20 years of trading

[pontificate]

Lets start at the beginning (although the real story starts later).
Looking for something to make some spare cash along with ambition and a desire to be entrepreneurial I came across a course in trading ( I later found out it was very rudimentary and barely breakeven involving exclusively simple moving averages). I plug along losing little bits here and there but developing a passion for trading and slowly developing, tinkering and refining all sorts of weird and wonderful technical analysis ideas. Some that would be profitable with discipline and the right approach and some that wouldnt. Needless to say even the good ones lost money at my erratic action seeking hands (This was all short term stuff, mainly intraday), Incidently now more than 20 years later my advice to anyone considering trading is to only trade stocks and only buy and only longer term and dont sell them even when your weird and wonderful latest idea indicates you should. Use all that stuff for your entry then put it to one side for a few years, maybe close half after a predetermined fixed profit plus 50% or something but not specific to the latest set up youre using better ones will come a long. Then when youre any good chances are youll have something to bet with. A bit of a tangent and advice youre obviously welcome to ignore.
Now where were we. Oh yeah ive done my nuts again. So on we go refining tinkering and suddenly (is it suddenly or eventually, maybe both) some very very very interesting stuff ( Id rather not mention the specifics of any set ups) I slowly got better and better with these ideas and started making very very good profits.

to be continued.....( probably next week)

 

[1nvest]

Incidently now more than 20 years later my advice to anyone considering trading is to only trade stocks and only buy and only longer term and dont sell them even when your weird and wonderful latest idea indicates you should.

All those that had bought Natwest in 2007 listed on the UK stock exchange would be disagreeing with you right now.
I certainly hope you dont get paid for your advice

 

[pontificate]

You might be disappointed it gets pretty dark

 

[pontificate]

All I expect is to know what Im allowed to look for, to be able to do it when i find it (without you moaning about it) and to leave in the same condition I came in.

 

[pontificate]

All I expect is to know what Im allowed to look for, to be able to do it when i find it (without you moaning about it) and to leave in the same condition I came in.

At this point I was paid a visit in a manner of speaking ( again specifics not my thing). At this point the world became increasingly strange, very attractive girls became a bit more interested, friends started to treat me a little differently and it felt as though the world had tilted a little somehow.
Insert - Timeline so far about 5 or more years. Job im happy with (shift work allows back for US open).
Strange and very unsettlig thoughts and occurences. A job that in these conditions was unsustainable. Conveniently voluntary redundancy was available so with my new found roll I got stuck (Its just occurred to me (sorry I cant be ar**d to edit this) that the attractice girl thing might have given you the wrong imppression about the size of my account the redundancy was much larger and the very very profitable is in percentage terms e.g. 1000% in one month). So we have for me a very pleasing account, lets get stuck in. And let me say from the outset that even 15 or more years later ive never found a more profitable and reliable set of technical analysis. Back to the story. Lets just call it a visit with invisible ink YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO USE THIS. Instead under my tutelage you can start the whole process again and after 20 years youll be able to only slightly underperform a tracker fund. It wasnt put exactly like that and the last bit wasnt mentioned.
So for the next it cant be far off 20 years I got to work understanding diligently everything i possibly could about these methodologies when not actually at the screen thinking about them day and night even during films or watching the news. During this period It would become commonplace that I would reach a point where I would either be profitable with a paticular component or very close to it (commonplace debatable). As soon as this happened It was made clear that I wasnt to do that anymore and that this was the new way to study, refine and improve with. This was repeated over the decade/decades until today where its clear Im not allowed to use any of this. The current component is the magic number and if you break even youre doing well.

Part 2 of the same period next week