Steve
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My background – the final part
By the time the article came out I was becoming quite well known, mainly through word of mouth and networking because I was too mean to pay for fancy stuff like PR. I was a regular contributor to a couple of columns, one in a weekly paper called Asian Voice, the other I can’t remember. I was asked to speak at various conferences and I was also invited to author a couple of books. One of these was on Level 2, the other a trading book primarily aimed at newcomers.
I spent hour after hour writing the Level 2 book and it took much longer than it should have as I was still doing my ‘day job’ as a trader, although we were focusing more and more on position rather than day trades by now so the pressure was eased somewhat.
After many, many months it was finally finished and I was very proud of it.
The publisher hated it.
There ended my writing career.
So, lets deal with that awful FT article before I close the tale by bringing it up to date.
I was approached by a contact at a spread betting firm who had been asked by the journalist to recommend someone who could be profiled as a successful ‘amateur’ trader. I must admit that I was quite excited at getting my 15 minutes of fame especially as I thought it might help boost the TT membership.
This was when I learned all about journalistic licence and I have regretted it ever since.
I’m not going to go through the article bit by bit as it was 8 years ago and don’t forget as I pointed out in my introduction the other day, until Paul G made contact it was very much in the past. Instead I have tried to show you the context of my work at the time so you can draw your own conclusions. Unlike the article this is straight from the horses mouth. I have not hidden anything and I have not embellished anything.
What the article did do was cause us to think long and hard about what we were doing and why. We had experienced a number of difficult situations on TT and the amount of time my ‘celebrity’ status (ho ho!) was taking up was starting to impact on our trading plan. In addition it was all costing us money. TT was funded by us directly, we had a bit of advertising revenue but it was nowhere near enough to pay for the upkeep of the site and it certainly did not pay for the time spent sorting out the behaviour of so called adults who really should have known better.
So by the end of 2004 we were feeling a bit low about our public work while our trading was the opposite. Neither of us wanted to stop doing the other stuff but we had to be realistic and put a time frame in place and some targets we would have to meet to make it worthwhile.
Sadly it not was not to be and in late 2005 we took down the TT site, closed our offices, sold the furniture and headed back home, much to the disquiet of Mrs Anderton who had enjoyed the peace and quiet. I still did the odd 1:1 if any enquiries were made but it was not too long before I turned people away. I don’t think you should do anything if your heart isn’t in it.
So for the next few years I carried on with my consulting work (which had never stopped), started sitting and developing my career as a Magistrate and earned the bulk of my living from trading as did Rob.
For the last few years I have been on my own as Rob has gone into business with his brother, they run a firm specialising in programming social media platforms. I’m pleased to say that they made a flying start and have worked with some pretty big name clients, Rob certainly deserves it after putting up with me for several years. He still looks after the IT elements of my trading which is just as well because I would be scuppered without it.
So there you have it. That’s the background and I am more than happy to stand up and be counted for everything I did. Some of you will more than likely have done some things differently and I might have done as well with the benefit of hindsight. But that’s all in the past and it is not a place I believe in dwelling. I have my new job at T2W to concentrate on and there is much to do so my energies are better concentrated on that in my view.
I’m sorry this has been such a long series of posts but I felt it was important you understood my journey so you can form your own views about me and can see where I am coming from in the next several months as we start to interact more frequently.
Right, that’s it. The end.
By the time the article came out I was becoming quite well known, mainly through word of mouth and networking because I was too mean to pay for fancy stuff like PR. I was a regular contributor to a couple of columns, one in a weekly paper called Asian Voice, the other I can’t remember. I was asked to speak at various conferences and I was also invited to author a couple of books. One of these was on Level 2, the other a trading book primarily aimed at newcomers.
I spent hour after hour writing the Level 2 book and it took much longer than it should have as I was still doing my ‘day job’ as a trader, although we were focusing more and more on position rather than day trades by now so the pressure was eased somewhat.
After many, many months it was finally finished and I was very proud of it.
The publisher hated it.
There ended my writing career.
So, lets deal with that awful FT article before I close the tale by bringing it up to date.
I was approached by a contact at a spread betting firm who had been asked by the journalist to recommend someone who could be profiled as a successful ‘amateur’ trader. I must admit that I was quite excited at getting my 15 minutes of fame especially as I thought it might help boost the TT membership.
This was when I learned all about journalistic licence and I have regretted it ever since.
I’m not going to go through the article bit by bit as it was 8 years ago and don’t forget as I pointed out in my introduction the other day, until Paul G made contact it was very much in the past. Instead I have tried to show you the context of my work at the time so you can draw your own conclusions. Unlike the article this is straight from the horses mouth. I have not hidden anything and I have not embellished anything.
What the article did do was cause us to think long and hard about what we were doing and why. We had experienced a number of difficult situations on TT and the amount of time my ‘celebrity’ status (ho ho!) was taking up was starting to impact on our trading plan. In addition it was all costing us money. TT was funded by us directly, we had a bit of advertising revenue but it was nowhere near enough to pay for the upkeep of the site and it certainly did not pay for the time spent sorting out the behaviour of so called adults who really should have known better.
So by the end of 2004 we were feeling a bit low about our public work while our trading was the opposite. Neither of us wanted to stop doing the other stuff but we had to be realistic and put a time frame in place and some targets we would have to meet to make it worthwhile.
Sadly it not was not to be and in late 2005 we took down the TT site, closed our offices, sold the furniture and headed back home, much to the disquiet of Mrs Anderton who had enjoyed the peace and quiet. I still did the odd 1:1 if any enquiries were made but it was not too long before I turned people away. I don’t think you should do anything if your heart isn’t in it.
So for the next few years I carried on with my consulting work (which had never stopped), started sitting and developing my career as a Magistrate and earned the bulk of my living from trading as did Rob.
For the last few years I have been on my own as Rob has gone into business with his brother, they run a firm specialising in programming social media platforms. I’m pleased to say that they made a flying start and have worked with some pretty big name clients, Rob certainly deserves it after putting up with me for several years. He still looks after the IT elements of my trading which is just as well because I would be scuppered without it.
So there you have it. That’s the background and I am more than happy to stand up and be counted for everything I did. Some of you will more than likely have done some things differently and I might have done as well with the benefit of hindsight. But that’s all in the past and it is not a place I believe in dwelling. I have my new job at T2W to concentrate on and there is much to do so my energies are better concentrated on that in my view.
I’m sorry this has been such a long series of posts but I felt it was important you understood my journey so you can form your own views about me and can see where I am coming from in the next several months as we start to interact more frequently.
Right, that’s it. The end.
