Let’s face it. Many of us trade because we desire financial security, the freedom to pursue our dreams, and the time for things that matter. We want to be at our daughter’s soccer games and spend time with aging parents. We really want to make that trip to Budapest or help our children buy their first home.
If you want to ramp up your trading without giving up your full-time job just yet, Certus Trading’s Matt Choi has a few ideas on how to help.
As a CMT (Chartered Market Technician), Matt Choi specializes in trading stocks, ETFs, options, commodity and financial futures, and FOREX. He is the co-author of the Amazon Best-Seller, The Winning Way. And he is the founder of Certus Trading, a small trading education company with a big mission: to help students become consistent and profitable traders who are able to realize their dreams.
Most importantly, Choi is a straight-shooter who explains—in plain terms—the world of high probability trades, commodity spreads and everything in between.
Unlike many professional traders whose experience comes from working on the exchange floor or for large hedge funds trading other people’s accounts, Choi’s experience and knowledge was accumulated after years of trading his own money.
An entrepreneur at heart, Choi owned and managed a successful car dealership after obtaining his MBA from McMaster University while he traded the markets on the side. He always knew that his passion was in the markets because the opportunities there are limitless, and it could give him the mobile lifestyle that he wanted. So he sold his business to focus full time on his trading.
“I don’t just trade for money,” says Choi. “I also trade for time to spend with my family, to make my son breakfast and to drive him to school every morning. I trade so I can be at all my son’s soccer games and skating lessons. I trade so I have time to see the world. I trade so I can be at the dinner table every night and have conversations with my wife.”
He knows that most professionals are very busy with their work, which makes it hard to focus on growing trading profits at a fast pace. Choi’s students and followers are doctors, engineers, consultants, dentists and entrepreneurs who are successful in their professions, but who share a passion for trading.
“One day, when they are ready to retire from their careers, they want to be able to transition into trading,” says Choi. “They want to continue building wealth doing something that they love doing.”
Choi understands. He spent a few years scaling up and get his trading income to the level he needed to break his profession at the time, start a new business and trade full-time.
He mainly focused on developing option strategies that weren’t going to fail when he didn’t have time to manage the trades every day. Eventually, he developed a set of strategies that require little day-to-day management
Here’s a glance at one of Choi’s strategies:
- Focus on straddles so you don’t need to worry about assignments or dividends. That makes the trade much easier to manage.
- Most people trade straddles the wrong way. They will buy a short-term straddle to trade earnings, or maybe biotech or clinical trials. Then they hope the announcement will move the stock enough to make money.
- Unfortunately, the price movement has already been built into the price of the options and the volatility crushes the announcement.
- On the other hand, a long-term straddle gives you time to be right. You can learn how to find them and how to get in at the right time and at the right volatility.
- There is a crystal clear exit strategy with these straddles, so they are very easy to manage. Typically, most people only check them twice a week, so that is great if you are going on vacation or having a busy stretch at work.
- Don’t be afraid of leaps—options that expire in a year or longer. These serve as a great anchor for longer-term strategies. The leap strategy doesn’t require everyday monitoring and is useful when you have a very busy professional life.
If you want to spend less time to make more profits consistently, but you don’t want to stare at the screen all day, you’ll need to get your own system in place. “You can start right away and shave years off your learning curve,” Choi adds.
