Trading Financial Markets

The journal that follows is dedicated to my beautiful and wonderful wife who has put up with, and supported me through all the years of my education and development as a trader. May she be forever blessed by my continued success.

Inspired by all the day-trading hype of the late nineties and because it looked easy, I jumped into trading stocks. Through my impeccable timing, my promising long positions blew out much of my account as the year 2000 saw the end of the big bull run. The clear solution - switch to options and futures, because I could more easily take either side of the market, and the extra leverage kept me engaged with what I had left. That brought more of the same pain, only bigger and faster losses. Determined to succeed, I resorted to more research, following the advice of others, trading rooms, seminars and books on technique and psycology, etc. Along the way, even a few con artists caught my attention. Stubborn to continue, and after several years listening to some real honest and experienced traders, I managed to actually learn something.

I learned that trading would be the most difficult thing I'd ever attempt. It must be approached it as if training for a highly specialized career. I faced grueling months of studying and testing, years of education, tuition costs, and loads of frustration. Success was painfully slow and marginal because there's an additional issue. In trading we aren't graded on a curve. Even if I do better than 95% of other traders doesn't mean I pass. Odds still favor a failing grade. Losing less than my peers won't suffice because I'm not trading just for fun - I want to make a profit. I compete with institutional fund managers with super computers, a staff of market gurus, and programmers, direct access to exchanges, and the capital of many others. And if things weren't already difficult - now very sophisticated high frequency computerized trading is a new and growing issue that didn't exist until just a few years ago. And with big banks recently messing up the economy, now we have the SEC, CFTC, Fed, and other government agencies doing their best to regulate me out of business. The odds against us - individual traders - are monumental.

So if you expect or hope that this will be easy, I suggest you quit now, find a different passion, and save yourself much grief and money. On the other hand, success is possible if you are willing to put in the effort. My journal that follows is a reflection of my trading that sustains me and keeps me on track. I enjoy talking about financial markets, economics, and sailing . . . if you want to discuss either, e-mail me - here

Good trading - Dave