How Did You Get Into Trading?

[Trade to lose]

Hiya Traders,

I decided on starting this thread after a particular trader said in his post that he was subscribing to a monthly newsletter on share tips. So what I hear you cry. Well the point here is that even though this newsletter was useless,it was this newsletter that got them into trading and something that they should be extremely grateful.

I must admit myself that I was never really interested in trading whether it be shares, indices or commodities. But one day I got a call from this bloke who was trying to sell me a trading system and its one that many of you will know well. I won't say which one because I don't want to embarass myself further. Anyway, I was told that I would make 30 to 40K etc etc.

Me being a novice and I guess a bit ignorant towards the subject bought it straight away. I was planning my holidays and even when to quit work. Yes Yes I was stupid and stop that laughing now! You guessed it I didn't make much money, actually I was breaking even, Ok I made a small loss. Well I lost my faith in trading and all the dreams that went with it along with a few thousand pounds.

The truth is I'm not bitter and in actual fact I thank the person who rang me and sold me this duff trading system. Are you crazy I hear you say. Well NO, the point I'm trying to make is that this system introduced me to trading and I'm now learning to trade for myself by reading books, workbooks, paper trading and learning from the people on websites such as these. Its been about 18 months now and I've learnt a hell of a lot. Trading is not learnt overnite and only those who persistent in learning will suceed in long run.

Anyway thats how I got into trading and I would love to hear how others got into trading?

regards,

T2L

 

[Old_Bob]

I got into trading through my son :cheesy:
Started 2 years ago at the age 54

 

[Dave1971]

My experience seems similar to yours Trade to Lose. I was told by an acqaintance how much money could be made trading, and by coincidence got a flyer from a guru within a week or two, and took him up.

As you would expect he did not live up to it, but it got me into it, and having lost my shirt once through greed I am gradually working my way back at a sensible pace. Been at it 4 years now but only at the sensible level for the last 6 months.

 

[ChowClown]

A friend from my investment club began SBing the DOW a couple of years ago and introduced me to TA (he used MACD predominantly). He lost his shirt several times and risked far too much per trade and trading on credit at times. Every time he got burnt he consistently repeated the same mistakes. He needed to make money from trading to supplement his income and the hope of a 'big win' and gambler's logic prevailed.

On Sunday he died (heart attack) aged 48. The irony is he still has a heavy short DOW open.

We're missing you big guy. Rest in Peace.

 

[JTrader]

Through the desire to establish some level of control over my life, by developing the ability to be self sufficient, became interested in ways to generate an income. I started to learn about trading 2.5 years ago.

Cheers

jtrader.

 

[wisestguy]

was fascinated by the markets for a long time, went to the far east , joined a bank , and afters 5 years of various shannanigans finally left and traded on my own account .

 

[rog1111]

When living in South Africa, I was invited to attend a free seminar (by a friend who was attending), with free tea and biscuits, which turned out to be a sales pitch for an expensive course on commodity options, based on Joe Ross' material. Well I didn't do the course, but the seed was sown, and from there fate took over. 9 years later.......

rog1111

 

[clylbw]

From childhood, I have always been interested in observing how money affects people and how people make decisions under monetary pressure. I wondered whether I could use all the information I had gathered in practise. Then I came across ' The Reminiscence of a Stock Operator' and, after reading how markets reflected crowd psychology and behaviour, knew instantly that trading was what I wanted to do with my life.

I dare say trading is my real passion. I have been through ups and downs; I am aware of all the pros and cons in this area, and the efforts I need to make in order to success. Yet, given a second chance, I would have made the same decision again to go into trading.

Maybe this is the reason why I have been unable to take the classic finance theories taught at university. The great professors may have a point in things such as market efficiency and rationality, but to me market movements always represent the sentiments and manipulations of various players in a particular moment. Well, let the great ones worry about the macro-important stuff; as a individual trader I am only interested in the trivial issue of actually making money day in and day out. :cheesy:

 

[wisestguy]

that's why market profs are profs and traders are traders .

I can't stand it when they pontificate on TV about the markets when they haven't made 1 single cent from it .

 

[billgates]

I was fired from my job and being old and unemployable, trading became the only way for me to bring bread home. No better mentor than hunger.

 

[6fulongs]

I was a horse racing gambler, then one day whilst on betfair I noticed this new area to gamble on, its was called financials...... > spreadbetting > direct access > level 2 > laughing > crying > why did i ever get into this ? > hard study > optimism

GOOG is much more fun than trap 6 at Romford

 

[wisestguy]

bill gates ,

what are you doing in afghan ?

 

[JumpOff]

bill gates ,

what are you doing in afghan ?

Wow, Bill Gates, are you really trading from Kabul? Way cool! Here in the U.S., they only show us pictures of rubble, camels, men with rifles riding around in the back of pickups, and women wearing those blue coverup thingies, and your new president prancing around in his latest designer clothing... (Our news is really watered down here.)

How is your trading setup? Do you trade from home, what kind of internet access do you have.? And how did the election go in your part of the world? Was everyone able to vote who wanted to?
JO

 

[zigglewigler]

I saw my future in the bottom of a whisky glass. Didn't like it.

Decided to be a clever bugger.

 

[knorrie]

JumpOff gets my post of the week, wicked )

 

[ERA]

Picked up a futures primer in a bookshop in Singapore, later picked up 'Market Wizards' in a bookshop in South Africa which really lit the torch, then had to wait a number of frustrating years for the internet to arrive to give me a gateway into the markets.

 

[frugi]

I was extremely fortunate to benefit from my grandfather's astute art habit, in that I was left some money in 1997, while I was working for a wine merchant. Wondering what on earth to do with my new found wealth (well it was a lot to a 24 year old anyway) I bought a few books and assimilated the basics of trading in quiet moments (punctuated by the far too frequent cry of "Oh no not another f**king customer") from the comfort of the warehouse office while my friends engaged in the usual pallet truck races around the shop floor, having helped themselves to wine from the tasting counter.

Trader Vic stands out as a beacon in my noob career: his generously sized brain and awkwardly written arguments convinced me that it was possible to earn an independent living from trading that would outstrip any indolent fund manager, form the "perfect business" (echoed much later by Joe Ross) and be enjoyable. Trouble is, although I relished the idea of pure autonomy, with dollars leaping gladly into my account if I pressed the right button at the right time from in front of a PC at home (I've always been a bit of a loner and probably an optimist to boot!), it looked like seriously hard, odd work and in the novelty of relative youth I was happy abusing the wine van on slippery roundabouts and enjoying the cameraderie of the shop floor a little too much to risk everything to retire to a garrett and trade "scared money" with no experience.

So, with more than a hint of cynical chagrin, the lot went to the unit trust vultures; but then I watched with increasingly surprised glee from the sidelines just as the Nasdaq bubble floated with a furious urgency. The unit trusts soared beyond my wildest expectations and I timidly sold all the way up (I was embarassingly unfamilar with the concept of the trend being a friend to follow at this point, and took the role of a bearish, rational, but utterly mistaken analyst throwing my naive opinions at a market that actually could go up further and did so big time). The highlight of my otherwise premature sales (indeed one was so premature that the u/t phone operator actually dared to question the sale with "You want to SELL that?", meaning of course, "You stupid little mad posh idiot this is the initial phase of the biggest bull run I've seen for 20 years!") was shifting the remaining half of a Japanese Smaller Companies unit trust on the very day it posted its highest high ever (purely by chance, of course). 412% profit, the stuff of dreams and ugly people slyly smiling from business magazine covers. Now I had some decent money and spent most of it on a wee flat - a sensible investment with the unassailable benefit of habitability - vowing to learn to trade, an opinion greatly reinforced by the bubble deflation which showed me that unit trust managers weren't the gods I had believed them to be at all; no, they were merely sheep who could read a newspaper and benefi from a few years' incredible luck, yet with little to fear thanks to a safe and excessive salary (a notion confirmed later, in my mind at least, by Naseem Taleb's "Fooled by Randomness"). Every dog has its day.

I took to swing trading with the same vigorous enthusiasm I normally reserve for absinthe, and soon lived modestly on the proceeds, with the lean periods supported by savings and p/t work. My methods were a little odd and probably could not strictly be called trading as they oft relied on such hideous crimes as averaging positions. But I had the cash, the postion sizing skills and the time to allow poor trades to become decent investments. I dabbled with poker, philsophy and probability theory as any pretentious young man might. As the years evaporated I managed to iron out most of these risky errors, but never attained the 30%+ returns after which I strongly hankered.

With the birth of this site and the stupendous amount of available knowledge therein, I became attracted to intraday trading for many reasons: the larger potential returns, the lack of overnight risk, the closer alignment with an ordinary day job (put the hours in and sleep at night), the intellectual challenge and the wish for total autonomy. So I started trading intraday, lapping up the No Indicators and Dow intraday threads among many. Trouble is I didn't really have a system, just a load of things to look out for, and it soon showed. I lost over 50% of my account in a year. I tried purely mechanical systems, thinking discipline was a major problem and all I needed to do was learn to follow orders. I now suspect discipline wasn't to blame - after all how could I be disciplined given no system to which to apply it? Anyway they disappointed too, with their inefficiency, total lack of intelligent user input and the frequent times I (correctly) said "No you can't buy there it's, like, so a top" and other irksome teenisms. In fact I almost gave up completely this summer, but just before committing my car to the ravages of Autotrader and seeking secretarial work, I forced myself to sit down and honestly work out what the major problem was. Obvious to everyone else I'm sure, but it came down to not having a solid discretionary system, a flexible system that can allow for artistic interpretation and gut feelings without letting them get me into serious trouble.

Here I am, at last, with considerably less cash, a respectable set of battle scars and, praise be, a system I really believe in, not to mention miles of personally observed and analysed one minute data stored somewhere in my subconscious. It's early days yet, but I feel like I'm cautiously on my way at last. If only I knew 4 years ago what I know now!

Apologies for the tedious strife story

 

[hastings]

how I started trading...? well a sort of...history?

Hello to all... hastings is back-up against the wall as usual. I mean fighting all the time. He's got no why. He likes to fight. And sell. He hates buying ...anything! He does what he does because he's like that , only that.
If the currency exchange posted some miracle quote the day I went to exchange my dollars? I'd try to explain how the US$ couldn't possibly be trading at a discount to the Cdn$ again.. could it? Hastings would say " Hey man ...YOURS!" Must be a mistake!.
Things change but do they? Back in '74 when a friend rode copper up to about 2$...and then rode it back down to about 1$... a cup of coffee cost 0.25$
I started trading lumber with my student loan and made 300$. It took me a year. I used to paper trade for 3 weeks and then spend 1 day sweating my brains out for 30$. Day trading. Back in '82 when interest rates were still in double digits the swissy was trading around 0.30 $ US. When interest rates came off in the US...well I think we know what happened eh? In '87 when the bonds broke 80 and the S&P dropped from 435 friday to 185 by monday afternoon and the fed intervined with unlimited cash support and the bonds closed 8 points higher. What can you do? What else is new here? Nothing.
An assumption...or two. There is a guy who 's job is to make the market. Is he always right? No. Can he loose. sure. And this guy on the other side who makes the numbers change on my screen is acting on the orders he's getting and has developed an idea of how the market is going to perform that day; so he's trading within certain parameters that he believes to be fundamental. After that .he's only processing orders.....for a few pips each way! But at least and to make matters even... HE SEES the orders! How big they are and when they need to be done by. We don't ! What IS he showing us on our screens?
I see patterns.... in the tick patterns that make up the bar charts (like a gypsy reading his tea leaves. My favorites are the camel caravans..but ..), signatures of these different guys at various times during the day. Sometimes I swear that the time zones have completely different signatures. Sort of an art form...creating neat patterns. I mean we all follow them. Our systems are captives of the market makers systems. And the whole propaganda machine that gives us the reasons things are changing. What is it that is lying behind everyones idea of VALUE? And where is this coming from? This is the game as I see it.
I 've concluded you really should only trade on the first friday of every month. At least you have an idea of Why the markets are going crazy. The price action actually occurs within known parameters which everyone is party to. The question of what makes markets move is fundamental to us all.
If I want to sell you something I'm going to sell you what you think you want; I will try to supply you with all the background first because I want you to be fully informed. Why do people living in the city all of sudden start acting like they live in the country by buying Landrovers? HumVees... There is no real answer unless one believes the ad boys who always claim they did it.
What questions do I ask? Who is selling me the Euro I'm buying this morning in the market? Why doesn't he want it anymore? Who's buying the dollars I'm selling when I'm buying the Euro? Are they really selling them to buy swiss francs? What does one do with a swiss franc anyway? Keep it in a swiss Bank? Why is the market taking so long to get to where ever its going? Is the market actually acting like it's going there today, everday? Why is it that a few hours of static price activity is so frustrating ? Is it just our interest in and our willingness to act that make it all possible? What is it about? This predicting the future thing.
I'm thinking about that great book.... popular delusions and mass movement hysteria. Remember the south sea bubble, tulip mania. All the outstanding human endeavors recounted all depended on someone ELSE buying higher. We have tulip mania everyday in the market. IT moves. We don't want to miss out so we get in (long..short..we have our reasons, our systems..our..beliefs). I like the market. I...like the market...can change my direction when I want. I like to play pair/impair sides on the roulette table. It has a time parameter, the wheel stops and you see the result. The ball lands within many number wells on the way to finally landing in one. The market is similar but for the differnce that we choose the number on which the ball will land. Our involvement syncronistically will make the odds worse than 50% or random chance. Is it possible to glimpse where the ball has landed before the wheel stops spinning?

Once upon a time....in the west....best of luck to all!

 

[FOREXHUSKY]

Well kida short story

When i was in army one of my duty boys show me martial arts instructor with trade on side(after duty hours).

I ask hem what to do and where to go and he send me to hes father with was institut. pro trader fror Laurentian bank of Canada and Banco Of Aruba...this man show me channels trades9sup/res bounces,and he show me pivot oportunities).

All rest was my own way.My life as a street racer was enough full of adrenaline but not enough income for new toys(cars,boats) i decide focus my mind on Forex.
And here im after 5 years of trading and initial capital of 25k$ by following my own rules and compound interest i own 2 huge houses and 80feet boat worth togh nice couple miln $ :cheesy: .

I love drive my sl 600 (2004) to "4xmadeeasy" meetings and kill those salesmans by my questions,i think this company hate me and all of them got my picture in wallets lolol

Best is noone belive in my succes until dont see how i live on my web cam.

Im just regural marine boy from street racing ,whith become milion. trading forex.
hard to believe.American Dream lol

Thats my story

 

[Satori]

There are some interesting posts in this thread.

My first experiences of the stock market were through an investment club I started with a few other people. Unfortunately we were dreadful and lost our capital in about 18 months.

Suckers for punishment, we revived the investment club with a new set of rules that would undoubtedly make us succeed where we had previously failed. Alas, we somehow managed to lose our capital again, so we quit for good this time amidst immature mutterings about what a con it all was.

Years passed and, not being one to learn a lesson from two failed outings, I started again on my own one day. Nothing in particular springs to mind as to why I started again when I did, it just seemed like a good idea at the time. However, a good idea that's put into action by a complete buffoon rarely reaps good results and I lost all my capital again.

Not only am I a buffoon though, I'm also a bull-headed buffoon who can't stand failure, so I sold the car, the dog and the wife to raise some more capital and thought I'd have another go. This time, though, I thought I'd read the instructions first. Clearly I had been approaching investing in the same way in which the sterotypical male constructs a flat-packed coffee table: struggle for 5 hours with the wrong tools, cobble together some wobbly bits of wood, saw a few legs off for good measure, wonder why there are three important looking left over pieces and only then read the instructions.

So I started to learn. The first thing I did was take the capital I'd raised and put most of it in the bank, keeping back only a small amount to experiment with. And experiment I did. I discovered that I'd made virtually all the classic mistakes one makes and a few home-grown mistakes too. I still made more mistakes - becoming obsessed with every technical indicator and generally overcomplicating things too much - but at least now I was money-managing and, in retrospect, lack of that was my biggest mistake in all the previous outings. This time though, I hadn't lost my capital so I gradually added more to it and began to see it grow, albeit slowly at first.

This went on for a few years and I found I was beginning to get the hang of things a bit, so I quit my job to spend more time on it. Now it makes me a living, which is really all I ever wanted it to do. I'm not the most skilled of investors so it may never make me truly rich, but who knows? I've still got lots to learn and maybe I'll make it big one day.

I always bear in mind that, although I consider myself to be reasonably intelligent in many areas, when it comes to investing I am a complete buffoon. Remembering this keeps me disciplined and on my toes.