Book Review: The Part-Time Trader

Don’t quit your day job. Instead, Ryan Mallory suggests, join the world of The Part-Time Trader (Wiley, 2014). Mallory himself started as a part-time trader while working in corporate America and then transitioned to being a full-time trader. He also cofounded SharePlanner, a finance trading site that gives real-time trade setups, ideas, and analysis to day traders, swing traders, and position traders—most of them part-timers.

In this book Mallory recounts his time as a dissatisfied “company man” who “added a heap of stress” to his life by trading at work. He himself proceeded by trial and error but eventually came up with a number of “best practices.” He describes how to balance job and trading, how to set up a “workplace trading desk,” how to fly beneath the radar and (critically) maintain monitor privacy. He explains why your best friend is the person who works in IT and how to trade when traveling. He admonishes part-time traders not to be too social.

I assume his advice is sound, although I was never in his position. For most of my working life my Simon Legree boss (me) would never have tolerated such distracting behavior.

In fairness to Mallory, he emphasizes that “you are being paid to perform a set of responsibilities and you should do them well. That goes without saying. … Essentially, what is true about the job that you hold should be the opposite of how you trade. Time-consuming job responsibilities means a trading strategy that requires you to be more hands off with your trading. Less time sensitivity and a job where you have the ability to work at your own pace without daily deadlines or a micromanaging boss allows you to customize a trading strategy that allows for higher-frequency trading.” (pp. 62-63)

Those who are trying to juggle the demands of a full-time job and part-time trading will undoubtedly find useful tips in this book. Mallory is writing from experience.