I’m looking to partner with a fellow Optuma user in the following way that I execute your trades for you and you execute my trades for me most basically I’m looking for somebody to execute my trades for me, but I think ideally, I would find someone who at least has a similar challenge of emotional involvement in executing their own trades, who would find a solution in it through my executing their trades for them.
‘I could tell someone else how to trade profitably, but I can’t do it myself’. I am sure there are some of you reading this now who have had this thought. ‘Traders plan their trades but they don’t trade their plans.’ This wouldn’t be a saying were it not common to the point of being the norm, rather than the exception. In this post I propose model for how 2 traders could work together that aims to solve this problem for both of the Trades involved. It defines two roles: 1) Tra Strategist, 2) Trade Tactician. In the sentence, ‘I could tell someone else how to trade profitably’, the ‘I’ is the Trade Strategist; the ‘someone else’ is the Trade Tactician. Each trader in the cooperative partnership serves as the Trade the Tactician for the other. Though I propose a cooperative arrangement between 2 individuals, it isn’t a traditional partnership in that there isn’t any commingling of funds, nor any division of profits. The Trade Strategist is supplies funding—he is the one who believes that he could tell someone else how to trade profitably—he can’t say the same for just anyone, of course. So naturally he is the one who should shoulder the risk. The Trade Strategist is also the one to whom go any and all profits. Will this leave the Trade Tactician insufficiently motivated to execute the responsibilities of his role with sufficient diligence? I answer that question with an unqualified ‘NO!’ Each individual in the partnership enters into it due to his confidence that ‘he could tell someone else how to trade’ though he can’t do it himself. The chance to see the profits that have seemed just out of reach, so close and yet so far, would be so motivating, I don’t see insufficient diligence in the role of Tactician arising as problem. The risk capital and profit would be behind 100% that of the trade strategist. My reason for this is as follows: I think having money on the line produces interest, and interest produces attention. The work of a strategist is something that could suffer due to lack of sufficient interest. It is sufficiently disconnected from the nuts and bolts of immediate gain that there could be a slackening of interest. The tactician, on the other hand. Is likely always to be sufficiently interested. My reasoning in this is as follows: the danger in trade execution lies much more on the side of impulsiveness and enthusiasm than it does on disinterest and indifference. This approach is geared towards swing trading. Here are some of the nuts and bolts details regarding how I see it working: the Trade Strategist would need to submit a trade plan to the tactician at a minimum of one day before any expected entry would be a rule that the tactician is not permitted to enter the market until market open the day following receipt of a trade plan by the Trade Strategist. As to the issue of risk management, I had not yet mentioned one aspect of my idea: the Trade Strategist would define rules and parameters for risk management and risk allocation. Any rules established by the Strategist cannot be overridden by the Tactician on any occasion! The strategist gcan choose to either define exact prescriptions such as ‘every trade should have X risk allocation’; or he could define parameters for the tactician, leaving it to the discretion of the tactician how much risk to allocate to a given scenario. The Strategist is NOT permitted to say, ‘allocate this much risk to this particular trade.’ This is in order to prevent the Strategist from becoming too emotionally involved. Another point I hadn’t yet mentioned: the trading plan developed by the strategist must include definitions for entry and exit criteria. It is up to the tactician to decide whether the criteria set out in the plan have or have not been fulfilled. If they have been fulfilled, he must act in accordance with the plan (although, again, he may choose to put on less size if his confidence in the trade isn’t high). I envision a weekly Saturday Zoom call. All other needed communications could be achieved asynchronously, utilizing annotated screenshots and messages via Slack.
Please let me know if anyone is interested in exploring this possibility.