Time is the justice that examines all offenders. –Shakespeare

With an impossibly busy July and August ahead of me, I’m starting to weigh the pros and cons of shoring up my long-term positions with my trading capital.

Two things happened this week. For a hot second Wednesday, all of my long-term investments flashed green simultaneously. [So brief was this moment that before I could take a screenshot of my platform, one switched red.] I won’t go into specifics, but my portfolio has been bear biased since April 9th. My short-term trading has also been choppy. I haven’t had any bad drawdowns, but I’ve been down a bit after commissions.

I think the reason is that I haven’t been focusing as much on trading. I’ve had a lot on my plate. Not putting in your all — taking the time the night before to look at charts, get ready for trading, and sit tight monitoring positions — will levy a toll.

I find myself winging it on some trades, not having done the proper thinking about entries, stops, and position size. I made a recklessly speculative play on United Natural Gas Fund (UNG) after it briefly stopped trading on Tuesday, sending traders scrambling. I minded my stop and then made some back on the other side, so it wasn’t terrible, but still — that’s the kind of thing in which I shouldn’t be involved.

Trading takes time, when learning especially. If you don’t put in the time, you’re headed to the poorhouse. There’s no substitute for the hours staring at the tape. That tape-time must be supplemented with a voracious diet of reading, educating oneself, processing. There is so much to learn that it’s possible (and some say advisable) to spend as much time reading about trading, listening to the old speculators whose market one inherits, as one does actually trading.

The expenditure by which one makes money trading — the spending of one’s time — is also the biggest opportunity cost of trading. Opportunity costs — we are told in Econ 101 — are the costs you incur by not doing something else. Here, the opportunity cost of trading is the time I’d spend doing other things. The opportunity cost of doing those other things is the money I’d make trading minus the profits I’d reap letting my money sit in longer-term positions.

Time is the ultimate paradox — in trading and in life. You can get more money, but you never get more time. Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can spend it, but you can’t buy it. You can use it, but you can’t own it. Once you’ve spent it or used it, you cannot get it back. In a sense, time is the ultimately liquid capital — the only cash you have Right. Now. Yesterday is a defunct futures trade, and tomorrow is a negotiable forward contract. Lost time is never found again, and found time is immediately lost.

Time is of the essence, sure, but isn’t the decision of how to spend that time more essential? It’s said that time heals all things, but what about the afflictions from misuse of that time?

I must think carefully here. I have limited capital with which to enter the trades of daily life. Do I invest that capital in law school applications, my senior thesis proposal, LSAT preparation, emails with friends, vacations to Alaska? Do I put my actual money in market-neutral positions, thereby saving myself from the screen between 9:30 and 4:00?

This is tough. Stay tuned for the final judgment call — it’ll be made on the margin.