My name is Gavin McMaster, I’m 29 years old and I’m originally from Melbourne Australia. Currently I live with my wife Alex and 2 year old daughter Zoe in Grand Cayman which is where we have lived for the past 7 years. I work in the hedge fund industry but am really looking to get out of the 9-5 (more like 8-6 at the moment). I started up a website called Options Trading IQ in December 2010 as a way to help fellow traders learn from my successes and my mistakes.
My interest in the stock market can be traced back to Primary School, i can’t remember the teacher or the which grade, but she told a fictional story which has always stuck with me. It was a typical stock market tale of fear and greed, the two most powerful emotions in the financial markets. A stock trader who bought a stock at $1, watched in climb all the way up past $1000, but got greedy and wouldn’t sell assuming he would make more money. Of course some sort of bad news about the company came out and next thing you know the stock was back to $1. Of course this was a fictional story, but from that point on i was hooked. I bought my first shares when I was 13 and have been trading ever since, although more heavily in the last 6 years. I have bought just about every book you can think of on options trading. I also went back to school and completed my Masters in Applied Finance and Investment in August 2009. Still, there is only so much you can learn from a book and i have learnt so much more from actually trading options.
I’ve been trading options seriously for the past 6 years and my aim with my website is to help beginner option traders learn from my experiences and also follow along with some of my trades to learn about how I trade and learn from my successes and my failures. My primary aim is to help people who are in the same position I was in 5-6 years ago when I was starting out. I had some pretty big losses in those first few years because I didn’t know how to evaluate or control my risk. I’m at a point now when I finally feel successful and have managed to grow my account from 25K to 125K over the last 2 years. My aim is to increase that to 250K within 12-18 months, both through my returns and also plowing some extra savings into my account.
Eventually through the website I would like to offer live webinars and educational courses. I have also been doing some interviews with top traders and have that as free content on the site. At the moment everything is free!
I look forward to connecting with people on this site and sharing experiences with a view to mutually beneficial growth.
Cheers!
Gavin.