The impacts of a quality plan can lead to big things. How big? How about a six figure gain within your trading account? What I love about the podcast is the many shapes and forms the motivation and inspiration can take. This time around, the motivation is that of sheer numbers and size of just what is possible. As our guest Stan (‘PapaBear’ in the chatroom) discloses, nothing happened over night or without a lot of hard work; however, it did happen and continues to happen! It honestly still inspires me and gets me fired up to know that by only using 30% of his account, he was able to double his ENTIRE account. This is the power of a plan and approaching this business we call trading in a logical and realistic way. Come along for a very inspirational ride!
Notes:
Today we interview community member Papa Bear aka Stan. Back in the 70’s, Stan saw an episode of The Brady Bunch when they had an episode about the stock market. This led to an interest that he carried until much later in life.
Stan unfortunately suffered a decent loss when one of the mutual funds he was invested in got too heavily invested in a stock that plummeted. This led him to pull his funds into a Roth IRA and start controlling his money himself.
After putting together as much as he could from free education, Stan had a big fear about ‘what do I not know yet.’ This led him to investigate some structured education for trading. After looking around the industry, Stan joined the University program.
Stan went through the courses and decided to focus mainly on options. The big emphasis he wants listeners to take away is that position sizing is absolutely crucial in long term survival trading.
He has never needed to utilize traditional margin since he is never using the entirety of his account and he has generated a fantastic return only using ⅓ of his account. He mainly focuses on candlestick formations and keeping himself involved in multiple sectors as not to be too concentrated.
Quotes:
Everyone and their janitor was getting in the market during the dot.com boom.
I started getting scared. What is it that I don’t know is what really scared me. All these different traders trade differently.
You rather eloquently showed me that I was wrong and rather than getting offended by it, I deeply appreciated it.
Paper trading was good for learning mechanics. Unless you get the adrenaline of having money on the line, the lesson doesn’t stick.
My first year after CTU I made 100% only using 30% of my account. We’re talking 6 figures.
The last thing you ever want to do is turn a day trade into a swing trade. They are two different philosophies.
