A Tale Of A New Trader...

[staray22]

I am always curious in hearing stories about how you started trading and why so I thought I would make a place on this site where we can all post our stories of becoming a new trader.

My story is quite simple-- I got laid off of my full time job of 22 years and thought I could turn to trading for easy income. I obviously learned that I could not get easy money from the markets but I am starting to really learn what I am doing and I hope that someday I will be a profitable trader.

[Brendan Egan]

Hey Staray22,
I'm sorry to hear that you got laid off--unfortunately it seems like that is one of the main reasons people start trading.

I think this is a great idea to have a spot for everyone to explain why they started trading, so here is my story:

I think my story for why I got involved in trading is pretty similar to a lot of others out there. I began trading in August of 2008. Before this, I worked a few normal 9-5 type corporate jobs and was really just getting burnt out. These were the jobs that I'm sure many of you are all too familiar with--working hard for little pay and little recognition.

Well, one night I was watching the news and hearing about how the stock market had declined substantially--the Dow Jones was around 11,000 which was far from its high around 14,000. They were showing investors and traders pulling their hair out over the money they had lost. I remember thinking to myself "...is trading full time really that difficult? Nah-it can't be! I'm going to give it a try..."

So the next day I went online in search of the least expensive online broker out there--after all I figured I should keep my costs down, right? I started trading with Zecco which was a newer site at the time but everyone on CNBC was talking about it so I figured it must be great. I funded my account with about $10,000. Then I placed a few of my first trades as a full time trader.

I knew nothing about trading, investing, indicators, markets, psychology, money management, risk:reward---none of that stuff. Sure I had been trading money on and off for a few years prior to this, but I was simply watching the "hot" stocks and I wouldn't really call this trading using analysis. I was just looking at a chart and making some trades. Back then I was trading Ford, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and a few other banking stocks that were popular at the time. My first month as a trader I made around $5,000.

I then turned to trading as a source of income and decided it was time to improve so I could make more money. I purchased a fancy computer, 4 screens, switched to a direct access broker, funded my account with over $25,000, and thought I was ready to go. Boy oh boy was I wrong.

From here I guess my luck began to run out--and after spending most of my profits from the prior months I went into a panic. Now I was dealing with the psychological issues that come with trading--the fear of entering trades, the hesitation that caused me to miss big moves, ignoring my stop losses. All the pitfalls that were slowly pushing me into the category of the "90% of traders who fail".

I was determined to end this vicious cycle, and luckily around this same time of December 2008 I met my trading mentors. Now, my mentors told me to ditch my indicator friends, to learn about psychology, study price and volume, and to trust them. Well, I didn't take their advise at first and I continued to lose some more of my money.

I finally reached a point where my account was about to be blown out and I would need to go back to the regular 9-5 job. I figured I should just give their ideology a shot after all I really didn't have much else to lose. While it wasn't an instant transformation, I must say that their ideology and methods dramatically improved my trading and helped me build my account size back up.

Today, I still trade however I spend the majority of my time working with newer and intermediate traders and teaching them how to trade. I feel I have developed not only the skills to trade, but more importantly for you I have the experience and understanding necessary to be an effective teacher. I now completely understand my trading methodology and have no trouble analyzing any position in any market on any timeframe.

I also am a full time college student studying at the University of Illinois' Chicago campus and working on degrees in Finance and Economics. This has given me a unique edge over other traders because I have a deep core understanding of markets and how they work which I am able to apply to my trading on a daily basis.

My reason for sharing this story is because I really want to help newer traders succeed, much like my mentors helped me succeed when I was down in a trading ditch. With all this being said I encourage anyone in a similar situation to what I was in to reach out for help through 123LearnToTrade.com, through our live coaching, forums, webinars and courses. One of my main goals on this website is to keep high quality trading education affordable for those struggling to keep their trading account funded and stay on their feet.

[Tomross58]

Well , I too was laid off from work and although I did some investing on my own in the 90's I never pursued trading as a full time job. Being in construction for 30 years and climbing ladders and scaffolds I was looking for something else to do but didnt know what. I always had the interest and slowly picked up things and when I was out of work I started to really dive into learning. I am in my first year (9 months ) of live trading and will never stop learning. I suffer from many of the things first year traders work through and slowly am building confidence and getting over the "fear factor" . I did have a mentor at first that introduced me to many of the aspects of trading but not so much the emotional. This site and course has been a help to me to not over complicate matters. I dont think there is a tool or indicator out there that can come close to telling you what price action can tell you. I look forward to what Brenden will bring about as far as webinars or other teaching programs that can help me to trade better. Keep up the good work

Tom

[cauyeung]

Well... some where during my sophomore year of college, I feel like I wasn't really learning anything. I felt like school was a huge waste of time, maybe thats just me. So, I figure I had to specialize in something broad and practical to differentiate from everyone else. Yep, stock market was the first thing that came to my mind. I was lucky to run into a blog of a very successful penny stocker. At first i was real skeptical about it, as I read more into the blog i found this guy to be honest in what he does (very interesting too). I learned a great load from him in many perspective. After months of studying and research I've finally felt it was time to get into the game, actually it was just about a month ago. Ya.. just started off with a small small small account. Well... here I am with several strings of winning trades follow by several losing trade, overall positive. However, the sample size of my trade isn't large enough to determine anything yet.

[staray22]

Thanks for replying guys! I hope we can keep this discussion open because I really enjoy hearing stories of how everyone got started!!