Flying down a mountainside on two skis while negotiating tight turns and ever-changing microclimates would be a terrible time to lose focus.
Todd Gordon knows this. If he hadn’t quickly learned this skill in his journey to competitive ski racing, he would’ve likely landed himself onto a stretcher and an air-lift back to base.
There was no other choice.
But for Todd, he’d have it no other way. From a young age, when he found an interest in something – whether skiing or finance – he’d go all in. Nothing else mattered.
And when he discovered the world of trading, he knew what he wanted to do. “There was never a question,” he said.
In college, between classes, skiing, and happy hours, Todd would trade options from his dorm room. It wasn’t a matter of IF he would be a trader, it was a matter of where would he start.
And that answer came right after college when at the age of 22, Todd headed west and joined a proprietary trading group based in San Diego. And from there, he never looked back.
How did he handle those first twinges of pressure when early trades went awry? His background in high-pressure competitive skiing gave him the tools to stay focused on the things he could control, and keep his attention away from anything else that he couldn’t.
In this episode of Off The Charts, Todd gets into all this, plus the transition he has undergone from a high-paced intraday scalper to a money manager guiding investors toward long-term gains.
We talk to a lot of traders. Not just on this podcast, but across everything we do. And one thing that is common to most of them is some level of stress which must be routinely navigated. And it’s often a real struggle.
From an early age, David Hale had hustle in his DNA. At just 10 years old, he was sneaking into casinos to play slot machines. By 11, he was betting on horse races. And before long, he was hunting for arbitrage opportunities in baseball card values.
It’s hard to believe Denise Shull is a product of parents and grandparents who believed in “buy and hold” and wouldn’t even know how to sell a share of stock if asked to.
“I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
Reinventing your career after 20 years is no small feat. Now, imagine trying to do that by becoming an active trader. That’s exactly what Andrew Moss is doing—but he isn’t going in blind.
Among the many things that stood out during our conversation with David Lundgren, it was this quote: “I want to find a way to listen, and learn, and get a little bit better every day.”
