I've been thinking about taking an extended vacation while still trading (benefits of a home office!). What this means is that i'd be purely on tourist visa's, but living in several different countries over the course of about a year. Has anyone had any experiences doing this? I haven't contacted my brokerage yet, but I thought maybe a few more experienced individuals could share their experiences, pros/cons, difficulties with execution, time zone differences if you are still trading on US exchanges, internet access annoyances, etc. I know vacation is supposed to be vacation, so I've worked my strategy around weekly options trades and so am really only checking the charts for about an hour a day.
Are you doing the backpacking thing through Europe or Asia? Flashing any financial capability is frowned upon during these sojourns. However, every country or locale has internet these days which you can access via internet cafes. Be aware that this is incredibly poor opsec making you susceptible to robbery , kidnapping and sodomy. If your dead set on producing content for your self promoting blog: "Trading Derivatives while I see the World" (It's been overdone), you should expand your trading time frame to accommodate magnitude moves that require a slower reaction time of days to weeks.
I am by no means planning to promote a blog lol. I am actually going as an extended honeymoon with my soon to be wife. We probably wont be doing too much of the backpacker thing as we're a little old for that, but I haven't ever done any trading abroad and we would be hopefully keeping a risk reduced amount of trading income coming in. Just looking for advice or stories from anyone that has done something similar :]
Not that difficult. Internet varies from country to country and unless you stay in hotels or hostels with wi-fi (unsecure), you have to familiarize yourself with the local internet options...then again there's almost always Starbucks. Personally, jumping from country to country continuously gets old quite soon. I recently did a very small scale version of this, 3 countries and 5-6 different locations in about 1.5 months...it's exhausting if you also want to see the places and not just sit behind your screen. In your shoes, I'd probably visit fewer places spending more time in each location as there is value in knowing your surroundings such as knowing a few words of the language, where to get good food, currency exchange rates, familiarizing with the transportation system and/or renting a vehicle and other minor things. Broker shouldn't give you any difficulty, IB at least works fine from my experience, there's nothing specifically that you have to do. Latency gets worse the further from Chicago/NJ you go but unless you're scalping, it shouldn't matter.
Appreciate the response. We are hunkering down each place for about a month at a time, hopefully to not get too travel weary. Anyone else!?
My Brokerage was okay with me trading from a different country. First time I tried to log into my account I was blocked as location was different but after I called them and ran through security they unblocked my account. No problem with execution as I am not a scalper and made sure I had a good internet connection. There was only 1 problem I encountered and that's working in a different time zone. I was in Asia and trading US Markets, even if I slept in the day for a few hours and woke up later in the day than I am used to doing. I still felt tired at 1-2am when there was still 2 hours of trading If you are only checking your charts for 1 hour a day you will be okay. You will just have to create a schedule depending on when you place your trades/check your charts taking into account the different time zones. Europe and Middle East are good time zones to trade US Markets but I don't recommend Asia.
I would say. Just enjoy your extended honeymoon. A scalper can pick up trading at any moment. With options trading, the velocity and magnitude of the price changes will affect the attention you need to give up. At best go neutral, and just trade the more important moves if you can differentiate that. d08 is European. So, he doesn't get hyped up about Europe. Being an American, my only regret is that I don't have the time and energy to explore every possible experience whenever I'm there.
Enjoy your vacation, stick to swing trades or long term positions with a hedge or a stop. Like Xandman said, "At best go neutral, and just trade the more important moves" Been traveling the world on tourist visas for 11 years now, mostly Asian countries. Welcome to the club. try to remember the good Internet cafes/WIFI locations wherever you go so you save yourself the trial and error whenever you go back, this had been my biggest challenge especially in remote areas.
I prefer day trading when travelling. It means that I'm able to go off-grid with no set time limit (Not to mention allowing me to lose myself without a thought to the markets). As @xandman mentioned, flashing cash around is not a good idea. Set up a direct debit to a travel account, and limit yourself to only spending a small amount per month. In this way I've found that my trading account grows nicely, and having to be frugal leads to meeting more interesting people and situations.
It's more secure to get a 3G/4G modem and just pop a new SIM in when switching countries. A headache at the start but definitely more comfortable than always going to a cafe. 11 years though, wow, that's something.