Happy New Year’s to All Our Readers!

The holidays are over and it’s time to continue with our training to become a futures trader. Before I start with our first goals and how we did in the first week of the year, here are a few words about how we ended last year – with a traditional End of Year party of course.

The end of year party was as I expected: a nice meal, a few drinks and having fun with everybody. However, at Positive there are a few very big differences. First of all, every newcomer to Positive has to sing a song in front of the whole company – not so bad in the Croatian office where we are 13 people, but the poor Dublin trainees had an audience of 50.

At first I thought that the guys were joking about it, but our head trader, a little too happily said it wasn’t a joke and that we better sing something good! So the night came, and nobody wanted to go first. I wasn’t able to eat all night long from the nerves, so I went first, otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten to eat! I croaked out a few verses, got some token applause and then sat down. Job done. Phew.
Then one of the other trainee traders stood up and belted out the Italian classic ‘Volare’ like an absolute legend! The whole party exploded and sang with him. Little did we know Pavarotti Jr. was in our midst. Good times.

The other Positive tradition is ‘Secret Santa’. Highlights included personalized baby shirts for expecting parents, toy cars for our car enthusiasts, a “solid gold” trading mouse for our top trader, tennis balls for budding tennis players, dog toys for the dog owners, and of course a Star War’s t-shirt! Some years there are thoughtful gifts, some years just jokes. I got a psychology book! Sometimes they are just weird. Go figure. On to the trading stuff.

With the new year we got new limits. Our previous daily limits were cut in half. In the first week we adapted well. Tighter limits helped us to be more selective about trades we pick. I looked at our sheets during the week and not one trainee went over their limits. The number of trades we did was approximately the same as before so I would say we are showing improvement. The second week we didn’t fair as well. We learned a new word. Limit down. We are now paying very close attention to trades that can potentially blow us up and trying to steer away from getting burned. It’s hard.

Green shoots this week though! At least one trainee each day had a positive day. We have barely scratched the surface of this futures’ trading profession, but seeing one of us figure it out each day is a good sign for my trainee trader class. Time for a cheesy celebration! Go team go! 

I’ve been blabbing and blogging for a few months now. I’d love to hear from you guys. What questions do you have for me? What would you like me to talk about over the next few blogs. Post a few replies and let me know.