Trading for a Living
What type of person would want to trade for a living? Where do they get such an idea? How do they learn? Is it risky? How much do they make?
It is very difficult for anyone to consistently beat the markets. This is a big problem for professional money managers and amateurs alike. However, the professionals still manage to get paid for their failure, taking even more money from your life savings. I once worked for a large fund management company and part of my job was to calculate the bonuses for the fund managers and their teams. I can tell you, the money they take from your funds is huge…
I am a speculator. If I get it right I win, if I don’t I have to pay. I use my own judgement, and I use my own money not other peoples’ monies. Nobody bales me out, if I get the market totally wrong for a period, I cannot switch it into a “toxic debt” account and carry on as before.
There are two schools of thought on how you should try to maximise your returns from the stock market:
- Invest your money and forget about it, hoping that when you need it the value of your fund will be bigger than what you initially put in. This is called buy-and-hold and it is favoured by most everyone with a vested interest in keeping their hands on your money.
- Try to jump in and out of different investments, dodging bullets, but incurring high costs and, possibly, taxes. This called stock-picking and it is great fun but very difficult, taking up a lot of time and a lot of luck.
If you are reading this – then you might be starting down the same path I once took many years ago. A path that many others have taken. Those of us who are trading for a living have many different personalities, strategies, and goals. But we have one thing in common: We all want to make money.
Wait! There are plenty of ways to make good money… right? Not exactly. The problem is simple – the high paying professions are simply out of reach. Most of us don’t have the time, money, or family connections to become a doctor, lawyer, or CEO. But becoming a trader doesn’t require 8 years of school and hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition.
In terms of time and money, compared to most professions, it doesn’t require much.
But don’t be mistaken… even though the life of a trader is much more accessible than that of a CEO, it is by no means a cakewalk. Trading for a living requires serious mental focus, patience, and a positive attitude. It may sound silly, but the biggest trades of my life weren’t made until I overcame mental blocks. But more on that later…
If you put in the effort and get the right training, you can and will have your breakthrough.
Unfortunately for me, it didn’t begin so easily. I had no real mentor and no real guidance from any source, on or off the web. And to this day when I look around the internet I see ugly websites from 1998 that have apparently never been updated. And most of them are trying to sell tutoring programs that cost thousands of dollars. This is why I created this site.
The world of trading is a very broad subject with no shortage of books, websites, forums, software, tools, etc. There is a lot of good info out there but also a lot of crap. Only a small percentage of it has helped me make money. My goal here is to sift through the dirt and pull out only the brightest golden nuggets of knowledge. As you browse through this site, you will find a small pile of incredibly powerful tips, tools, and strategies that I have hand selected. Study them carefully!
(sugar free for the win)
So bookmark this webpage, grab a coffee or red bull, and start playing your rock and roll theme song in your head- its time to get started!
