Meetup Groups

Written and contributed by John Wilson

Meetups.  There are plenty out there.  From Star Wars Fanatics to How to Cuddle (yes, that does exist)…whatever floats your boat, it’s out there.  Have you ever attended one or organized one?  If you have, you may have noticed that the majority of those who attend are generally interested in being there, but there are also those who think the topic should be absorbed like osmosis.  I call them the “spoon feed me, please” attendees.  I’m victim of that too when in the hardware store.  I have no idea what I’m doing but I feel really energized when walking through those isles with all those cool tools on the wall.  Don’t ask me how to use them or even what they do.  I just soak it in and pretend I belong.

I recently led a trading meetup.  Here are some comments from these “spoon feed me, please” attendees when I briefly spoke about trading market neutral strategies, ie. the M3 trade. Here is a great example of a meetup group that Dave Thomas presented the M3 at:

“That is just too confusing.”

“Why bother with all that work?”

“I need some other software to manage these trades?  I can’t do it all on TOS?”

“What’s RUT?”

“How does this relate to Apple?”

“The T + what line?”

“I’m a fundamental investor.  All this option stuff won’t work over time.”

“I thought this was an import/export meetup.”

Opps.  I think I learned really quickly how far we have come as M3, Bearish Butterfly, Rock, etc traders.  It’s a lot more difficult than we think or remember.   How did I recover?  I stopped and backed up the trading truck.  I went to my Jim Cramer versus trading options card.  Whew.  That worked!

If you are a “rookie” to the John Locke world, you can relate to the difficulties in not only trying to understand the nuances of the trades, but also the vernacular.  Don’t worry, we were all rookies at one point in our trading journey.  If you are a “veteran”, you live and breathe this stuff.  However, you may have forgotten how difficult it is to explain this new world to someone else.  It’s tough.  Just be gentle.

Nonetheless, rookies or veterans, we all have something in common.  We must continue to learn and push ourselves each day to become better traders.  If you are new, keep it simple.  I suggest the Bull trade.  Once you understand the pros and cons of that trade, you can move on to the Bearish Butterfly.  The next step is usually the M3, which is a trade where I place most of my trading capital.  You may have to watch the videos at least three times plus spend a lot of time backtesting.  Then and only then will you continue to improve your trading.  The big “ah ha” moment is when you “OWN” the trade, meaning, you know the trade inside and out.  Yeah, the spoon fed way sounds much easier, but as we all know there’s no free lunch.

For those veteran traders, you get it.  My only advice is to try to maintain a “rookie” mindset.  I find that it keeps me fresh and honest with myself as I don’t want to fall into the trap of assuming I know it all in this ever-changing market environment.

If you find yourself in a Meetup group like I did, buying a round of drinks for everyone helps too.  It must have helped because some of them ended up joining the Locke community, which is great.  Sounds like I need to bring up the Rock trade at the next meeting…how cruel!

One more thing, never skype in other members to a Meetup group.   It doesn’t work, but I didn’t have to buy them drinks!  Here’s an example of how the skype meetup could go:

Happy Trading

Written and contributed by John Wilson