There are many stages everyone seems to go through on their way to becoming a successful trader, not always necessarily in the same order but generally not too varied, and a trading journal seems to be one of those stages. "
The main objective of this journal is to help me develop and mature as a trader, and instil a little more discipline into my trading.
Background
I’m a Kiwi and started playing round on the stock market many years ago while still at school. It was the early 80’s and I did pretty well. A few years later I was working as a futures broker and doing well for my clients (and myself) – we used paper charts with a few trendlines, not much more, but didn’t really need to as everything was going up. Then in May ’87, things got ugly. I learnt what margin call really was and saw a lot of successful people lose a lot, including their boats and other toys. Things started to rally a little, and we were introduced to a new computer programme (I believed it was called FutureSource) but many people had been burnt. And when I started losing money for my clients (which is logical now I look back because before that I had only known a strong trending market) I got out. We all know what happened later that year, in October – there were many stories of people who lost much more than their toys. Although there would also have been many people who went short and literally made millions.
There were also traders in the middle of all this. The profound psychological impact on these traders still astounds me even today. I saw how intelligent, confident whizz kids aged 10 years overnight and became shells of their former selves – we were all so young - and to this day I believe some may never have really recovered. Many of the older guys (what was old for me then - 40, 50?) who I would occasionally see on the street in following years, never had another decent job again, and I knew one who ended up living on the streets, an alcoholic, dying some years later.
Regardless of all this, and probably i) because I got out before the really big crash, and ii) I realized how much I could have gained if only I had been on the other side of the market, I was hooked on derivatives and leveraged markets.
At the start of the last decade, with internet now a household phenomenon, I found the online casinos. I started out losing, time after time, but learned much (not to use martingale style betting was inevitably one of the first ), and went on to create some winning systems, building up small accounts in many casinos only to see them start losing as I increased my bet size. I would take out my winnings, and move to the next casino, where the same thing happened. So I tried live casinos, but I soon saw it wasn’t anywhere as glamorous as the movies. And even though I often came out winning, when you spend several consecutive days for hours on end only to break even (or even lose some days), rest assured you are cured of thinking gambling is an exciting way to make a living. Even winning, the depressive nature of the casino itself got to me.
And then I found Forex…..
The main objective of this journal is to help me develop and mature as a trader, and instil a little more discipline into my trading.
Background
I’m a Kiwi and started playing round on the stock market many years ago while still at school. It was the early 80’s and I did pretty well. A few years later I was working as a futures broker and doing well for my clients (and myself) – we used paper charts with a few trendlines, not much more, but didn’t really need to as everything was going up. Then in May ’87, things got ugly. I learnt what margin call really was and saw a lot of successful people lose a lot, including their boats and other toys. Things started to rally a little, and we were introduced to a new computer programme (I believed it was called FutureSource) but many people had been burnt. And when I started losing money for my clients (which is logical now I look back because before that I had only known a strong trending market) I got out. We all know what happened later that year, in October – there were many stories of people who lost much more than their toys. Although there would also have been many people who went short and literally made millions.
There were also traders in the middle of all this. The profound psychological impact on these traders still astounds me even today. I saw how intelligent, confident whizz kids aged 10 years overnight and became shells of their former selves – we were all so young - and to this day I believe some may never have really recovered. Many of the older guys (what was old for me then - 40, 50?) who I would occasionally see on the street in following years, never had another decent job again, and I knew one who ended up living on the streets, an alcoholic, dying some years later.
Regardless of all this, and probably i) because I got out before the really big crash, and ii) I realized how much I could have gained if only I had been on the other side of the market, I was hooked on derivatives and leveraged markets.
At the start of the last decade, with internet now a household phenomenon, I found the online casinos. I started out losing, time after time, but learned much (not to use martingale style betting was inevitably one of the first ), and went on to create some winning systems, building up small accounts in many casinos only to see them start losing as I increased my bet size. I would take out my winnings, and move to the next casino, where the same thing happened. So I tried live casinos, but I soon saw it wasn’t anywhere as glamorous as the movies. And even though I often came out winning, when you spend several consecutive days for hours on end only to break even (or even lose some days), rest assured you are cured of thinking gambling is an exciting way to make a living. Even winning, the depressive nature of the casino itself got to me.
And then I found Forex…..
Return on Equity: 2017, 32.4%; 2018; 8.0%, 2019 (30Apr), 4.5%