Trading Financial Markets

The following journal is dedicated to my beautiful and wonderful wife who has put up with, and supported me through the many years of my education and development as a trader. May she be forever blessed by my continued success.

My obsessions are sailing and trading the financial markets, a proven money-bleeder and a potential money-producer. Trading is a wonderful business, especially in foreign currencies which offer a 5-day/week, 24 hour market. I trade any time I want. At around 7:00 pm eastern time the Aussie and Asian markets are firing up, midnight to 2:00 a.m. Europe jumps in, 6:00 am North American markets begin to get active, then it all starts to quiet down late morning, about the time I like to head to the beach for a walk. I can sit at my computer for a few hours, make some cash, then go walk the beach, maybe take a few days off to sail out to my favorite anchorage, then head to the trading desk again when I need some more cash. If I stay the course long enough to automate my trades . . . even better, almost like a personal ATM.

Pretty awesome, eh? I imagined trading to be something like that. If it was that easy, everyone would be a trader and we'd all be disgustingly rich. But as you probably know, learning to successfully "trade" in any financial market may be the most difficult thing you'll ever do. It should be perceived and approached as if training for a highly specialized business career. Expect much study, grueling hours, tests, years of education, tuition costs, and plenty of frustration.
But there's an additional issue - in trading you aren't graded on a curve. Just because you do better than 95% of other traders doesn't mean you pass. Odds are you will still loose your money. Losing less than our peers won't work unless we are just trading for fun. Even institutional fund managers with super computers, a staff of market gurus and programmers, and the capital of many others have a difficult time beating inflation, taxes, fixed costs, and making a profit. And the odds against the us - individual traders - are much much greater. If you expect or even hope that this will be easy, I suggest you quit now, find a different business, and save yourself much grief and money. Wait . . . on second thought, the more people willing to throw money into the pot, the more that's available for those who do their homework, so don't quit, start right in trading live today!

In spite of the lame humor, I do not take this lightly. Success is possible. My journal that follows is serious reflection of my trading that sustains me and keeps me on track.

I enjoy talking about financial markets, economics, and sailing . . . if you want to discuss either, e-mail me - here

Fair winds, following seas, and good trading - Dave