I forgot to ask last time, I sense an interesting story there,
how did you go from packing fags (student job?) to earning 6k a month with SB?
Not questioning you, I believe you, just genuinely interested.
Completely understand if you would rather not say.
No mate you fire away.
Here's the story (for which you'll find some parts involved with what we were discussing):
Started paper trading at 13 (1991)
Parent account at 17 (Father stood as guarantor and signatory as 18 is legal age) (1995)
Own account at 18(1996)
NOTE: I was trading shares outright / no leverage. T-14. 14 day account payment with £250k buying power on trust of payment and a temporary overdraft facility for clearance of £20k.
Started buying houses at 18/19 (1997 1st property 2 bed terrace) and built up slowly over 8 years. During my late teens I was considered extremely rich by my friends standards (for which I had many) as I had a stock portfolio worth 10's of thousands and several properties. They laughed as I used to get around by push bike a lot. Here's the thing, I was rich on paper - you know the story here. Plus I could drink and ride with no problem of losing my licence.
During this time the mortgages were being mainly paid by the rental income (plus a large float for disasters - 6 month survival fund) plus the portfolio was handing out dividends plus capital. But, I didn't have anything stable and the 9/11 incident caught me out and hurt financially, To be honest the portfolio was failing prior to this event. It was at this time I then worked in a warehouse stacking fags in boxes to a make stable money, I had a lot of time on my hands as most of my good friends worked. I didn't stick it for long and was there long over due to the point where I no longer cared and eventually walked out one day and never went back, I didn't care to hand in notice and all that, there was simply no need as the wages were no where near what I had accumulated by the properties, the stock portfolio (which recovered greatly over the ensuing months but with less stock as some was sold off), and my personal bank account. I finally caved in, said to my friends I was leaving (they thought I was joking), left my table and boxes and went. It was summer time and around mid day, I went to my local pub, got drunk and waited for my friends to come down after they had finished work. I then had some more drinks and a ham and cheese toastie if I recall then went to the local night clubs. I Never looked back.
It wasn't until around 2002/4 that I fully converted to spreadbetting. For many reasons I didn't change all my contracts over to speadbetting, for one I knew very little about this seemingly new thing and knew even less about leverage and the damage it can cause.
I was going through all my old paperwork earlier today to find some contracts of open and closed positions from back then. This was when trading was done by telephone and teletext was a great thing. Also financial public documents were sent via post in hard copy, yep, a real book. I still have the contracts somewhere as I never throw anything business related out. It even includes my div payments. Would be good to post a screenshot of some of them in my journal but so far I haven't spent long enough to find them, there in the attic somewhere.
For the timeline I am 35 years old now. 36 in December.
Lee
