened, and I cried my heart out plenty of times. But I came back soon afterward. There haven’t been many times, if any, that I started doubting if I can get over a feeling lousy stage. The only time I can remember was when my grandma passed away.

So last night it was a shock for me to realize I felt depressed three times in less than a week. Yesterday morning the first thing my supervisor said to me was, “You didn’t seem to be so cheerful this morning.” I forced a chuckle and blame on the cloudy winter weather.

This morning I didn’t even bother to hide and answered “OK-ish” when he asked me how I was doing. Then of course I had to explain the “-ish” bit--MM woke me up about 4am when he finally went to bed. He started snoring pretty soon but I didn’t have that much luck…

This is nothing new under the moon. Sometimes I found myself waking up in the middle of the night anyway even MM was still working in the other room. Lately we only went to bed together for the two weekend nights. Still I feel grateful if he does come to bed before 6am (the time US stock market closes) and he does fall asleep right way. There were plenty of times he could not sleep much several nights in a row because the situation was too bad.

Sleeplessness is just one problem. Here is a list of “the worries” on top of my mind:

1. Long-term effects on health due to constant stress and sleeplessness,
2. Lack of exercises if one trades American, Australian and Japanese markets as MM does—it is a 24-7 job (almost 7, MM reads Financial Reviews during weekends) and there is simply no time.
3. Lack of social life. Again, no time.
4. Unstable income which makes it difficult to have a long term plan, e.g. starting a family. Certainly sometimes MM makes more money in an hour than what I make for a day. But you never know what happens in the next hour…
5. Obsession with the idea of being self-employed and freedom, which makes it difficult to move on if trading doesn’t work.

Of course there are things from the plus side:

1. Working in flexible hours and nobody has to take a leave when somebody has to stay for the Plummer to show up.
2. He is always at home and that gives a soothing feeling
3. He has the competitive advantage of managing money so I don’t have to worry about that.
4. Most importantly he likes to trade so is generally happy if the market goes his way.

It boils down to a trade-off. Life is pretty good if the market is collaborating. Otherwise life as a trader’s partner could be difficult like right now, when the market is against us for such a long time. Once upon a time I used to hugging MM when he went to bed at the middle of the night to warm him up. But lately I stopped—I feel cold myself and that coldness comes from within. MM have been feeling depressed for quite sometime and I can tell he’s drowning. I have been trying to save him with hugs and kisses but last night I realize that might not be such a good idea: I am drowning as well, emotionally.

It is a romantic idea to drown together for sure. But I still want the two of us as a whole to survive. One of us has to remain solvent and healthy/cheerful enough to go to work everyday. That person has to be me right now.

So, I will have to detach myself for a while. I tried kissing, kicking (tried to convince him to start looking for jobs) and everything in between. Nothing worked. Time to back off--it is probably best to leave him alone for a while anyway.