For someone like myself who got started in trading after the introduction of the internet and computers, it’s hard to imagine what it “used to be like” before technology really came to age. We get a great taste of that in our interview with Mike (chat room alias “TraderMike”). His journey first began back in the 1990’s and over 20 years later, he’s still here and improving. Mike trades full time; however, he has one of the more creative ways in which he accomplished this goal. Mike is a great asset to the community and someone who is very active in the chat room, so now you get to hear this story!
Notes:
Trader Mike started getting interested in the market in the ‘90s and recognized very early that he wanted to be in full control of his investments. He didn’t want to pay someone else a fee to pick stocks or funds for him.
Mike utilized fundamental analysis to start his trading journey and focused primarily on what other analysts were saying. When he would find that 11/15 would agree that something was a buy, he would enter a trade. However, his exit criteria was pretty wishy washy and was much closer to throwing darts or exiting based on his feelings.
After two decades, Mike delved down the path of trying to expand his education and was using more internet based newsletters for his trading. His timeframe for trades at this point was 3-6 months. While his portfolio was still trending up, he definitely got into some hot water with large losers and felt paralyzed which led him to hold.
He decided that he wanted a career change and decided to dive into trading full time. Mike realized relatively quickly that now that he was trading for income, his longer term trades would not pay the bills or result in daily/weekly income. This is when he decided to investigate further into technical analysis and ultimately Claytrader University.
Mike made an agreement with his wife to give him 1 year to see if his trading would work out. If not, he would go back to work. He had capital set aside for this journey so that absolutely nothing would change in their daily living. By no means did he use his family’s nest egg to attempt this new career.
Quotes:
“I learned young that I needed to take care of my money and self invest it so I would have something to retire on.”
“I was subscribing to what other people were recommending. I was using Google more to understand how stocks move.”
“In the past I didn’t care if something went down for weeks but trading for income I realized I didn’t have the tools to make decisions.”
“I wanted to understand and learn this so I could manage my own trade plans for the future and forever.”
“I’ll watch the 2, 5, 15, and 1 hour charts to develop my trade plans.”
“I like to watch the first 15 minutes evolve and then establish my trade plans based on my comfort level of what I see.”
