Backstory

30 Apr Backstory

A bit of a back­sto­ry to my jour­ney as a trader.

I was always drawn to charts. Every time I saw any­thing finan­cial it just drew my atten­tion. How­ev­er, life took me on dif­fer­ent paths before return­ing to the path I should have been on: Day Trad­ing. One might say it was fate 🙂 

My jour­ney start­ed off when a friend of mine was strug­gling with decid­ing what to do with his life. One day he told me that he had made 60 pounds tak­ing a trade one time. So he decid­ed to become a trad­er 🙂 Know­ing that this is a huge endeav­our (plus hav­ing want­ed to do this mul­ti­ple times) plsu hav­ing a bit of free time from work, I decid­ed to join him.

To study the art of tech­ni­cal analy­sis I sug­gest­ed to study a top­ic for 2 weeks to speed up learn­ing. Then get togeth­er and teach each oth­er on the top­ic. If I could teach him back what he taught me it would mean I had under­stood. And vice ver­sa. Two weeks lat­er I show up with my Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion on Japan­ese Can­dle­sticks. First thing my friend said… Uhh I’m not doing a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion. I told him I did­n’t care. He could do it on a piece of toi­let paper as long as he could teach me what he had learned. I think I scared him off.… he tried once to teach me on some­thing but I knew there and then he was hold­ing me back. I was way more dri­ven to study and actu­al­ly put in the work as he was. So many are tempt­ed by the glam­orous lifestyle but once they see all the work that needs to be put in?!… Well… Bye-bye! Thus, I decid­ed to con­tin­ue solo. 

I ded­i­cat­ed myself to find­ing pat­terns in the mar­kets, specif­i­cal­ly crude oil. Every­day I sat down and went through charts look­ing for pat­terns. Did this for hours lit­er­al­ly every­day until I found some that worked. Then found indi­ca­tors like VWAP and Kelt­ner Chan­nels that were show­ing me sim­i­lar lev­els. If you’d like to have a look at how I use these you can do so by click­ing here.

I always thought that if some­one else could do it. I could do it by myself as well. About 3 years in I was still deter­mined but still not con­sis­tent­ly prof­itable. I did not want to buy a course or hire a men­tor. Until I found Dee and the Mar­ket Stalk­ers method.

What drew me to her were (and are) a few rea­sons: She spoke in my lan­guage before I could speak the lan­guage. I know that sounds weird. It’s just the lev­el of detail in her com­mu­ni­ca­tion showed me she knew what’s up. That and she wasn’t using any fan­cy trad­ing soft­ware, just plain old MT4/5. I had already come to the con­clu­sion that buy­ing “bet­ter” hard- and soft­ware is not the path to becom­ing a trad­er. In the end we need some tools but not every­thing peo­ple are try­ing to sell us on. 

I pur­chased the 3 entry-lev­el Ude­my Mar­ket Stalk­ers cours­es and I was hooked. The more I watched, the more I learned. About 4 months into these cours­es I kept look­ing at the Mar­ket Stalk­ers web­site to apply for the Gold men­tor­ing. There was ONE BIG CAVEAT: a back­ground in pro­fes­sion­al IT / Sci­ences / Med­i­cine / Avi­a­tion / Engi­neer­ing / Music / Sports was required… I had the ‘at least 2 years of active trad­ing expe­ri­ence’ but not the background… 

Sad that I was, I start­ed think­ing that if she requires this then maybe it isn’t for me and I am just kid­ding myself. I have no back­ground in any of these as I work in Busi­ness Devel­op­ment, Sales & Mar­ket­ing. I kept look­ing at the page over and over. Think­ing if I could just talk to her. She’d see that I could do this. 

Until one day…. ONE BEAUTIFUL DAY…. A lit­tle sen­tence was added: Alter­na­tive­ly pro­fes­sion­al back­ground as a suc­cess­ful busi­ness per­son. Yaaaaayyyyyyy! I ran to my gf to tell the good news. She got excit­ed for me as well as I had been talk­ing and mop­ing about this for quite some time. As a gift she offered to pay for half (lat­er on I found out I have to give half of my earn­ings to her as well 😀 maybe wasn’t the best deal). So I made the appoint­ment for the inter­view with none oth­er than Dee. 

I know I might sound like a teenag­er gush­ing over Dee but it was a big deal for me. Up until this point (3 years in) I had had only one encounter with an actu­al pro­fes­sion­al trad­er (that I could ver­i­fy). And up until that point I did not know for cer­tain if I was on the right path. So here I am about to have an inter­view with Dee so all these thoughts of inse­cu­ri­ty crept back into my mind. What if I am not that cer­tain?! What if I bomb the inter­view?! What if she doesn’t like me?! 🙂

The day of the inter­view it was all I could think of. After minor tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties we had our Skype meet­ing. What a load off my shoul­ders… What an idiot I was to think so neg­a­tive­ly… The con­ver­sa­tion was great. The ques­tions she asked I only wish peo­ple would ask me. Nobody cares about trad­ing the way traders do. I don’t care who you are. Most peo­ple just care about how much mon­ey you make. If you are not a trad­er you sim­ply don’t know what we do and go through.

We were sched­uled for 30 min­utes and we talked for almost 2 hours and I believe we could have talked longer. With the time-dif­fer­ence I was already late for bed. Even though I didn’t want to cut it short I did have to. Then Deeyana told me she would like to work with me and I could start her Gold men­tor­ing the next week. OH HAPPY DAY!! 

How hap­py I was just to get an inter­view you can imag­ine how hap­py I was to get accept­ed for the men­tor­ing! Again, like a teenag­er gush­ing over trad­ing etc…. But for me it was like get­ting accept­ed into Har­vard. I’m sure peo­ple are going to frown upon that or even talk shit. I. Don’t. Care. I got in 🙂

The men­tor­ing was the best thing I have done for my trad­ing career. I know this might sound like I’m adver­tis­ing her cours­es etc. but it real­ly is the real deal. 

After the 6 month men­tor­ing I have now been prac­tic­ing by myself for 5 months. Try­ing to make all the con­cepts my own. I have been doing fair­ly well although arriv­ing at the stage of siz­ing up in account size. I have encoun­tered my next chal­lenge: grow­ing con­fi­dent with size. Keep an eye out on my blog as I will be doc­u­ment­ing my progress every step of the way. 

• Twit­ter
• Insta­gram