Current State of Affairs

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit."
- Aristotle

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The last daytrade I made was on November 20, 2007. It was a $350 loss on a Euro short. After that loss, I decided to take a break from trading. I spent a lot of time researching stocks for swing trading, but not really finding anything to get me into a routine. So between the 20th and today, I was mostly just watching the markets, and occasionally buying some stocks for my retirement account (like those dividend paying stocks that I mentioned in this previous post).
Like most retirement accounts, I cannot short any stocks, so the better part of November was spent mostly watching stocks go down. Kind of sucks, but at the same time, educational.
I also spent some time reflecting on my futures trading. I got close to settling into a routine of trading only the patterns that I listed in my pattern catalog. I can even visualize what I would do differently once I get back to trading futures. I think one of the things that I was stuck on was being over focused on making sense of every little tick, and in the process, losing sight of the bigger picture forces and trends at work. Kind of like zooming into a picture @400% for most of the day, when you need to zoom out (more often than I realized) in order to get a sense of where you are.
But for now, that visualization of what to do will not be actualization yet, since I will need to take out a big chunk of my trading funds in preparation for moving and all of its associated costs (moving expenses, closing costs, cleaning costs, etc). Within the next 3-6 months, my family will be moving to another house, assuming that we can find something that meets both my wife's and my own criteria. The reasons for moving are mostly financial, as without the extra stream of income we used to have when my wife was working, and with my trading income being inconsistent (ie. inadequate), it was prudent to reduce the size of our mortgage by moving into a cheaper house. Plus, downsizing the mortgage would also enable us to replenish the rainy day fund that was drained by my wife's health issue.

I suppose one could say that I should have gotten my finances in order before getting into the vocation of trading for a Living. In my defense, I should point out that my decision to pursue this vocation was based on a unique situation at the time - I was laid off by my old employer. I still remember on that day that I went for a walk to a bookstore nearby and started flipping through a book about starting your own business. It's hard to believe that it's been already a year. What do I have to show for this length of time? A few thousand dollars of trading income that has long disappeared into bill payments, and some head knowledge about do's and don't's of trading.

Yes, my trading life has gone through the first-thrust stage and is now at the pullback stage. What will happen next? Stay tuned, because even I am curious to find out the answer.......