What’s Your ROI on Time?

When it comes to trading, return on investment is the metric most people reach for first.
How much did you make?
How much did you risk?
How much was in your account when you started — and where are you three or six months later?

That makes perfect sense. But it’s not the only return worth paying attention to.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about this more — maybe it’s the entrepreneurial energy of being in Austin — and it hit me:
There’s also a return on time.

Here are a few ways to look at your ROT (return on time) in trading — and make sure it’s at a level you’re truly comfortable with.

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1. How Much Time You Actually Spend Trading

Trading isn’t just entering and exiting orders.
It’s everything that surrounds those moments:

• Analyzing your charts
  
• Researching the market
  
• Getting your tech up and running
  
• Managing open positions
  
• Reviewing results
  

Even if your review is as simple as glancing at whether you made or lost money, it still counts.

If you use a trading plan and journal like I teach in the First 40 Trading Club, this part is easy — you’re already tracking your actions. Once you know roughly how much time you spend, you can correlate that to your return on investment.

There’s no right or wrong number here.
It’s about what feels right to you.

Think of it like your personal hourly rate.
You can’t guarantee $100 per hour trading, but you can look at the balance:
Over several months, how many hours went into your trading — and how did your account respond?

I do this by looking at my time in a few specific categories (and yes, I track them). 

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2. The 5 Categories I Track in My Trading Time

I use a time-tracking app called Clockify so I can see exactly where my hours go.
Here’s how I break it down for trading:

1. Prep — Getting charts or watchlists ready, reviewing potential setups, planning trades.
   
2. Live Trading — The actual execution and management of trades in real time. Entry, monitoring, exit.
   
3. Review — Post-trade evaluation, journaling, and learning from outcomes.
   
4. Admin — Account maintenance, paperwork, platform updates..
   
5. Education — Taking in market news or external research, studying trading courses, software tutorials, attending coaching sessions.
   

All five contribute to your trading performance, and all of them deserve to be factored into your return on time.

So if you haven’t been paying attention to where your time is going, start now.
Awareness is the first step to improving your “ROT”.

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3. The Diversification Trap

Many traders feel drawn to trade multiple markets — it sounds smart, like “diversification.”
And sure, diversification is great advice… later on.

But early in your trading journey, I recommend doing the opposite.

If you’re still:

• Building experience,
  
• Working toward consistent profits, or
  
• Refining your knowledge base…
  

Then focus on one thing.

Not one type of market — literally one instrument.

If you trade futures, pick just one ticker, like the ES.
If you trade stocks, narrow down to a small watchlist or use a filter that returns only a handful of names.

The more focused you are, the faster your time pays off in meaningful results.
Once you have consistency, then you can expand.

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4. Time Is the One Thing You Can’t Get Back

Think about it:
If you lose money on a trade, you can always make that money back.
But if you lose an hour… that’s gone.

So make sure the time you spend on trading — or anything around it — is worth your time.

My husband and I have a “10-minute rule” for Netflix.
When we start a new show, we set a timer. After ten minutes, we check in:
Are we still interested? If not, we move on.

You can apply that same principle to your trading life.

If you attend an online training or dig into a trading book, and it’s not clicking after some time — step away. It doesn’t mean it’s bad material; it just might not be right for you right now.

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Trading is full of returns — but your return on time might just be the one that shapes everything else.

Wherever you invest your hours, make sure they’re giving you back something valuable — skill, clarity, or peace of mind.

That’s the kind of ROI that keeps you trading for the long run.

~Hima