The Beginning/Background

Ok. So I decided to start a blog to help me force myself on the road to becoming a full time trader or Institutional Trader. Been finding lately that I have been recklessly trading, acting on intuition and not fact. Trying to predict the future, not whats happening in the present. This blog is to force me to describe my trade ideas, or just ideas in general, in detail to further myself along this path.

Basically I'll describe where I stand now (Or over the past two years).

Attended Algonquin College here in Ottawa for Business Administration. During the first month (although I do not recall what got me into it) I began getting a heavy interest in the financial markets. Bought my first stock in September 2006, Ticker SYBD, bought 1000 shares around $0.11 US or about $110.00 plus $30.00 commission (TD Waterhouse has large commissions). This was a fundamental News play. I had not even heard of Technical Analysis (T.A) at this point in my trading (and as you will read later on, I did not really use T.A for equities markets). They had a small article on them on Yahoo In-Play news ticker. Not really knowing what I was doing I took the trade. Being a new trader, I had my QuoteTracker open in the background of my school Laptop and would constantly look over at it to see if I was profitable. Fast Foreward to the end of October, news of the Oxycyte, their "Synthetic Blood" would be featured in Popular Science Magazine (November 2006, Page 88, yes I have a copy beside me while I type this). AWESOME! exactly what I thought as I clicked Sell at $0.21/Share. 100% profit!!! Now realistic profit would have been $210 - $60.00 ($30.00 per execution) or $40.00 profits. Great at the time, this is where my equity trading began to implode.

I was fishing around a few Equities facebook groups, started sharing ideas, and was invited to a PalTalk investing group. WillyWizardsUnderground. This is where I began to become a reckless trader. Unknown to many, but the Equities market is full of fraud. Specific kind called stock pumping. Due to the liquidity of "penny stocks" or "stinky pinkys" as I call them, where the originator front loads (buys before the others) and then creates rumors on the stock, such as large gold claim, or lawsuit in favor of said firm, and others buy in. As the others are buying in, the originator sells to them, hence creating manipulated profits. Now I'm not saying this happened in this room, but there were some rumors spread around, and me being the N00B so to speak I bought in with rather large portions. This is where I started losing, and losing fast. Not mentioning tickers as I am quite embarrassed that I bought in. After suffering 75% losses I took time off.

After mentioning this loss I was contacted by several other members that were rather upset with the recent fraud. These traders were different. They didn't talk rumors or news. They talked Moving Averages, Parabolic Sar, Trend lines, Fibonacci Retracements, Price action. This was real trading. During the time here I developed most of my analytical skills. I learned how to properly scan for a stock, how to make precise entries/exits, and a lot of T.A. This is where I began to focus my trading.

After the 75% loss I stopped trading live markets. I went into research mode. After reading Adventures of a Currency trader the first time (I have read the book seven or eight times now) I opened a FOREX account at CMS FX. This brought me into a whole new world. Also I should mention that by this time, I had dropped out of school on my own terms to focus on my personal learning (controversial, but will touch this in another post). I began reading up on Macro-economics, I began to get back into scouring news for hits of strength in the Dollar or the Euro, or the Yen. Results started to become quite well as I was playing on the volitality of the current sub-prime market. My fundamentals began to become stronger as I looked into inter-market correlations such as the price of gold and commodity indexes vs. the USD. This sparked several long heated debates between several people on the gold standard, and the current actions of the US Fed.

At the time I worked at Starbucks, which I highly recommend to everyone as a networking tool. I met several wealthy investors, and business owners. This lead me to my previous job to being unemployed. While at this job I was constantly surrounded by currency markets. Fundamentally and T.A. While there I helped created the daily market reports published in the local business journal. This furthered my understanding but began to created mixed feelings on currency trading, as I was open to too many different opinions, which clouded my understanding of current situations, leaving me to try to predict the impossible...future price actions.

So this is pretty much where I stand now. Hungry for the action, but strapped down to financial restraints. One thing came to mind. The quote that I base majority of life on:

"Like a Phoenix, I have Arisen from the Ashes...And Into My fire, You shall Fall"