Don’t be shy…

[KennethVinson]

Hi everyone! My apologies for taking so long to introduce myself, I fell behind a few weeks ago due to some business travel, and am now just catching up.

I’m Ken, I’m 48, and live in Santa Cruz, CA, USA.

My trading history has been quite the aimless journey up until recently. I’m a technical writer over in Silicon Valley, and worked for Cisco Systems for many years. My first true exposure to the US stock market was through the Cisco stock options that they used to give us so generously. For the first few years of my employment, Cisco was a darling of the stock market, and I was there when, for two days, Cisco was the most highly-valued company in the US. On paper, things looked very good, and I thought I’d be set for life. I mean, no way Cisco stock goes down, right?

During the tech crash of 2000, I held onto those Cisco shares all the way from $82 per share to $9. Well, so much for buy and hold.

I had been studying mechanical trading systems using set stock screens through organizations like the Motley Fool and American Association of Individual Investors. Made a lot of sense to me to find a mechanical system that backtested well and took the guessing out of stock trading, but didn’t really have any capital back then.

Last year I discovered Nick’s books, and have been trading weekly for about 15 months. It’s very clear I still have a lot to learn (I’ve made just about every mistake that Nick predicts new traders will make).

My ultimate goal is to sell a small business, a local retail store that I’ve owned for almost ten years now, take that capital, and grow it into something I can retire on.

Nice to virtually meet everyone, you’ll see me posting more frequently now, I promise!

Ken

[JulianCohen]

My name is Julian Cohen. I retired seven years ago after a long career in the money markets as a broker. I never turned my hand to trading until I retired, although I had read a lot about it for many years, and aways leaned towards trend following or momentum trading, and certainly systematic as opposed to discretionary.

I have been trading my own account for four years now, and haven’t blown up my account, which is something to be happy about. I have learned a lot about myself during this time, and I know that to remove the emotion from my trading, I have to remove all the discretion. This I have done for the last year with a futures account that I run on Trading Blox. I had a programmer write my system for me and thoroughly tested his work. This cost a lot, but I have more than made up for it results. I run a long term weekly trend following system based on Donchian breakouts, with a counter trend mechanism running alongside. It is simple and it works.

I realised that I had other ideas I wanted to test, but with no programming knowledge I was always going to be paying someone to do it for me. Then I heard Nick on a podcast, read Unholy Grails, trawled the website and saw the mentor course actually taught programming. Not only that but they could teach complete beginners too. So here I am.

In my spare time I am an underwater photographer and I travel quite extensively. A weekly trading system is great for that.

[Nick Radge]

Great to have you onboard Julian.

[CAIHuang]

Hey,

My name is Luke Aram. I am 30 and I live in Perth. I am currently working on Barrow Island in the north west on a FIFO roster. I have been doing so for almost 5 years. Before that I worked as a structural drafter in the city at an engineering firm. I started FIFO work so I could set myself up financially and also to get a big capital base for trading.

I started gaining an interest in the stock market in early 2009 and started researching the stock market via a few subscription emails (the first being the ultra bearish ‘Daily Reckoning’). I had a few hot tips for some speculative shares and I started to trawl through the threads of ‘Hotcopper’ and ‘Aussie Stock Forum’ to gather information and chase more hot tips. I burnt some money and also made a packet on a few trades.It didn’t take long till I started to gain a real interest in technical analysis. I have read countless books and have traded ‘The Chartist’ discretionary setups. I also started to dabble in day trading/swing trading the forex market. I however realised that I was way under capitalised for my strong aspirations of ‘trading for a living’! So hunted out FIFO work to gather funds for trading and other reasons.

For the majority of my FIFO career I have been working 12 hour days with a pretty average internet connection on a 26 days on and 9 days off roster. That with working out in the gym didn’t leave my a lot of time to trade so I took a back seat and passively watched the markets and read trading books. Beginners cycle rearing it’s ugly head again to some degree. I do suffer from information overload and am constantly reading and learning new strategies. Not necessarily chasing the holy grail, just always trying to learn and equip myself better for trading when I should spend more time actually trading!

Over the years I have always wanted to learn Amibroker inside out and learn to code and create a few profitable systems. I have realised over the years that day trading for a living would be a very tough ask and if I could trade some discretionary setups and have some good systems running then that would be a great approach to earning and being continually involved in the market.

I don’t have any coding experience so there is a lot for me to learn. I now work on a 2 weeks on 2 weeks off roster so I will do my best when I am away on site for 2 weeks but will aim to get as much done as possible on my 2 weeks off. I still have set aside some time to trade the European Forex market open and try out some discretionary swing trading strategies. I have a wife but no kids as yet so do have quite a bit of free time on my 2 weeks off. I am really looking forward to the mentor program and hope Craig and Nick can assist me with gaining the valuable knowledge to competently and confidently trade mechanical systems while also imparting some general share trading wisdom along the way.The forum looks great too and I am keen to participate in it more. I started the course 12 days ago and am almost finished Section 2 Module 8.

Cheers

Luke

[Nick Radge]

Great to have you here as well Luke. We’ll get you through!

[Anonymous]

Hi

My name is Miguel and I live in South Africa, born in Johannesburg but these days spend most of my time at the coast with my wife and 2 dogs. I love riding my bicycle and ventured from amateur racing many years ago to the more relaxed touring option these days.

I have been in the trading environment for 16 years, 13 years working in a bank treasury and 3 years as a private trader. I started off as a technical analyst on the forex desk and then moved to a new bank and traded short term interest rates and FX swaps until I left in 2009. I invested in some small businesses while still working in corporate and left once the income from those could sustain my lifestyle. I got back into trading as a private trader 3 years ago and after 6 months of trying day trading gave that up and took a longer term trend following approach which has served me quite well but over the last year I have been mostly flat (not invested, which has been a good choice). About 6 months ago I started looking for an alternative methodology to trade in addition to the trend following to “fill in the gaps” when my trend following is flat. The past 6 months of trying to develop something that I am comfortable and confident with led me here as I was not making much progress on my own.

My goals:
* Trading as another source of income
* Develop a few trading systems
* A longer term one to manage my own retirement funds
* Enhance my trend trading system to be more mechanical, I found that my exit strategy was a little too discretionary and when a run of trends came to an end I was left with emotion to make my decision to get out and possibly “gave away” (not that it was mine) too much at the end
* Add a shorter term system/s that are not correlated to the trend following one. About a year ago I thought I had come up with something different and learnt the hard way that I went about it the wrong way, nothing ventured, nothing gained but this time I aim to do it correctly with the correct guidance.

Coding will be new for me, but I am up for the challenge.

I look forward to interacting with the group and hopefully I can add as much value as I will consume in this forum.

Cheers
Miguel

[Nick Radge]

Great to have you here Miguel. Sounds like you have a similar background to Stephane.

I think you’ll find some great knowledge and resources here – especially for filling those holes. Quite a few are having success with mean reversion strategies and putting other ideas out there.

Look forward to working with you.

Nick

[KevinPenny]

Hi My name is Kevin. My wife and I live in the Perth WA hills area. Ive been interested and have traded for many years. From CBOT wheat futures to Black box SPI trading .. I have made every mistake that a trader can make and most times more than once. That perhaps makes me an expert on what doesnt work. Ive been a subscriber to The Chartist for some years, and its through Nicks teaching that ive been able to raise the bar on my trading achievements.
Some time ago on a chat forum (since closed), I was encouraged to enter a contest in that FA could beat TA.
At the time I was mostly a Pattern trader, and I realised that with the stocks picked by the FA guy, I had to change to some sort of trading system so
that apples could be compared with apples.
And I had to win! There was no way an FA guy with a buy n hold strategy could beat me or us TA guy’s …
So I made a simple system with buy on break out rules and ran a trailing stop loss, plus a re entry rule.
About this time I read Nick’s book “ Unholy grail’s “ and It all made made perfect sense to me. Lightbulb !
I Named my system the Holy Grail Trading System (HGTS) in Nick’s honour.
After a year went past the results where added up. The FA guy came in with an 8.6% gain.
The HGTS returned 24.5% gain.
This was to be a game changer for me, it proved that a rough system, ran manually could beat stock picks that in essence where random picks.
Proving the fact that as a trader, you just have to mangage risk, and let the cards fall..

This mentoring course is the best oportunity for me to capitilise on measuring various methods and risk to make the most out of my trading capital.

I often daydream on how I would front up to the panel of “The Shark Tank” With a bullit proof backtested system that would leave them with there mouths agape. With me and Team Chartist, walking away saying Na, we dont need your money.

Cheers.

[Nick Radge]

Quote:

I often daydream on how I would front up to the panel of “The Shark Tank” With a bullit proof backtested system that would leave them with there mouths agape. With me and Team Chartist, walking away saying Na, we dont need your money.

Lol. Perfect!

Glad you’re here Kevin. See you at Noosapalooza.

[TerryDunne]

Hi everyone!

My name is Terry. I live in Sydney and have a wife, 2 teenagers and a cat. I have a five year plan to replace the two teenagers with a chocolate Labrador and to trade to supplement my (semi) retirement.

I’ve traded for just under 20 years now, up to trading other people’s money through a fund that a partner and I set up while I was living in California. We launched – long only equities – in 2008, which wasn’t the world’s best timing. However, we were able to return all of the money of those people who stayed with us by 2012…and then I put my queue in the rack, where it has stayed ever since.

Now I want to get back on the bike and I see Nick’s service as a great way to do this. I can’t wait to get into the course, starting tonight!

[TimothyStrickland]

Awesome Terry! I am sure your 20 years of experience will add a lot of value to us newer traders as well! Only been doing this for 3 years and I love it. Looking forward to seeing your results

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone,

My name is Julie and I live in Sydney with my husband Greg, three children and two active dogs. Home is a busy place but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

It was great to hear from some of you at the last GoToMeeting.

I have been interested in the markets for the past 5 years. I have invested based on fundamental analysis and attempted discretionary trading and decided that a systematic approach is more suited to my temperament.

My goal for the next 5 months is to build one system that meets my objectives and fits my lifestyle.

[MichaelRodwell]

Nice to meet you Julie! Great goal! Good luck and let me know if I can help at all. I’m a little bit ahead of you and been keeping my journal on here so you can see my journey if its of interest. I got a lot out of reading about other people’s progress.

[Nick Radge]

Great to have you here Julie and I look forward to watching your progress over the coming months.

[Author]

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