Up until two years ago I'd never really been interested in the Stockmarket. Yes, I 'd had the British Gas shares and BAA shares when they were floated in the 1980's, but apart from that I'd never given it a second thought.
Then in October 2004 I received a promotional 'junk' email from Goldline Systems advertising their system and how they had turned £2,000 into £72,000. It stirred some curiosity in me - well who wouldn't like to know how to turn £2,000 into £72,000? So I visited their website and read their claims - even their trading returns for each year are posted on their site - and I thought 'well this seems genuine'.
However when you get to the purchase page, you find that the system costs £4,995. I have to admit that the cost stunned me and even if I'd had that amount of money to spend I wouldn't have parted with it, without doing some research, so I 'Googled' Goldline Systems and found quite a bit of material on the system and a lot of it not very complimentary.
It was during this search that I came across a site called Trade2Win.com - the link to the site is on the left - and started to read the various posts in the forums as well as a lot of the Knowledge Lab articles on trading. I was hooked!
My next stop was Amazon where I ordered two books by an author called Toni Turner. The books were 'A Beginners Guide to Short Term Trading' and 'Day Trading Online'. I think I dropped lucky with this purchase, as I had no idea at the time which books to go for - there are literally hundreds on trading - or which authors were worth reading. These two books gave me an excellent base with which to learn trading and I've included them on my recommended reading list - see the link on the left.
Now I was really hooked and registered with a Spreadbetting company to get a 'demo' account. After three weeks of trading this I thought I knew as much as I needed to and was ready to take the plunge in the real world of trading.
I wasn't!
I was so desperate to make a success of it, that I rushed in and had to learn the hard way - by losing my own money. What didn't help me was that, at the time, I was very unhappy working for the company I was with, and saw this as a way out, so I wanted to be successful right then and there. Looking back I can see this - they say hindsight is a wonderful thing and it is. Now two years on, I'm making a profit from trading, but I'm still learning and probably always will be. My Dow Trading Strategy, which I developed earlier this year and am still working on, has over an 80% success rate which pleases me enormously. You can read more about the Dow Strategy by following the link on the left - Trading the Dow.
So what advice would I give to new traders?
Read: Read as much as you can, there are some great books on trading out there that will give you a sound grounding in the art of trading. I've listed the ones I found valuable on 'Recommended Trading Reading' - the link is on the left.
Research on the Web: There are a lot of web resources out there - from forums, to educational sites, financial news etc. Remember, you can never have too much information. Again l've listed the sites I found valuable in 'Recommended Trading Reading' - the link is on the left.
Get a Demo Account: A lot of firms allow you to register for a demo trading account where you have an imaginary £10,000 to trade with. It doesn't help with the psychology of trading your real money - which is a bigger factor than a lot of people think - but it does get you used to trading. I would recommend CMC, not only do I trade with them and always have done - but their demo account comes with a charting package which shows you what's going on in the market.
Remember: Trading isn't easy - if it was then everyone would be doing it. But neither is it difficult. It just takes education and perseverence. If you stick at it and don't give in, then you'll undoubtly learn more, but you'll also end up succeeding. |
