Change at the Top

After more than ten years at the helm of Trade2Win I’ve decided to step aside to give someone new the opportunity to bring a fresh focus to the site. I’ll remain the owner of Trade2Win and on hand to help where I can, but I’ll be handing over the day-to-day management to a new pair of hands.

Since launching in 2001, Trade2Win has grown significantly and far beyond my expectations. It’s been an epic journey. There are a lot of things I did right and, in hindsight, a fair number I did wrong; but one thing that’s remained constant is my commitment to Trade2Win and the interests of the community.

Finding a successor has been a tough job.

Today I’m pleased to announce that the search is over. It gives me great pleasure to welcome to the team, Steve Anderton.

I firmly believe Steve possesses a unique mix of experience and skills that make him the ideal candidate for the job.

First off, and most importantly, he’s got a passion for trading. He’s traded actively from home for over twelve years and still remains an active trader to this day.

Secondly, Steve has extensive business experience, which will no doubt serve him well as he grapples with the many challenges the job will bring. Also, as a local Magistrate, he knows the difference between right and wrong. He’s used to hearing out the arguments and determining what’s fair and just.

Thirdly, and perhaps the best qualifier for the job, he’s already had experience running a trading community. Steve, along with his son Rob, founded a small but passionate trading forum called Tactical Trader during his early days as a trader. He understands it’s a tough job.

I’ve given Steve a free hand to review everything we do and work with, everyone involved to come up with the best ways to move Trade2Win forward. Steve will be making his own introduction soon and will no doubt be telling you how to get in touch, I know he’d love to hear from you.

Finally, I want to take this opportunity to thank each and every member of Trade2Win who has contributed to the site. I especially want to praise the moderators and staff, past and present. Without your tireless efforts we would never have got this far.

Good trading to you all.

Paul.

Good luck, Sharky

Welcome Steve (and good luck too! It's a jungle out here!)

Peter

Good luck Sharky.

So - when do we meet the new guy?

DionysusToast said:

Good luck Sharky.

So - when do we meet the new guy?

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Thanks for the good wishes Peter, and the jungle warning!

DT, I am just putting together my 'introduction' post and i'll get this on sometime this afternoon.

Steve

There I was, looking at my latest positions and thinking there must be easier ways to make a living, and up pops an email from this fellow Paul Gould. I last saw Paul back in 2004 and he had made contact with one of my sons (he runs an IT firm and Paul found the website) to find out what I was up to nowadays.

As you would expect I was intrigued why someone from so long ago was looking for me. I knew I did not owe him money so felt very safe making contact, that’s when all of this started.

He told me all about what had happened with Trade2Win over the years (and I have since read a great deal of it) and how he was looking for someone to take over the management of the whole thing. The priority was clearly the community and everything connected with it, where there is a need for a considerable amount of work.

With my trading, some management consulting work and my duties as a Magistrate I had not really thought about doing anything extra. Despite this, I was hooked. I love a challenge and to find one linked with my day-to-day job made this an unusual opportunity. I was also very disappointed when we had to close Tactical Trader (a long story that I’ll be happy to share at some point) so in some ways this gave me an opportunity to almost carry on where we left off, albeit many years later!

So in the end it really was too good a chance to miss so I agreed to join the team. My official handover was only yesterday but I have been around for a short while in the background, reading, absorbing, watching and asking questions so that I could make the best possible start.

So here I am, at the bottom of a mountain that has to be climbed. There’s a huge amount of work to do in a whole number of areas and there is no doubt that this will mean some changes. Some of these will not come as any surprise, especially as many of you have asked for them either through feedback or postings you have made.

What you can be sure of is that I’ll not be making changes for changes sake and I’ll do my best to keep you all involved through regular and clear communication. I’ll also be asking for your help and advice as we go along so it will be your chance to shape some of the things that we will be doing.

Keep in mind that I can’t do it all at once. There will be priorities and they will get dealt with first, once again I’ll keep you posted as to what these are as they become clear (some are pretty clear already!)

Finally you can be sure that I’ll be here and will be happy to answer your questions and hear your feedback. As you would expect, my working hours will be pretty fluid so if I am not around at the time you make contact you can be certain that I will get back to you. Being frank and transparent in my actions has been a guiding principle throughout my career and it will be no different here, so you may not always like what I have to say but you will always know why I am saying it.

So keep in touch by emailing me at [email protected].

In the meantime I very much look forward to making Trade2Win a great place to be and to developing the site for your benefit.

Steve said:

Thanks for the good wishes Peter, and the jungle warning!

DT, I am just putting together my 'introduction' post and i'll get this on sometime this afternoon.

Steve

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Good Luck Paul and welcome Steve

Cheers wackypete2, DionysusToast and Lord Flasheart.

We've spent a fair amount of time preparing for this handover and over that period I've come to admire Steve's work ethic and his ability to get the job done. It's a big relief to know the site's in good hands.

I'd encourage all members to take up Steve's offer of getting in touch. If you really want to see change for the good then now's your chance to make it happen.

Good luck Steve!

Hi Steve, and welcome.

Now down to business. What everyone wants to know is what is your policy on lulz and further to this, do you think Teh Scose is trolling?

I had stopped posting and has resolved not to begin again, but since you've invited questions this looks like an opportunity to have some interesting discussions.

First, hello Steve, and welcome to your new role. As perhaps you will agree, there are a number of challenges that face you and I'm sure you are keen to get started. Possibly the greatest of these are the thorny vendor matter and the alleged decline in content standards.

A quick question first if you don't mind:

Sharky spoke of your extensive trading experience, but doubtless due to a perfectly understandable oversight left out the question of your success or otherwise. Can you tell us whether you are profitable or not, and if so is trading your primary source of income? Or to put it another way, are you a professional trader? I should say this is asked not merely from idle curiosity, and I do hope that you understand why members would be interested in this information.

I would also like to sound you out on an area that has recently caused some controversy, perhaps drawing upon your experience as a magistrate, and see if you have formulated an approach in your new role as T2W boss should the situation arise again.

There have been allegations that certain vendors have made false claims in their marketing in order to convince potential customers of their expertise and prowess, thereby making it more likely that those customers will be converted from potential to actual by forking over sheets in return for the said vendors' products and services.

Put simply, it has been alleged that untruths have been told in order to get people to part with their money.

In your view, as a magistrate, is this (or is this likely to be) fraud? I would be interested in your views both legal and ethical.

To give an example, let us say I am a vendor. I claim to make my living from trading (in order to convince potential customers that I can do what I teach), but in fact this is not true and I make my living not from trading - because I can't - but rather from taking money off people in return for teaching them alleged trading skills. I have told them a lie in order to get them to part with their money, and of course it is a lie of great import. If I said to potential customers "I cannot trade - pay me to teach you how to trade" I would receive very few enquiries, I think.

So am I in this instance committing fraud in your opinion? Is what I am doing wrong according to your personal ethical standards?

I wish to conclude by apologising for the length of my post (like Pascal, had I the time I would have made it shorter) and welcoming you once again to your new role.

I look forward with interest to your reply, because of course it potentially gives rise to a number of interesting questions, as I'm sure you'll agree.

scose-no-doubt said:

Hi Steve, and welcome.

Now down to business. What everyone wants to know is what is your policy on lulz and further to this, do you think Teh Scose is trolling?

Click to expand...

I pity the fool that insult Teh Scose by sayin he a troll when I'm around.

The Leopard said:

I had stopped posting and has resolved not to begin again, but since you've invited questions this looks like an opportunity to have some interesting discussions which might make me rethink my decision (which did sadden me somewhat).

First, hello Steve, and welcome to your new role. As perhaps you will agree, there are a number of challenges that face you and I'm sure you are keen to get started. Possibly the greatest of these are the thorny vendor matter and the alleged decline in content standards.

A quick question first if you don't mind:

Sharky spoke of your extensive trading experience, but doubtless due to a perfectly understandable oversight left out the question of your success or otherwise. Can you tell us whether you are profitable or not, and if so is trading your primary source of income? Or to put it another way, are you a professional trader? I should say this is asked not merely from idle curiosity, and I do hope that you understand why members would be interested in this information.

I would also like to sound you out on an area that has recently caused some controversy, perhaps drawing upon your experience as a magistrate, and see if you have formulated an approach in your new role as T2W boss should the situation arise again.

There have been allegations that certain vendors have made false claims in their marketing in order to convince potential customers of their expertise and prowess, thereby making it more likely that those customers will be converted from potential to actual by forking over sheets in return for the said vendors' products and services.

Put simply, it has been alleged that untruths have been told in order to get people to part with their money.

In your view, as a magistrate, is this (or is this likely to be) to be fraud? I would be interested in your views both legal and moral.

To give an example, let us say I am a vendor. I claim to make my living from trading (in order to convince potential customers that I can do what I teach), but in fact this is not true and I make my living not from trading - because I can't - but rather from taking money off people in return for teaching them alleged trading skills. I have told them a lie in order to get them to part with their money, and of course it is a lie of great import. If I said to potential customers "I cannot trade - pay me to teach you how to trade" I would receive very few enquiries, I think.

So am I in this instance committing fraud in your opinion? Is what I am doing wrong according to your personal ethical standards?

I wish to conclude by apologising for the length of my post (like Pascal, had I the time I would have made it shorter) and welcoming you once again to your new role.

I look forward with interest to your reply, because of course it potentially gives rise to a number of interesting questions, as I'm sure you'll agree.

Click to expand...

re re the "extensive trading experience" there's a thread here with a linked ft article from back in the day.

“I reckon I work about four hours a day, four days a week,” says Steve Anderton, who last year made £60,000 as a day trader using spread betting.

Click to expand...

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/tra...aturdays-ft-article-about-steve-anderton.html

Lightning McQueen said:

re re the "extensive trading experience" there's a thread here with a linked ft article from back in the day.



http://www.trade2win.com/boards/tra...aturdays-ft-article-about-steve-anderton.html

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That's interesting LM.

I'm sure many members will enjoy reading that article.

"He supplements his trading income by giving day-long training sessions to would-be spread betters,"

Steve, do you still sell training? I'm sure the membership would be interested to know and of course, if you can show some proof of profitability then I'd imagine there's quite a few that would be interested in purchasing training.

Oh FFS, I suppose you're going to tell me he's an Australian as well.

He's an author too it seems.

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/first-steps/96922-dma-level-2-book.html

Now's the time to give some more detailed background about my early days and in particular the FT article and training services.

Most of my working life has been spent in operational management (with spells in retailing, manufacturing and financial services) with a very strong bias toward training and development. I was always worried that spending too long in any training job would leave me unable to practice what I preached so my whole career so I tended to move backwards and forwards between the two every few years.

My last salaried job was as National Sales Manager for Winterthur Life. Back in the early 90's regulation was really starting to have an impact on insurance firms, dramatically increasing the costs of running a salesforce. In line with many other businesses at the time, our Swiss parent decided that the costs were to prohibitive so me and my entire team were made redundant.

Over the years I had often thought of running my own consulting practice but two growing boys and a large mortgage usually made me think twice. The redundancy gave me the kick and the modest pay off (I was only there six years) gave me a cushion of a few months so I bit the bullet and went on my own from 1st April 1993.

For the next seven years I worked flat out, I was rarely at home and travelled many thousands of miles a year and loved every minute of it. I built the business to be one of the three main players in my field at the time and I was very proud of what I had accomplished.

But, all good things come to an end and by the start of the new century I was looking for something else to do. I didn't want to give up my practice completely but wanted considerably reduce the number of miles and hotel rooms.

While I was giving a great deal of thought to what I could do, my wife heard an interview on the radio where a Building Society Clerk (as they used to call them) had learned how to trade the financial markets. Apparently it was really interesting and she made a few quid as well.

For some reason my wife thought it would suit me so I decided to find out more.

This is the moment it all started.

I have just realised this post is getting a bit long so i'll do a part 2 a bit later on - it's hard work re-living all these memories!

Sorry Leopard, I meant to say that I will deal with all the points in your post once I have given them some thought.

My background – part 2


Because I was still busy with other work that paid the bills I was fortunate to be able to spend a great deal of time researching how this trading thing worked and the kind of things that were out there. It wasn’t easy, the picture at the start of the decade was very different to what we have now, even T2W had not been born when I was looking for help and guidance and there was very little on the internet in those days that wasn’t from the US. Come to think of it, there wasn't much of anything on the internet back then.

To cut a very long story short I ended up paying £3000 to someone to teach me the ropes. I travelled up to a pretty grotty hotel in Scotland and spent two weeks with a bunch of other newcomers learning how to trade DAX futures. The basic approach of the person running the course was to go through page after page of retrospective charts looking at what had happened and how things could have been different. I can hear you all screaming from here about how stupid this was but keep in mind we were all new and did not know any different.

So after the course I was ready. I had read all the recommended books and developed my approach so there was nothing left to do but make it happen.

It seems funny looking back but I remember going to see MAN Financial and almost begging them to let me have an account (the course was all about direct access, spread betting wasn’t even mentioned). I can’t remember the exact numbers but I know I had to deposit a large sum of margin money with them and the commissions each way were outrageous by today’s standards. That didn’t matter of course because of all the money I was going to make.

Next thing was to get the data. I chose E-Signal and had to have it by satellite because of where we lived. This meant having the biggest (and dearest) dish I have ever seen installed on the side of our house.

So that was it,fully trained, connected and money deposited with the broker, there was nothing stopping me now.

Except for one thing. I was completely unprepared for the psychological impact of having real money in the market and seeing a trade go against me. Yes I had read it in the books but no amount of reading could have prepared me for the horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach when things were not in my favour.

So I did the predictable thing and let my losses ride while taking profits on my winners far too soon. It was a salutary lesson. And I have to say that it was pretty demoralising having been naïve enough to believe it would all be very straightforward.

So it was back to the drawing board.

More to come in part 3! I have to get on with something else for a while but I’ll definitely finish the story tonight, though you are probably bored silly by now.

Steve said:

My background – part 2


Because I was still busy with other work that paid the bills I was fortunate to be able to spend a great deal of time researching how this trading thing worked and the kind of things that were out there. It wasn’t easy, the picture at the start of the decade was very different to what we have now, even T2W had not been born when I was looking for help and guidance and there was very little on the internet in those days that wasn’t from the US. Come to think of it, there wasn't much of anything on the internet back then.

To cut a very long story short I ended up paying £3000 to someone to teach me the ropes. I travelled up to a pretty grotty hotel in Scotland and spent two weeks with a bunch of other newcomers learning how to trade DAX futures. The basic approach of the person running the course was to go through page after page of retrospective charts looking at what had happened and how things could have been different. I can hear you all screaming from here about how stupid this was but keep in mind we were all new and did not know any different.

So after the course I was ready. I had read all the recommended books and developed my approach so there was nothing left to do but make it happen.

It seems funny looking back but I remember going to see MAN Financial and almost begging them to let me have an account (the course was all about direct access, spread betting wasn’t even mentioned). I can’t remember the exact numbers but I know I had to deposit a large sum of margin money with them and the commissions each way were outrageous by today’s standards. That didn’t matter of course because of all the money I was going to make.

Next thing was to get the data. I chose E-Signal and had to have it by satellite because of where we lived. This meant having the biggest (and dearest) dish I have ever seen installed on the side of our house.

So that was it,fully trained, connected and money deposited with the broker, there was nothing stopping me now.

Except for one thing. I was completely unprepared for the psychological impact of having real money in the market and seeing a trade go against me. Yes I had read it in the books but no amount of reading could have prepared me for the horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach when things were not in my favour.

So I did the predictable thing and let my losses ride while taking profits on my winners far too soon. It was a salutary lesson. And I have to say that it was pretty demoralising having been naïve enough to believe it would all be very straightforward.

So it was back to the drawing board.

More to come in part 3! I have to get on with something else for a while but I’ll definitely finish the story tonight, though you are probably bored silly by now.

Click to expand...

Absolutely not.
This should be required reading for any wannabe traders.

My background – part 3

So my glittering new career is in tatters, all that money on training, books, satellite dish (it wouldn’t even pick up Sky!) data feed and countless other things and for what? A declining bank balance.

I’ll cut the next bit short otherwise I’ll be onto part 15 and it will be the early hours of the morning. Bottom line is I had to pick myself up and start over. When I had stopped feeling sorry for myself I realised that I had learned some valuable lessons and at least I had done it for real rather than just thought about it.

One thing that hit me like a ton of bricks was so obvious that I don’t know how I missed it. For years I had been in business yet it never occurred to me to treat my trading like a business. This was the turning point. There was nothing wrong with my chosen vehicle (DAX) or my set up, it was my thinking that was wrong and the fact that I had not developed robust money management rules or developed a business plan with clear milestones and earnings targets.

So instead of starting at the wrong end (the individual trade), I figured out how much money a year I wanted to make. I treated this very simply as a salary, if I was doing my other stuff instead of trading what could I expect to earn? This was my starting point. I then netted this back to number of trades per day allowing for winners and losers, the various elements of my planning were developed based on a number of the books I read at the time (I think Van Tharp was one of them but it is a while ago!)

It was around this time that Spread Betting was really gaining ground and I decided to try it in parallel with the direct access trading from MAN having attended a number of those 'no obligation' evening tutorials. Finally I started to make progress. Because I had done the numbers it eased the pressure when in a position considerably. So I was making money and earning what I wanted to earn and that was enough for now.

My new found freedom allowed me to spend time looking at lots of other trading methods and instruments and I probably dabbled with all of them at one time or another, always comparing the results with my bread and butter earner, the DAX.

Around this time my eldest son (Robert) had left his job and was looking for the next thing to do. He was still at home at the time and was well aware of my trials and tribulations as a trader, quietly he was hooked. He was particularly interested in the computing angle (that’s his job) and had already spent some time working on the IT systems of a trading floor in the City. This was great news for me as I had no idea about how best to use the computer in this way. There were a number of predictive software packages around at the time so it seemed to me that there must be something in it.

In addition, Rob was keen to set up a forum for traders and at the same time I decided to start and offer some training based on my own experiences.

The end result was that we set up Tactical Trader and moved out of the house into some offices. The idea was that we would both trade but in parallel he would develop the forum and the software and I would develop the educational side of things.

I should make it very clear at this stage that the software was always going to remain ours. We did not intend to sell it and we never made any attempt to do so. Rob spent many hours, days and weeks thoroughly examining what was out there, testing many of the accepted rules rigorously against real trading data before coming up with something that helped us in our daily market time. To this day I have not shared the details of this with anyone else – the point has been made often enough in the forums on T2W – if you have an edge then why not make money from it rather than sell it and diminish its effectiveness.

I realise that there are many people here on T2W who just can’t understand why someone who trades wants to teach. For me it was pretty simple, I love training, I always have and I never wanted to (and still don’t) spend all day glued to an array of monitors.

In addition I was appalled by what I had seen over the years masquerading as genuine help. Like many people I would visit things like the IX Expo and see the starry eyed audiences being taken in by absolute drivel and sometimes, completely misleading information.

So I decided to develop something for newcomers. A summary of what I had learned starting from the beginning and hopefully short circuiting them through the process so that they were ready to start trading with their eyes open.

Primarily these were 1:1 sessions (the most I did was three) with the morning spent talking through the necessaries and the afternoon doing a variety of real time trading. I didn’t do very many of these but they seemed to work well and the people who came along (who decided to continue trading) did report good progress. I can’t say for sure about the longer term gains because these are hard to prove (or disprove) but I know for sure I did everything I could to teach them well and did so ethically and professionally.

In parallel with this, Tactical Trader was doing well (it would have done even better if that Trade2Win lot had not got such a head start!) and providing useful support for those I had worked with. We had our ups and downs once the ego’s started to clash but all in all it was a worthwhile thing to be doing.

Once again, I’ll speed things up a bit here. By 2004 we were both trading profitably, I was doing my 1:1 training, we were running Tactical Trader and Rob was developing and refining his automated approaches.

This brings me neatly to the article and I’ll start the final part there.

More in a short while.

Steve how much did you charge for the trading courses and 1-1. Thanks