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
