Creating Your Trading Environment | Podcast Episode #440

0:07
Hey, I’m Ryan Mallory and this is my swing Trading the Stock Market podcast. I’m here to teach you how to trade in a complex, ever changing world of finance.

0:16
Learn what it means to trade profitably and consistently, managing risk, avoiding the pitfalls of trading, and most importantly, to let those winners run wild.

0:25
You can succeed at the stock market and I’m ready to show you how. Hey everybody, this is Ryan Mallory with shareplanner.com’s Swing Trading the Stock Market.

0:35
And today’s episode we’re going to talk about my trading environment, my setup, where I do my work, where I do my trading, all of that and more.

0:46
I have an e-mail from a guy. I’m not going to use his real name. Obviously. I’ve mentioned that every episode I give people fictitious names just so that you know, they don’t regret having their name on this episode 10 years from now. And so for this podcast episode, I’m going to give this guy a good Florida red nickname of Mudflap. Now, I don’t think anybody actually goes out and names their kid Mudflap. I could be wrong, but it’s usually a nickname. When I was growing up, we used to have a fishing camp that we had a single wide trailer on and we would go bass fishing on that thing almost every weekend. But it was a it was a great little place, great place of memories. And down the dirt Rd. where we had our our trailer, there was a guy named Mudflap. And so I figured Mudflap would be a good Florida redneck name for this podcast episode. So Mudflap rights.

1:40
Ryan, first and foremost, great content and great podcast. Thank you for your contribution to the trading education of myself and all of your listeners.

1:49
You’re welcome. I’ve dabbled on Robin Hood since 2020, not related to COVID with 0 experience, zero education and 0 strategy. I’ve had decent luck with basic buy low sell high strategy. I’ve started my account very small with an unwillingness to lose my hard earned money. I started with $250 in 2020 and I’ve doubled it three Times Now with profits ranging from a few cents to double digits. My losses have also matched that at times.

2:13
Wow, this is like the second listener in a row that has actually mentioned that they’ve not just thrown endless dollars at their trading account, but they started small and they wanted to build up their account as they were able to become more experienced as traders. That’s great.

2:29
I think that’s a really good thing to do because it, when you’re learning in the beginning, you don’t want to be thrown around huge sums of dollars because one of the emotions are going to be out of control. So you’re almost guaranteeing that you’re going to make outlandish trading decisions that are going to work against you. So starting small, learning the quirks of trading and risk management and everything else, it’s it’s very important. Mudflap goes on the right.

2:51
I recently started reading a book on how to day trade for a living. It was in that book that I realized the difference between day trading and swing trading. So based on the definition, I am more of a swing trader. I do have trades that occasionally turn into day trades. I plan on finishing that book and also reading how to swing trade as well. I’m really wanting to get serious with this. I’m learning a lot about the time commitment and how you have to approach this as a serious full time job to be successful. Though I am not at all prepared to give up my full time job and gamble on this pursuit, I do want to make this a goal of mine for the future.

3:22
My question is this. What is your setup? The office space in your home? The furniture, the atmosphere, the ambiance, your trading space? What is your hardware? The computer, the monitors, the mouse, the modem type, and the Internet speeds. In terms of software and subscriptions, what are the basic necessities in the ballpark cost of those programs and subscriptions? Like if you were to create three different tier level setups, basic intermediate in advance, what exactly would those consist of ballpark estimates and why those options for that tier level?

3:51
I’m learning a lot from the book previously mentioned and listening to your podcasts everyday in my commute to and from work. However, any attempt at my own research is quickly flooded with get rich quick schemes and false guarantees of success. Working in the oil and gas industry, the demand for my presence exceeds my capabilities at times. I hope to gain a real understanding of this and get a proper set up in mind. I really want to set some goals towards properly equipping myself with real tools that make a difference. Keep up the great work Ryan and your efforts are appreciated by many. Best regards Mudflap.

4:22
Hope he still appreciates it after I gave him a nickname of Mudflap. Nothing to do with him, it’s just I got to give him a name.

4:29
So I’m not using his real name. So OK, there’s a lot to cover on this podcast episode. I’m hoping I can make this one episode. I think I can. But one of the things that I would do and I, I like to do this with emails, especially long emails like this one where they give me a lot of content to work with, is try to pick up on some things that are said. You know, I may have said differently in the past and I’m not sure. I think that sometimes I’ve looked at it from a certain lens, but there’s a line here where Mudflap said really wanting to get serious with this. I’m learning a lot about the time commitment that you have to approach this as a serious full time job to be successful.

5:04
Do I think it has to be a full time job to be successful? No. Now, could I have said that in the past? I mean, you go back to 400 and I think this is my 440th episode. You go back to 440 episodes. There’s a good chance I might have had a different viewpoint and if I did, I’m sorry, but my thinking can change over the years. I mean, you look at what I might have believed when I was a 8 year old kid, you know, believing in the tooth fairy. And what I believe now is a as a 44 year old, I would tell you that the tooth fairy is not real anymore, even though I believed it when I was eight years old. So I think sometimes your perspective on different things can change.

5:35
I think too much in society today is we don’t allow for room to adjust and to develop our thinking on certain issues or certain strategies. And even in the stock market, you know, a lot of the things that I have written 15 years ago is different today. And some of that might be because the markets changed some or it may just be because I’ve developed as a trader, I’ve developed new takes on things. But I think we have to be open to that. One thing I, I would say those I don’t think swing trading has to be a full time job.

6:02
Do I think swing trading is difficult to be successful at? Yes. That’s one of the reasons why I do this podcast and why I think it’s been popular is because I do try to explain how the stock market is difficult. And most of the time when people come to whether it’s the SharePlanner or whether they come to this podcast, it’s not usually their first podcast that they listen to. Most of the time it’s when they have fallen hard on their luck and they have struck out. They’ve blown up accounts and they’re like, OK, somehow this isn’t is sunshine and rainbows as everybody’s making it out to be. And they come across this podcast and they start to realize, OK, there’s a guy that’s being realistic here. There’s a guy that explains things as they are.

6:43
So while I don’t think that you have to commit to this full time, I do think that the more time you can commit to it, the better off you’ll be. Especially in the early going because you’re going to be looking at charts that you’ve never looked at, confronting indicators and situations that you’ve never seen before. So the more time that you can develop to that or devote to that, the better off you’re going to be. I’ve mentioned in past podcast episodes all the time that I think that swing trading can be a very boring endeavor. I mean, I, I feel like right now it’s extremely boring to me.

7:10
And you might be laughing at that because like Ryan, we’re it’s the month of August. For those listening to this in the future, we’re in the month of August 2024 here when I’m doing this podcast episode, We had this huge sell off from July 16th until August 5th. And then from August 5th, we had this epic run higher. So there’s been a lot of price action. I made money off of the run to the downside, but the way that the market bounced in the way it reacted, I did not play the the move to the upside. I’m fine with that. You’re not going to play every single move out there, but I’m also not going to chase, you know, 500 point moves to the upside within a, you know, 8 to 9 day period.

7:47
So for me, there’s been a little bit of frustration on my end. Just damn, you know, when is this market going to take a chill? And it has started taking a little bit of a chill in recent days, but there’s that aspect of it to where you can be bored at times and your swing trading because you don’t have a lot of action going on. There’s not very much of a reason to get long on, on a market that’s extremely overbought. And so you’re trying to hold off and waiting for a better opportunity. And sometimes I can go for days or weeks.

8:15
So there’s that element. And, and I’ve talked about in those podcast episodes in the past, how I do think it’s important people think that you need to quit your job and just completely focus on the stock market. I think that depending on the job that you have, I, I think you can do both. Obviously, if you’re working at a job that’s extremely demanding, let’s let’s say for instance, your truck driving, right, your, your truck driving. I actually have had truck drivers write into the show. But I do think that it’s probably hard to be a truck driver, be a day trader because you’re going down I-95 trying to make day trades. I mean, that might be a little bit risky.

8:50
So I think a lot of it does depend on the job. I think that if you’re going to stay at home and do swing trading as a whole, I think it does benefit you to have maybe a side gig, have something that you enjoy doing. Like for me, this podcast is really important. I love doing it. I love being able to take the experiences that I have learned over the years from the stock market and apply it to this podcast and and being able to hear your stories as well. That’s kind of a thing that I have.

9:15
If I was technically a full time swing trader in the traditional sense, I would just be staring at my monitor all day long and not doing anything else. But I do other things. But swing trading is my primary focus. But I do have other things that I enjoy doing. But I would also say this, that with swing trading, does it have to be a full time job where you’re working 50-60 hours a week at it? Not necessarily. The markets open 6 1/2 hours a day. There’s going to be research that you have to do before and after and scans and so forth.

9:43
But you look at it from any standpoint if you want to do anything. And I think this is where people run into the mistake here that I’m not saying Mudflap is wanting to do this. I think Mudflap has a pretty good handle on the expectations that comes with, you know, trying to be really good at swing trade. But I think a lot of people in general, they’re looking at trading as a way to make free money because they’re not making it somewhere else in life. I think a lot of people struggle with that.

10:09
I’m not saying that the people listening to this podcast do. I think the people listening to this podcast, they’re a lot smarter than the other people that are not listening to the show out there. Because I think that by listening to the show, you have a better understanding and expectation of what the stock market is. And a lot of people out there do not have that. Since you’re listening to the show, No, I don’t think that of you, but I do think a lot of people outside of it do have that.

10:29
I mean, one of the things that you’ve probably encountered, and I’ve encountered a lot are people who come up to you and say, hey, can I get a good stock pick? I just need some money, so can you give me a stock that can make me some money? I got $100 in my Robin Hood account. I have one person say I need a stock that will take my $1000 and turn it into 100,000. I’m like what?

10:48
When you find out what that is, you let me know because I don’t know any stock that’ll go from 1000 to $100,000 that I can just tell you in advance. But there’s that thinking out there and with that thinking is that I don’t have to do anything to earn it. I just hit a buy button, type in a three letter symbol or four letter symbol and watch the magic happen.

11:07
And that’s just not what it is. There is a time element to it. One of the things that I would like to do personally is to maybe start getting into some woodwork. And, you know, I got these table saws. I got miter saws. I’ve got all sorts of, you know, DeWalt tools and stuff. And they’re just kind of collecting dust in my garage. And I look at them and I see these videos on how people are making tables and chairs and redoing closets. I’m like, man, that looks really fun.

11:27
But I can’t just go into it and be like, OK, I’m going to be a master Craftsman. No, I’m going to probably mess up a lot of things in the process of trying to learn how to do that stuff think I would like to do. But the other element that kind of scares me is the time that it would require if I’m just doing it on Saturdays as a way to take a break from the markets and everything, which is kind of what I’m thinking about doing.

11:46
Will I progress that much? Probably not. I mean, over the course of the year, I’ll I’ll learn a lot. But if I was doing it five days a week and spending a couple hours a day at least on it, let’s say I was spending three or four hours a day on it, would I be a lot better off? Yes, I would be. I would. I would probably have a lot better skill set for woodworking and and creating things.

12:07
Whereas if I’m going to just do this on Saturdays, it’s kind of like a way to get away from things. I got to have lower expectations. I’m probably not going to be that good at the end of the year. I’ll have learned some things, but I wouldn’t necessarily write home to Mama about how good I’ve become at carpentry. So keep that in mind.

12:23
So the questions that start to pop up here in the e-mail from Mudflap is what is your setup, your office space in your home, the furniture, the atmosphere, the ambiance, the trading space? What’s my hardware, the computer, the monitors? So the monitors that I use, I have 4 monitors that I use. Now if I was a full time trader and I didn’t have anything else that I was having to pay attention to, would I do that?

12:47
No, I probably have two monitors that I could work off of and I’ve had a lot of different setups in the years. And for the purposes of, you know, what is your basic mid and elite or advanced setups probably fit my different setups in each of those categories. But for my trading setup, it’s nothing glamorous. It’s in a room up in my upstairs house. I used to have an office in downtown. I liked it, but I ate out a lot too.

13:14
And then COVID hit and I was like, you know what, I’m just going to move everything back home. Everything’s shut down. My kid wasn’t going to school. I didn’t want to leave my kid at home for, you know, 12 hours a day. And I didn’t want to necessarily take him to my office for 12 hours a day and just have him sitting in a chair. So I moved everything home and I haven’t gone back since. So I mean, when you hear about the, you know, commercial real estate struggling because there’s a lot of office vacancies.

13:34
Yeah, it’s true. I mean, I I have vacated my office as well. And when interest rates were real low, took advantage of that, bought a new home and also married my wife at the time. So a lot of things were changing, and I like being home. I love being able to go downstairs and grab a sandwich. If I want to make a sandwich, I guess I love that. I love, you know, being able to have access to a refrigerator or a microwave or whatever.

13:58
If I need to heat something up, it’s just nice. Like my wife’s leftover meatloaf. I’m going to eat some of that today. I like having access to that. It should make some amazing from scratch mashed potatoes. So yeah, I’ll be heating that up after I’m done recording this. So it’s not anything fancy. I know that you see the people on the marketing and Facebook ads and all that stuff and they’ll be like, look at my office, you know, it’s in a downtown skyscraper overlooking the entire New York City area on Big Time.

14:27
No, mine’s not like that. I just installed a window because I used to have blackout windows to where I couldn’t see out. And, and a lot of that was just for like lighting purposes because I do have a YouTube channel. If you haven’t checked that out at youtube.com/shareplanner, you just have a YouTube channel and trying to control lighting and everything when you have like the Florida sun blistering into your office makes it very difficult.

14:45
So I blacked out the windows and now I got to a point to where I didn’t like not being able to see the sun outside. I installed one of these windows with a remote control where I can raise and lower the blackout curtains, which is really cool. It really helps. I think it keeps things from being too gloomy, but that’s probably the coolest thing in my office. The other things that I have, along with like 4 monitors, I have my computer that I got. It’s a gaming computer.

15:07
I think the gaming computers make great trading computers. Now. In the past, I used to have a friend that would build me my computer. He was really smart guy, valedictorian of his engineering class. He would build me the computer setups and they were phenomenal. But now it’s like the desktop has come soaring back with online gaming and everything. The computer setups out there that you can just buy off the shelf is amazing.

15:27
I bought my cyber Power PC off of their their website and it was during COVID so I think I’ve had this one since like early 2022 I want to say and it’s starting to slow down a little bit but it’s still blazing fast compared to most computers. It’s got a 3090 NVIDIA GPU graphics card. It runs on AI, think it’s a 12th generation I9 processor, 64 gigs of ram on the computer itself. That’s a lot, but totally necessary because I do, like I said, I do videos, I do podcast and stuff.

15:58
It’s good to have that extra capacity. The solid-state drives definitely a must. That’s going to allow your computer to run faster. I think one of the biggest things for your trading setup is to have a lot of RAM on your computer in a really good processor and a really good graphics card. That’s really the meat and potatoes anyways of a computer.

16:15
But Cyber Power PC, I’m not getting paid by them at all. They don’t even know I’m talking about them. But you’re asking for honest answers, you know, So I’m giving it to you. If it benefits them, great. They actually do a pretty good computer, but they’ll actually tell you when you’re combining things. It’s like, OK, this particular piece of equipment can’t work with that piece of equipment. So it it works out really well, but I do believe in trying to get as much RAM on there.

16:33
And the reason why is because when I go through my charts, I want the charts to load fast. So TC 2000 one of the things it’s, it’s one of the silliest things that you can possibly like about a charting software. But for me it’s everything because it’s represents time when I’m going through my charts, I hit the spacebar and I love that aspect of it and how fast it goes through the charts.

16:56
I think trading view has that feature as well. But for me, being able to go through my watch list, I can hit a spacebar in it instantly pops up. Now you probably can still get the same with like 32 gigs of ram and everything, but there’s there’s a subtle difference in the speed. And so when I’m popping that space bar, it just flies. So I like that.

17:14
I think the processor plays into that as well. But being able to go through charts really fast is important to me. So I would say for any computer that you get, even if you’re not even using for trading, you get a computer that has at least 32 gigs of RAM. If you want a really basic set up, I think you can buy a laptop from Best Buy. I think that laptop I bought was somewhere in the range of and I bought about a year ago somewhere in the like between 12 and $1400. And this isn’t, this is more for like travel that I use this for.

17:38
But one of the things that I can do and you can buy these off of Amazon is I buy these attached monitors and then you just clip them in to the back of your your monitor. You can have like 3 monitors coming off of your laptop. They’re not huge monitors, but they’re huge in the sense that, OK, I can have my charts up front and center, I can have a spreadsheet to the left and I can have a spreadsheet to the right or whatever, or maybe it’s a Twitter feed.

18:04
It’s great. It’s 100% worth having those extended monitors and I think my wife has even commandeered one of them when I don’t use them for her own work, but they’re really helpful. I think I paid no more than $200 for those monitors and they’re probably cheaper now because I think a lot more people are starting to use them. So there’s more competition, there’s more people selling them.

18:25
So if you’re going to go with a basic setup of like a laptop, make sure you get the the monitor extensions, but also to make sure that you have the 32 gigs of RAM in your computer. That’s probably a lot for a laptop. Most of your laptops I think are 16, but I would definitely aim to find one that has 32 gigs of RAM.

18:34
Now my Internet connection, you have to have the right card for it too. And that’s a modem that can handle 2500 gigabits per second of Internet speed. So I’m, I’m not sure if I’m using all the right terms there. I’m not a computer specialist, but I’m just telling you my, my knowledge and understanding of it.

18:54
So I have a modem that’ll actually allow me to do that. And then through AT and TI have the fiber wires that’s run up to the house and I have 2500 GBPS. There was a house that we were looking at one time. My wife and I were looking at it and, and like asked one of the neighbors like, what do you guys do for Internet?

19:14
And it’s like, oh, it’s kind of crappy out here. It’s like 100 megabits per second or less, you know, depending on the day. And it’s like through Starlink or no, it wasn’t even through Starlink. It was through some podunk outfit that I’ve never even heard of. So we didn’t go after the house just because the Internet was trash out there. But internet’s important.

19:31
You definitely the more speed, the better. That’s also going to aid you in your charts and how fast it pops it up. I noticed an incredible difference in my charts when I went from 1000 megabits per second to 2500 megabits per second. I mean, just crazy difference or 2.5 gigabits per second. Hang on how you want to say it, but internet’s important.

19:51
When my Internet goes down, I can use my phone as a hotspot with my computer. That’s that’s also helpful. But it’s definitely going to be a lot slower. But I don’t get a secondary Internet connection. I used to, but not anymore. Now we’re going to get to the monitors too.

20:04
But first, before I do that, as part of one of the subscriptions that Mudflaps asked me about, I would definitely tell you to check out swingtradingthestockmarket.com. I know that’s a little bit shameless, but. It is a really good way to get all my stock market research each and every day.

20:20
That’s going to include my daily watch lists, my watch list reviews. I go through every one of my stocks that I put out on the watch list and I review them each day just to see how they’re doing, what to expect going forward. That’s pretty awesome. And then there is the master watch list for bullish and bear stocks that I put out there each and every week as well.

20:37
I do mega cap updates on all the big, you know, traders that are moving and shaking this market like NVIDIA, Microsoft, Tesla, all those guys, Apple. And then I’m going to do stock market updates throughout the week as well. So it’s a really good service, really cheap, good as swing trading. the-stockmarket.com, it’ll take you to SharePlanner and you can choose a plan that works for you.

20:52
So the monitors, the monitors, this is always controversial. I see these things where people have like 15–16 monitors that they’re looking at. I don’t think that’s really necessary for them. I don’t even know how for one, I don’t even know how you sit in a room that has 16 monitors without having like 13 air conditioned units just pouring cold air into your.

21:13
When I first became a full time trader, I had eight monitor setup. This is kind of embarrassing talking about it, but I had a eight monitor setup plus I think I had another three on another computer in my office. Guys, I’m telling you, it was so hot. I ended up having to like trade in my boxers. No joke.

21:31
It was so hot. I had a friend that came over one time. I was like, what is going on in here? It is boiling hot and he took out his like little Boy Scout thermometer that he had on his key chain and he’s like it’s 90° in here. Maybe it’s just a Floridian in me, but I had been trading in that for like over a year.

21:46
I mean, just trading in boxers. And this guy, he installed AAC unit for me onto the bedroom. Like what you see in some of those, like, you know, older houses where you have like the AC unit hanging in the window. He installed one of those and that sucker did help out quite a bit. But that thing ran nonstop just to keep it down to like 80° in that bedroom.

22:07
But I’m thankful that for that. That was when I was first starting off, man. When you’re younger, there’s some crazy things that you’ll do, but that was one of them for me. I had like 11 monitors. And so the computer that I had at the time, because there wasn’t really a wide use of multiple monitors, I had to put like 4 graphics cards inside the computer that would support two monitors each.

22:26
And that was where the source of the heat was coming from primarily was this graphics cards just putting out tons of they were just stacked in there. Solly, I could have made some money off of Bitcoin, I guess mining for that stuff back in the day huh. So those were the monitors that I started off. I think that was kind of wild from there.

22:41
I I think I just wanted something that was less crazy. So I went with that big screen. TVAI think it was like a 52 inch big screen TV at the time that was actually huge, but now they got them 80 something even 100 inches now I think, but I put a piece of software on there and now I think all of your monitors come with it.

23:03
But at the time it was pretty cool because I could make quadrants out of my big screen. So I had a big screen just right in front of me and I think I might have had like two more monitors on the side that supported me and that was pretty good too. I think that I was that wasn’t a bad setup, but there wasn’t any curvature to the monitors where I could kind of like bend the outside of it towards me.

23:18
So that was a good setup and it’s time. It was definitely better than the 11 monitors that I had running, which was totally unnecessary. I mean, I had monitors that really weren’t even being used for anything because I couldn’t find a reason for them, but I thought it was cool. Now again, I have 4 screens.

23:35
I have two on the left that are stacked on top of each other. I have one in the middle and one on the right and on top of the right I have ATV thing so I can watch King of Queens at night. You know which I love that show where Everybody Loves Raymond or if there’s like a good football game or Houston Astros playing, I’ll put that on there.

23:47
But I actually do use all four monitors. I mean, I have Thinkorswim on one, I have my TC2000 on another, I have a web browser and then the Discord. But I don’t even need all those. If I was just trading by myself again, I think I could get by a fine with just like 2.

24:03
But running SharePlanner, doing the podcast, everything else I do like to have the four monitors, they’re always being used. So I would I would say not so much that we need a basic, intermediate or advanced set up, but I think there’s just like a basic like I just want to get by and then there’s like more of a what you really need and I think what you really need.

24:22
I think desktops are much better to work off of than laptops. I think there’s more power that you can put into them. I think if I was buying a computer right now and I was just buying it for trading, I would probably go, I would get and buy from cyber power PC. I would go ahead and get the latest processor card like I nine.

24:43
I think that’s the latest one, right. Have they come up with anything since then? I’m not sure, but whatever the latest processor card from Intel is, I would probably even do AMD. I’m fine with that as well.

24:54
Whichever card works with everything else that you’re trying to get for your PC. But the latest processor card and the latest, you know, iteration of that, you know, whether it’s a 12th Gen., 13th Gen., 14th Gen., and then I would at least have 32 gigs of RAM on it. I think 64 if you’re gonna be using it for something else like I need 64 because rendering videos can be pretty taxing on the computer, but 32 will get by just fine. 64 though, if you really wanna see it go fast.

25:22
Mid level for Internet speeds would have to be 100 megabits per second. If you can get more than that and we’re talking like 1000 megabits per second, that’s ideal. 2.5 is is also really I love 2.5, but really where I benefit from the 2.5 is on uploading videos. Uploading this podcast, it goes lickety split like in seconds.

25:44
Sometimes when I do a video it doesn’t even show you that it’s uploading. It goes that fast. Thousand though will be probably more than you ever need. I also have kids that do gaming in the house and I’m telling you, even at 1000 megabits per second, that sucker is taxing. What those games do. You have like two kids that are playing like Call of Duty golly, and then you got somebody downstairs watching YouTube TV. You’re consuming some bandwidth at that point.

26:07
I think 2:00, depending on how much you use your computer. I usually swap out my desktops every five years or so. I think the NVIDIA graphics cards are probably the best you can get. AMD as well, but I prefer NVIDIA. Anything over like a 4000 series is pretty good. I mean top level really, and that’s about it.

26:25
I mean, I definitely have a solid-state drive where you can store a lot of information and stuff on there. Really good to be able to have plenty of space, like at least two terabytes of space on your hard drive. And definitely have, I have a backup drive on my computer, but I also think it’s good to have multiple external drives as well just so that you can backup everything.

26:43
So a little bit more about the setup. We talked a lot about the computer’s furniture. I have a chair that I think I’ve used for about 8 years. I spent about, at that time, I think it was about $1200 on the chair. It’s like a was a Herman Miller chair. I think they’re really good, but definitely worth it.

26:58
I used to buy these $200.00 chairs at Sam’s that were like made out of leather and you’re just like sweating in them all day. You’re getting all sticky to them. And then imagine sitting in one of these Sam’s chairs that are all leathery and then you got 90° weather because you got 11 monitors blasting heat into your office. That was not comfortable.

27:15
But the Herman Miller chair that I have now, I’ve been using it. I’ve looked at new chairs, but I can’t find anything that would really be better than what I have right now. Herman Miller. I like those chairs a lot. I’m trying to think, what else?

27:25
All my desk stuff’s from IKEA. I buy these like little, you know, fake wood countertops from IKEA. I cut them off in half and I really just designed my space the way I liked it. I used those Alex drawers from a Kia. That’s like $90.00 per drawer, really cheap, but they really do the job.

27:45
So that’s about it for my trading setup. There’s nothing too crazy about it. I think where I start to get into a little bit on the crazier side of the equipments is like the microphones I use for the podcast and, and all that equipment, which, which there’s definitely a lot more money into that.

27:57
But from a trading perspective, pretty basic set up, There’s nothing fancy about it. I have a lot of foam on the walls just because I want to make sure the quality of this podcast is good, but there’s not a lot of things hanging up. I got a nice view on the second floor of a preserve outside my house, which, which I appreciate.

28:13
But again, it’s nothing like what you’re going to see on Wolf of Wall Street or, or all of the financial gurus that are parading their, their wealthy lifestyle. I’m pretty basic so, and I think that’s really all you need. You don’t really need too much craziness.

28:28
I work in silence pretty much all day long. I don’t have the radio on. I don’t have the TV on. I used to, I used to not be able to work at all without the TV. But then I realized, you know what, it’s kind of nice not having CNBC blasting or you know, a movie or music blasting. I just work in silence and it allows my mind to really think as well.

28:41
In terms of charting softwares, I think there’s three really good chart softwares out there and I think what you really have to do is experiment with them all. I primarily use TC2000, but I also have Trendspider and Trading View. I think all three of those platforms are good. I think Trendspider is really good for like pattern recognition for scanning, unbelievable scan capabilities there.

29:03
Trading view pretty much is like has everything that you can need. TC2000 lays out everything really well, lot of customization there and it’s really simple. I think the learning curve on TC 2000 is a lot easier. They’re all pretty much priced the same, but they all have different strengths.

29:16
You can get into the Fenviz world where you can get a lot of stuff for free off of that, but I don’t think you’re really, that would probably be fall into like the basic package of what you need for trading. There’s other chart stuff out there too, like Yahoo Finance or Google Finance that you can get charts off of that.

29:36
But if you’re really going to be serious about swing trading, that’s probably one of the biggest things that you need to think about is what kind of charting platform are you going to use? You can use Thinkorswim that that would be another one that would be free. And I know a lot of people use Thinkorswim. You just have to have a brokerage set up with them. Decent platform.

29:51
I don’t like it too much. I mean, it hasn’t really changed much over the last 15 years. I mean, it’s pretty much been the same. I can’t remember if it has changed even in the last 20 years. It’s very similar. I mean, there’s not much has changed, but it’s also still a very good platform as well.

30:08
And that’s pretty much what all I have to say about that. As Forrest Gump said. That’s all I have to say about that. We covered a lot. This was actually a pretty long episode, but I’m glad that Mudflap brought all this up. Lots of good stuff. I probably could have made this into two podcasts, but nonetheless, I actually do have a bourbon to review here.

30:30
It’s First Call, it’s 53.5% alcohol, which makes it like what, 107 proof? I didn’t even know I had this one. But I’m out of Evan Williams, which is what I normally use for my old fashions, and I’m using this one instead. And I didn’t think the bourbon was very good by itself. It had a lot of ethanol, but I thought that that would work with the old fashioned, but I was wrong, was completely wrong.

30:55
It didn’t work at all. It was not good and instead what I got was a very sweet taste. I’m not even sure how 53 1/2 percent very ethanol like flavored bourbon got so sweet when I poured it into an Old Fashioned. That kind of stumped me some and I still don’t know the answer for that.

31:12
But the more I’m doing these Old Fashioned reviews and trying to find the right Old Fashioned for my recipe, the more I’m thinking that that Evan Williams Bottled-in-Bond is really one of the best ones I’ve done today. I mean really a really good bourbon.

31:28
So I give Evan Williams a 7.5 as like the benchmark to compare all others against. Honestly kind of regret giving it a 7.5. I should have given it 8.0 because I’m not finding a lot of them that are better than that at all. So for this one, I’m giving it a 5.2. First Call does not make for a very good bourbon.

31:47
Kentucky Straight Whiskey does not make for a very good bourbon at all when making an old fashioned. So there you have it.

31:56
If you enjoyed this podcast episode, I would encourage you to leave me a 5 star review on whatever platform that you’re listening to me on. Plus, make sure you check out Swing Trade in the-stockmarket.com and send me your letters, send me your questions.

32:08
I want to hear from you guys. I want to know what bothers you guys. I want to know what the things that you are struggling with. I’m not going to tell anybody your name, send it to me and we’ll make a podcast episode out of it.

32:18
So you can do that by sending it to me ryan@shareplanner.com. I’ll get the e-mail won’t be filtered through anybody else, so be sure to do that. Thank you guys and God bless.

32:26
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32:40
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32:57
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33:07
If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me at ryan@shareplanner.com. All the best to you and I look forward to trading with you soon.