Reflections on Trading and Blogging in 2007…
I hope everyone is well, it’s Boxing day in the UK and I’ve some time since everyone is out right now. I thought I’d take the time to reflect on the blog and trading in 2007 (even though I started the blog around July/Aug time so it hasn’t been a complete year).
Firstly, for those that have noticed, I have a new logo and banner.. it just makes the blog look a bit more tidy and professional. I have also removed the Poll and replaced it with a Shoutbox (which is essentially a live chat program). This maybe useful for me in posting live trades one day (when I’m successful of course!) and for people to send me questions.
Anyway, firstly to talk about the blogging side of it.. my blog has grown and I have learnt a lot about blogging and marketing it… the first stab at blogging was through the free hosted WordPress website. This was great but it didn’t give me the flexibility that I wanted so I decided to register my own domain and hosted it on that. It was surprisingly easy to set up but then I didn’t get any visitors!! When you have a free blog with WordPress, you are instantly visible to the thousands of readers!! When you set up your own blog on your own domain, you are then invisible to the world.. you need to market the site and pull in your readers. This involved registering my blog to all the blog directories that I could find.
Slowly but surely, visitors were coming and soon I had gained a Google Page Rank of 3….
I’m hoping to grow the blog as much as I can but essentially, the blog is currently my S&P emini trading journal.. I am documenting my trades, my thought processes which I hope will help me learn from my mistakes and become a successful trader.
For those that have followed my blog, you will know that I joined a trading academy around July time pretty much the same time I started this.
It wasn’t too difficult to get into the trading academy, they give you an interview and a stress test disguised as a maths test. Of course, there are the hefty training fees which you have to cover.
Ok, why join a trading academy? Well, if you make it, you’re back by company funds. They do take 50% of the profits you make but if you make it at this stage, then the risk is with them. Obviously, there’s the buffer zone that your training fees cover for them.
The long term goal is that both parties win, you make money, they make money!
Anyway, I made a heap of mistakes at the begining and my discipline is poor. It’s still bad but it got better the more I did under the tuition of the allocated mentor that you get.
Just a few weeks ago, I got the call and they put me on the live account… hoorah, I made it before the New Year…
Trading psychology is paramount to whether you make it in this game.. you need good discipline and you can let the emotions get the better of you.. I wrote about this prior to going live and soon afterwards but even though I was aware of it, I didn’t do so well.. I had 3 losing days in a row (admitedly, one day wasn’t my trading but with the restrictions that had been put on my account which meant I couldn’t close out a profitable trade which then became a loss).
I was soon demoted and back on the simulator which was a bit of a disappointment considering all the hard work!! Anyway, the obvious thing for me is to get back on the simulator and get back the trading psychology I had prior to going live.
Ok, this article is becoming a bit long so I’ll stop here and post again when I get a chance.
Please note that I won’t be trading until the New Year now… low volumes mean that you you’ll be privy to whipsaws and stop running!!
