…In With The New

When we started this full-time trading endeavor over a year ago, we weren’t lucky enough to have high speed DSL piped into our houses. Our only options were to rent an office in town, or work out of one of our father’s empty offices. Being that we didn’t really want to shell out $500-600 per month for an office, we opted for the second, free option. Well, we have now moved up (or more accurately moved over) to a new office.

Our old office was about 90-100 sq. ft. and an old upstairs file room with no windows. There was just enough room for two 6 ft. tables positioned in a “L” shape, a bookcase and a garbage can. We both worked off the same table, shoulder to shoulder for over a year. Luckily, we get along with one another quite well. Being that the office was free, we couldn’t complain too much about the cramped nature of our office. We had a 768kbps Frac T1 line to the office, but on average it really only pumped out about 350-400kbps. If we had both our streamers, both IB accounts, and Blocks 2.0 all running simultaneously, we ate up 98% of the connection and our charts would lag terribly. This small room also only had one tiny heat/air vent so we were constantly enduring temperatures of arctic/tropical proportions on a daily basis. That’s not to say that everything about the location was bad, au contraire. The office was only about 1/8 mile from our houses, so we had almost no commute, and we cold go home and have a nice homemade meal (a.k.a. ham sandwich) for lunch. Below is a picture of us in our dungeon.

In late November we were informed that our T1 would be replaced with a DirectWay satellite connection. Knowing the latency and FAP limitations of the satellite connection, I knew we had to start looking for a new office. We again considered renting an office, but there were no readily available options that would work. Then I remembered that my father-in-law still owned an old office/shop in town that had some unused offices. A few phone calls later we had secured a new location, free of charge. After changing the carpet and cleaning up a bit, we moved in Tuesday of this week.

The new office is a little over 3x bigger than the old one coming in at 310 sq. ft. It even has its own kitchen area, which we have furnished with a refrigerator and microwave. There is now enough room for both of us to have our own table, and we even have a lounge/reading area by the bookcase. Our internet connection is also much faster here as well. We are running off 3MB DSL, which runs our streamers and scanning software much smoother. As an added benefit, since I can’t just run home at anytime now, I get to bring my Jack Russell Terrier to work with me. Its nice to have Stuart around to entertain us when there isn’t much going on in the market. Of course, all is not daises and cupcakes here; we still have issues with the heat/air situation, but overall it is a much needed improvement. Here is the new office.