DAVIEGRANT
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The Story of a Breakeven Trader !
The Story of a Breakeven Trader.
The above title I think sums up my experiences to date with trading the stock market, which overall has been a spare time affair, with the simple goal of making money?
Looking back I have traded the markets for the last 10 years. I first got started trading ‘Penny Shares’. I subscribed to a Newsletter and away I went. I bought various small cap shares, that all showed some sort of potential for rapid growth (according to the Newsletter?). I did this for about 2 years and in that time had a few success’s, one being Sleepy Kids. A company who had at the time bought the rights to Budgie the Helicopter, which was written by Sarah Fergurson. These nearly quadrupled in value within 6 months and I sold them. I don’t mind saying I made a large sum of money relative to the amount of effort it took me, (reading a Newsletter is pretty easy as long as you can stay awake!). Flushed with success, I ploughed a lot of the profit back into various ‘Penny Shares’, all tipped by this Newsletter. Now guess what happened……yep, I bet you all got it……half the portfolio started taking a dive (only a few pence in some cases, but that’s a lot when they are only a few pence anyway!). The other half just didn’t move at all. Then I found out that when you wanted to sell your penny shares, liquidity was a BIG problem, especially when the stocks were pretty dormant. “What do you mean nobody wants to make a market for my penny stocks” I said, to my very patient broker. So I learnt the hard way and lost money, but also made some. After 2 years of penny shares and various newsletters all touting undervalued shares etc I was still to my amazement only just above breakeven , so I thought to myself, well at least I haven’t lost money in those 2 years!
Now, what I had discovered during that time, was I loved the Buying and Selling of various stocks, but penny shares didn’t offer much ‘Cut and Thrust’ on a regular basis. So I looked at Options. Wow…..these are great, they have leverage, they have liquidity and best of all they are available on most of the major stocks I follow anyway. This was to be the start of a period for me where I became massively interested in the Technical Analysis of Stocks and Indices. I read every book I could on the subject and I also went on a FTS course in Porlock, where for 3 days they taught us the subtleties of Option trading. The last day was a competition where they simulated 1 years worth of live trading and we had to trade our pretend account. To make it even more interesting all the Traders put money into a pot at the start, on the agreement that the Winner takes all! That winner ended up being me…hoorah!!! That helped me cover the cost of the course and I was break even again. A very familiar feeling.
I carried on studying Technical analysis and then devoted my life(not literally, I’m not that sad?) to try to find the Holy Grail of trading systems. Yep…. never one for setting myself small goals, I really thought that somewhere out there was a set of magic numbers and set-ups that could take me to the promise land where in a fair world, I could shack up with Kyle Minogue and Trade everytime I needed the lastest Aston Martin. After all I WAS meant to be a mathematical genius?(According to Mr Watson my Pure Maths teacher, circa 1982. I’m not sure he was known for his judgement on these matters?) Over the next months I had developed a system that when back tested could make 650% per year on the FTSE 100 index. Wow…I thought…get me my broker and lets make stacks of cash. For the next 3 months I had a hit rate of 80% correct trades and I was feeling pretty good about my system….Now guess what happened next…..yep, you got it again……my system started losing….. 3 consecutive losers, then 4, then 5, then 6…. OH MY GOD LET THE PAIN STOP!!! I bailed out of my system….I could take no more. It was a relief just to be out of the market. I gathered my wits and calculated what sort of hole my trading account showed. Well…it was at near break-even!!! Time for reflection I thought……I had now been trading for about 4 years and my account was no bigger than at the start. If the money had been in the Bank I would have made more than this. But how can this have happened, I’m Davie Grant, I’m a mathematical genius, I’ve got a system that says I can make money, well in the past 3 years on paper at least…just not now??? Well at least I haven’t LOST any money! So I soldiered on.
Options soon got me interested in the Futures markets. They had excellent liquidity, they were in lots of different markets and trading an account on the US market was simple. The only downside was, if your not careful, the downside!! Meaning, unlike Options, Futures that went against you quickly could hurt big style. So I studied and played around with Money management and combined this with another system I had developed for the S&P’s. Now this was one of my first revelations. Proper intelligent use of Money management improved my bottom line more than any improved system could have at the time. After a while of trading Futures, which mainly consisted of Indices, I started to read about various systems for sale. A lot of them were American and a few for the FTSE were from the UK. The promised figures were amazing on some, and a few even came with money back guarantees. These systems seemed considerably better than my humble effort, so lets give a few a try. These I paid for out of Trading profits and thought I would soon recover the money on my first few trades. One of the systems got off to a flying start and tended to trend every 2 or 3 days the others were based more on breakout systems or retracements and traded on average every 6 to 10 days.
It soon became apparent that depending if the market was trending or trading the systems became useless in certain market conditions or the drawdowns were too scary for a mere mortal like me to psychologically endure. So after a good year or so of trading mechanical systems I was hovering AGAIN around the Break-Even level on my trading account. The only thing I felt I’d achieved in all these years was to make market makers, spread betting companies and brokers richer than they were already. Well……at least I was providing an income for other people and like I had said many, many, times before, I HADN’T LOST ANY MONEY!!!
I took a break from trading for about 6 months and just sat on the sidelines. I still followed the markets I was interested in, but didn’t actually Trade. During this time I started to put down on paper my golden rules for trading, so I wouldn’t forget what I’d learnt over the past 8 years. When I went back to trading after this rest, I found I was approaching trades differently. My technical methods were the same but I was starting to consider fundamentals more. I was devising trade set-ups that were more original and soundly based on price action created by the crowd. I felt after just WATCHING the markets for 6 months and not being financially involved with them, I’d become more in tune with the ebb and flow and could see certain things developing just from the price action rather than an overbought/oversold indicator or some self proclaimed guru. As long as I followed my strict money management rules and showed no emotion, matter if the trade was good or bad, my equity curve started to consistently point upwards. My drawdowns were minimal and my consecutive loses are very rarely more than 3 in a row. Now after more than 2 years, my account has grown 450% and I feel I’m no longer a BREAKEVEN TRADER. How did I do it?……….Well…for me it was my Golden beliefs, it was the fact that I believed in them, not someone’s else’s system etc. They were rules that I had learnt the hard way, and for me that has always been the best way. In addition, it was the realisation that trading the markets is WAR….Yes WAR….It is easy to forget that trading is a zero sum game. I have to take your money before you take mine, its maybe overly simplistic, but is true never the less.
On that note I will leave you with some of my Golden beliefs that, for me at any rate improved my Trading and my bottom line…..so far anyway!!!
GOLDEN BELIEFS
· Set a realistic goal for returns. We can’t all be Richard Dennis. A lot of system hype and legendary stories lead us to believe tripling our accounts, year on year is common. IT IS NOT!
· Good Money and Risk Management combined with market knowledge separates us from the gamblers.
· Accept the disorder, randomness and chaos in the markets as part of the game. The market is often far from logical.
· Always stand apart from the crowd. Learn to be your own guru. Don’t rely on someone else’s system or hot tips. One day they won’t be there!
· Match your style of trading to the market conditions. Often the one method is not suitable for all markets and conditions.
· Avoid Greed.
· Never Forget, the behaviour of 90% of traders, creates an advantage for the other 10%. BE IN THAT 10%.
· Success in trading is not purely technical, it is also an art.
Well for what it was worth, that was my little story so far. Everyday is a new battle in the markets and I love every minute of it. I find it very interesting to talk with other traders and their experiences, we traders all have a common goal outside the markets and you at T2W are my equals, but rest assured if we are in the same market together, I will try to empty your wallet before you empty mine (smile).
The Story of a Breakeven Trader.
The above title I think sums up my experiences to date with trading the stock market, which overall has been a spare time affair, with the simple goal of making money?
Looking back I have traded the markets for the last 10 years. I first got started trading ‘Penny Shares’. I subscribed to a Newsletter and away I went. I bought various small cap shares, that all showed some sort of potential for rapid growth (according to the Newsletter?). I did this for about 2 years and in that time had a few success’s, one being Sleepy Kids. A company who had at the time bought the rights to Budgie the Helicopter, which was written by Sarah Fergurson. These nearly quadrupled in value within 6 months and I sold them. I don’t mind saying I made a large sum of money relative to the amount of effort it took me, (reading a Newsletter is pretty easy as long as you can stay awake!). Flushed with success, I ploughed a lot of the profit back into various ‘Penny Shares’, all tipped by this Newsletter. Now guess what happened……yep, I bet you all got it……half the portfolio started taking a dive (only a few pence in some cases, but that’s a lot when they are only a few pence anyway!). The other half just didn’t move at all. Then I found out that when you wanted to sell your penny shares, liquidity was a BIG problem, especially when the stocks were pretty dormant. “What do you mean nobody wants to make a market for my penny stocks” I said, to my very patient broker. So I learnt the hard way and lost money, but also made some. After 2 years of penny shares and various newsletters all touting undervalued shares etc I was still to my amazement only just above breakeven , so I thought to myself, well at least I haven’t lost money in those 2 years!
Now, what I had discovered during that time, was I loved the Buying and Selling of various stocks, but penny shares didn’t offer much ‘Cut and Thrust’ on a regular basis. So I looked at Options. Wow…..these are great, they have leverage, they have liquidity and best of all they are available on most of the major stocks I follow anyway. This was to be the start of a period for me where I became massively interested in the Technical Analysis of Stocks and Indices. I read every book I could on the subject and I also went on a FTS course in Porlock, where for 3 days they taught us the subtleties of Option trading. The last day was a competition where they simulated 1 years worth of live trading and we had to trade our pretend account. To make it even more interesting all the Traders put money into a pot at the start, on the agreement that the Winner takes all! That winner ended up being me…hoorah!!! That helped me cover the cost of the course and I was break even again. A very familiar feeling.
I carried on studying Technical analysis and then devoted my life(not literally, I’m not that sad?) to try to find the Holy Grail of trading systems. Yep…. never one for setting myself small goals, I really thought that somewhere out there was a set of magic numbers and set-ups that could take me to the promise land where in a fair world, I could shack up with Kyle Minogue and Trade everytime I needed the lastest Aston Martin. After all I WAS meant to be a mathematical genius?(According to Mr Watson my Pure Maths teacher, circa 1982. I’m not sure he was known for his judgement on these matters?) Over the next months I had developed a system that when back tested could make 650% per year on the FTSE 100 index. Wow…I thought…get me my broker and lets make stacks of cash. For the next 3 months I had a hit rate of 80% correct trades and I was feeling pretty good about my system….Now guess what happened next…..yep, you got it again……my system started losing….. 3 consecutive losers, then 4, then 5, then 6…. OH MY GOD LET THE PAIN STOP!!! I bailed out of my system….I could take no more. It was a relief just to be out of the market. I gathered my wits and calculated what sort of hole my trading account showed. Well…it was at near break-even!!! Time for reflection I thought……I had now been trading for about 4 years and my account was no bigger than at the start. If the money had been in the Bank I would have made more than this. But how can this have happened, I’m Davie Grant, I’m a mathematical genius, I’ve got a system that says I can make money, well in the past 3 years on paper at least…just not now??? Well at least I haven’t LOST any money! So I soldiered on.
Options soon got me interested in the Futures markets. They had excellent liquidity, they were in lots of different markets and trading an account on the US market was simple. The only downside was, if your not careful, the downside!! Meaning, unlike Options, Futures that went against you quickly could hurt big style. So I studied and played around with Money management and combined this with another system I had developed for the S&P’s. Now this was one of my first revelations. Proper intelligent use of Money management improved my bottom line more than any improved system could have at the time. After a while of trading Futures, which mainly consisted of Indices, I started to read about various systems for sale. A lot of them were American and a few for the FTSE were from the UK. The promised figures were amazing on some, and a few even came with money back guarantees. These systems seemed considerably better than my humble effort, so lets give a few a try. These I paid for out of Trading profits and thought I would soon recover the money on my first few trades. One of the systems got off to a flying start and tended to trend every 2 or 3 days the others were based more on breakout systems or retracements and traded on average every 6 to 10 days.
It soon became apparent that depending if the market was trending or trading the systems became useless in certain market conditions or the drawdowns were too scary for a mere mortal like me to psychologically endure. So after a good year or so of trading mechanical systems I was hovering AGAIN around the Break-Even level on my trading account. The only thing I felt I’d achieved in all these years was to make market makers, spread betting companies and brokers richer than they were already. Well……at least I was providing an income for other people and like I had said many, many, times before, I HADN’T LOST ANY MONEY!!!
I took a break from trading for about 6 months and just sat on the sidelines. I still followed the markets I was interested in, but didn’t actually Trade. During this time I started to put down on paper my golden rules for trading, so I wouldn’t forget what I’d learnt over the past 8 years. When I went back to trading after this rest, I found I was approaching trades differently. My technical methods were the same but I was starting to consider fundamentals more. I was devising trade set-ups that were more original and soundly based on price action created by the crowd. I felt after just WATCHING the markets for 6 months and not being financially involved with them, I’d become more in tune with the ebb and flow and could see certain things developing just from the price action rather than an overbought/oversold indicator or some self proclaimed guru. As long as I followed my strict money management rules and showed no emotion, matter if the trade was good or bad, my equity curve started to consistently point upwards. My drawdowns were minimal and my consecutive loses are very rarely more than 3 in a row. Now after more than 2 years, my account has grown 450% and I feel I’m no longer a BREAKEVEN TRADER. How did I do it?……….Well…for me it was my Golden beliefs, it was the fact that I believed in them, not someone’s else’s system etc. They were rules that I had learnt the hard way, and for me that has always been the best way. In addition, it was the realisation that trading the markets is WAR….Yes WAR….It is easy to forget that trading is a zero sum game. I have to take your money before you take mine, its maybe overly simplistic, but is true never the less.
On that note I will leave you with some of my Golden beliefs that, for me at any rate improved my Trading and my bottom line…..so far anyway!!!
GOLDEN BELIEFS
· Set a realistic goal for returns. We can’t all be Richard Dennis. A lot of system hype and legendary stories lead us to believe tripling our accounts, year on year is common. IT IS NOT!
· Good Money and Risk Management combined with market knowledge separates us from the gamblers.
· Accept the disorder, randomness and chaos in the markets as part of the game. The market is often far from logical.
· Always stand apart from the crowd. Learn to be your own guru. Don’t rely on someone else’s system or hot tips. One day they won’t be there!
· Match your style of trading to the market conditions. Often the one method is not suitable for all markets and conditions.
· Avoid Greed.
· Never Forget, the behaviour of 90% of traders, creates an advantage for the other 10%. BE IN THAT 10%.
· Success in trading is not purely technical, it is also an art.
Well for what it was worth, that was my little story so far. Everyday is a new battle in the markets and I love every minute of it. I find it very interesting to talk with other traders and their experiences, we traders all have a common goal outside the markets and you at T2W are my equals, but rest assured if we are in the same market together, I will try to empty your wallet before you empty mine (smile).
