When you have a level playing field, you need to have an edge over other people’s strategies, to win.

With screen-based trading, the old-fashioned edge of having a set of cosy mates on the trading floor is no longer a tool you can use. Nor will you get any kind of unique strategy by sharing classes at a business school.

So here are a few tips my experience has taught me. Tips that might be considered a little… alternative.

But I reckon they work.

Get a good night’s sleep

If you look at sporting superstars, they always have their edge, which could be their diet or coach.

With the Tour de France teams currently starring on my TV, I noticed one team had a strategy for handling injuries caused by crashing off their bike and sliding down the tarmac on their knees or hips.

Their coach had a little secret that helped them recover five days faster than normal and it wasn’t using the Lance Armstrong book ‘Winning Tour de France for Dummies’.

Although Armstrong’s team doctor did use it. He had special blankets built for them to sleep on and put over them, plus little sensors that he would tape near any tarmac skin grazes.

His secret was that the devices would get plugged into a normal electric socket and they would just ‘earth’ the blankets and sensors and help the body get rid of built up static electricity in a simple manner. Look:

I thought, this sounds mad so I researched as much as I could and found out that ‘earthing’ your body has some amazing effects.

Basically, if you sit with your shoes and socks off and put your feet onto grass for a minimum of 20 minutes per day, after a couple of days your sleep pattern becomes settled and you will awake refreshed and focused.

I did, and I was. So now I’m a fully fledged Earther.

Practical research

To keep an edge over other investors, I would always send someone down to the pub nearest to the manufacturing company I may be researching. Their job was buy drinks for their workers and then ask questions that we wanted answers to and could not trust the answers the CEO was giving us.

AGM secrets

At AGMs I would always have a female join me. Ninety per cent of the time it was my mum, because no one has ever convinced someone of the opposite sex to randomly join them for an AGM of any sort. At least, not in the kind of social circles I whirled around in.

Mum would tell me if she could trust any of the directors, just by looking at their faces. And this turned out to be a very useful edge to have, as if she did not trust them, we would avoid with, as it turned out, about a 90% success rate.

Keep focused

To keep my mind focused and edged up, I drink organic coconut milk concentrate and wait for about eight minutes for the effects to kick in.

Coconut milk has a strong MCT component which goes straight to your brain and keeps you fully focused.

Brilliant to take before big trading sessions and when reading and dissecting prospectuses and annual reports.

For the golfing weekend away

I always had an edge over the young bucks in the office who would want to go out celebrating a deal, because if more liquid was going to be consumed than food, I could always out drink them and still be the first one at my trading desk in the morning.

Whilst they would be struggling with hangovers I would be getting on with my job, looking fresh and very smartly attired. However much they tried to destroy me by drinking me under the table, they never could.

What they never realised was that I had a secret, and to this day I’ve never shared with any of them. But its time has come.

Before embarking on a big night, I would have a sneaky little survival kit stashed in my draw at work. A few gulps of neat olive oil from my kit would line my stomach and stop the alcohol from getting in my bloodstream.

If it was going to be a really big session, I would pop a couple of milk thistle tablets. These turn your liver into a little industrial power plant by handling the alcohol consumed in such an efficient way that you never got drunk.

I always had the edge, and their respect, and none of them ever cottoned on (until now).

If anyone else has any tips on how they keep a trading edge over others, I would love to hear them.

(Though not from you, Paleo Pete, or any non-wealthy chartists.)

The Secret Broker can be found on Twitter here @SecretBrokerAU. Feel free to contact him with your best stock tips. It takes far too much time to milk a thistle.