[TonyStevenson]

Greetings all

I’ve always had an interest in the sharemarket but was long on ideas and short on risk capital during my 20s-30s. I was attracted to the idea of a systematic approach via earlier books such as O’Shaunnesy’s “What works on Wall Street” but frustrated that they covered USA and not AU. Studying economics wired my brain to think in terms of models. During these times I stumbled around buying on a whim things like AAPL (should have held those) and TLS (very late to the party in T3). I lacked any systems and was emotionally driven. No wonder I didn’t succeed.

Been in IT my whole career. I was fortunate to be the founding Marketing Manager at MYOB. As we grew the business from startup to multinational I enjoyed the challenges and benefits from being a public company executive – 1999-2008 – and then the private equity world of 2009-2015. It was an interesting journey living through corporate roller coaster and being an ‘insider’. I am retired from MYOB now but (disclaimer) still hold shares from when it relisted (May 2015).

During my 40s I had access to more capital and pushed on with investing mainly through managed funds and using modest leverage in AU 2001-2007. I didn’t have complete confidence in approach and as valuations heated up in 2007 I liquidated most holdings. So managed to side-step GFC but missed the last run up in that bull market. By a fluke I progressively started re-entering the market in March 2009 (as the market turned up).

Since GFC been trying to find more science and rigour to my approaches while aiming to quell emotional rollercoasters. Discovering ‘trend following’ and through further searching finding Nick Radge has been fantastic. Was really taken by the quality of thought and rigour in “Unholy Grails” – it was that systematic book for AU investors I’d been searching for 25+ years. I’ve been trading Growth Portfolio in AU and Weekend Trend Trader using Amibroker and High Frequency Strategy in USA.

So here we are – I am 51, retired stay-at-home dad trying to get some life balance and help our 3 kids get through high school and uni (oldest starts uni this year).

My aims in joining
* Intellectual stimulation
* Develop strategies for wealth preservation and growth with my trading in US and AU.
* Unlearn some bad habits – eg jumping out of winning positions, jumping on speculative trades
* Develop confidence in systems to more effectively quell emotions and persist with them
* Get off the learners cycle
* Develop perspective that encourages patience – inclined to want to trade more often than is ideal

Looking forward to sharing the journey.

PS I am on Skype now and then – tony.stevenson

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