Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Student trader: Opprtunist and Risk Manager


When I was 9 years old, I heard my dad speaking at home how someone he knew had lost almost all his wealth in stock market in India in 1992 - 93. As I grew up many such stories had danged my ears and made me to conclude “ Stock trading was nothing but gambling. One can never make money trading stocks”.   


While I started my first job even though one of my colleague spoke about him making and loosing money in the stock market, I could only think of calling him “ looser”. I could think of no success.  
Honestly, I had no idea about how stock market works until I moved to US. All I knew was selling, buying and traders or investors loosing money. One day while my closed one was suggesting about learning to trade stocks my answer was “ Trading stocks is falling in ditch with wide eyes open”.  
 But my pal’s opinion was against mine. His suggestion was why not I give a try to learn it before I conclude on what is not true.
I thought of giving a try after his suggestion. Since then I started spending almost 9 hours a day learning to understand how stock market works, why people loose money or make money even though I couldn’t believe one could make money in real. Spent few  months in dummy trading , day trading and swing trading and over the time I realized even after reading several books on various methods that one can’t make money unless he or she has his own strategy or method developed. I also remember reading everyone has different way of trading. So then I spent time in understanding what strategy could work before I decided to live trade. After spending reasonable time I decided to trade  live and lost small amount which was enough for me to think I could no longer trade. So I took break again, dummy traded for some time as my interest grew to figure out how to do this and came back to live trading again. This break helped me to understand why I lost.  
I should say my pal was a greatest inspiration for me where he kept encouraging. I am thankful for the belief he had in me. I realized its not just the strategy I had to develop, to be a successful trader but also to be disciplined to follow it. Being disciplined in trading was very tough task. 

Well, over the time I was hired for a prop trading firm and now I am a professional day trader, trading stocks for the firm. I enjoy trading and I am passionate about it. People tell me, “ Don’t think you can make money always. Because its easy to make money as stock market is going up but you cant make once it crashes”.
 I don’t care what one says as I am a believer of moving in the direction of stock market moves.  I am not a stock market geek or stock genius. But I believe in trading with chart movements. If market is long I am long, if market is short, I am short. Either way, market moves I am with it. Every morning when I wake up, I decide to be flexible for trading and accept the fact that I should be out when I am on the wrong side. Many of my trades go against me and I like to be stopped out before I loose a chunk. So I consider stop loss as my best friend. My dream is to be a good trader on daily basis and learn more and more on daily basis.

This is for the people who think one can't make money in stock market. Here are my few free suggestions.
  • Just because you lose doesn't mean that somebody else can’t make money in the stock market. 
  • If somebody makes money in the stock market, they make it because they are flexible, disciplined and more over they believe in themselves. 
  • They are ready to accept that they are wrong when their trade goes against them and they stop out before losing more. 
  • Every trade is traded with stop losses. 
  • We are all human beings and our emotions play in every way. But a good trader trades as a game with right strategy without letting his emotions fail him.
  • So now you know why 90% loose and 10% gains in the crowd.


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