Millionaire TradersQ: Are you sports fan?
A: Yes, I am. Ideally, if could do something outside of trading,
I’d be a professional athlete. But my abilities just don’t allow for
it, [laughter] or my size. I’m not a sports fanatic, but I love watch-
ing football. I even watch golf now, which I never used to do. I
found that sports and competition is a real common thread of good
traders.
Q: Yes, we find that to be a very common personality trait,
particularly of equity day traders. Traders in other markets dif-
fer somewhat, but equity day traders tend to be very athletically
minded.
A: Right. On a China trip, I think it was over a year ago, I said let’s
go play some basketball in the morning after work. I just announced
whoever wants to play, show up. We met up at the university gym
and I noticed 95 percent of the 15 guys who showed up were the
top traders out of the 200 traders plus.
Q: Very interesting.
A: Yeah [laughter]. I think there’s some correlation to trad-
ing/competitiveness. And, you know, it all makes sense. But it was
just neat to see, so far from home, guys who aren’t athletes but com-
petitive. It was the most unorganized, horrible game of basketball
ever played [laughter].
Q: It was the spirit of the thing that mattered.
A: Yeah, they were hacking every chance they got. It was fun
though. The best part was I was the tallest guy! Rare chance for
me to dominate on the court!