Options Trading is not a game of “perfect”

How one woman finds inspiration and perspective as a parent of teenagers.

Faced with a health scare to one of her children, Samantha LaDuc (@SamanthaLaDuc) decided to sell the company she had built to her employees, then dedicated the next couple of years to her children.

During this time, introspection told her she needed to “be at the front door” for her kids when they came home from school. And this need for balancing life’s priorities led her to trading.

Her timing of this decision roughly correlated with the coming Financial Crisis of 2007–08, and led her to relentlessly seek out mentors to help her shorten her learning curve. “Can I shadow you?” became her catch phrase and she was willing to travel anywhere and everywhere to meet and learn from any “super trader” who would be giving of their time.

“Trading is not a game of perfect. Raising children is not a game of perfect. And at every opportunity to be humbled, we will be.”

Samantha has since drawn on the goodwill of several willing mentors and her deep experience in parenting sometimes unruly teenagers to arrive at a state of confidence that comes from knowing her risks, recognizing patterns, anticipating problems, avoiding the fear of missing out, and always being humble.

Her success has been a testament to her dogged hard work, dedication, and ability to adopt a lawyer’s mindset when considering entering trades:

“To be a good lawyer or a good trader, you have to be able to look at both sides [of the trade] and defend it.”

Learn more about Samantha, how she tackles the trading day, and discover some of her tricks to extract profits from the market. She and I had a fantastic conversation that you can listen to here:

The Gimme Some Options podcast just launched! It’ll be a mostly daily broadcast which will dive into the options trades I made each day and why, as well as occasional interviews with other options traders. I seek to learn from everyone and share stories that will educate, enlighten, entertain, or scare you right out of your pants.

Archives are available on Soundcloud and will be available on iTunes soon.