What got me into trading ?

George Soros.

Sounds strange, but there's a simple explanation.

Before Soros became famous I never even remotely thought that trading could be a way to make consistent money.

If I ever thought about trading at all I suppose I put it on a level with gambling: entertaining, but with the odds against you and therefore not a means to generate income.

That changed when Soros made his bet against the pound and earned over USD 1 Billion in a couple of days.

His feat firmly moved him into the limelight as he was covered by the worlds media. That was my personal wake-up call that in the professional world of trading and investing there were people who had been earning superb money with pretty good consistency over decades.

What I also found interesting was that trading was primarily a means to an end to him, a means to make money to finance his causes. His main ambition was putting a good portion of the money he was regularly making to spreading democracy around Eastern Europe where he came from.

I found that combination very attractive, making money and adding value added to society.

That got me thinking, and with admittedly lots of hubris I decided that if there are others out there succeeding consistently at trading that that proves that it is generally possible, and, secondly, when something is generally possible, that I would do everything in my power to succeed at that as well.

Took me some 8 years after Soros' famous feat, I finished my studies and graduated with a Masters in Politics first, did what I'd also always wanted to do, work for myself, accordingly went on to take my first entrepreneurial steps, eventually received an offer and sold out, wasn't a fortune but enough for a starting stake, so then I decided that from that point onwards it would be trading, and I just jumped in.

Read everything I could from people who had actually made their bundle from trading, not from writing about trading...

met lots of other traders online...

visited lots of traders at home or in their offices to see their setups and what they do...

discovered that there is a very strong correlation between the KISS crowd who believe that markets are nothing more than the sum of their participants who are all doing their own thing in their own way and own time frame, meaning net profitable trading is primarily a probability game...

and on the other hand the oooh la la life is very complex and markets even more so crowd who believed that success in markets is down to cracking a secret system hiding behind an elusive holy grail that somehow manages to conduct all market participants in a mysterious way with a magical wand, that crowd had lots of theories about everything and it's cousins but unfortunately tended to prefer being right over making money...

I had always believed in the validity of Ockhams razor, who observed that all other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best.

All other things in trading seemed decidely equal, so KISS it was.

Identify a trend, jump onboard, ride it as long as it's intact in your chosen timeframe, and keep your losses small.

To be honest I must admit that it still took me pretty long before I turned the corner from net loser to net winner, but with dogged determination I never let go of the objective of making it.

Think that is one of the main driving elements of success anyway, not superior brains or a superior business model (Apple vs Microsoft anyone) or anything, no, while having those won't harm you of greater success relevance are focus, determination, experience (10 000 hours) and perseverance, falling off the horse a lot just like everybody else, but not being afraid of re-experiencing failure, and just getting right back on again.

I definitely agree with this:

"Malcolm Gladwell says that if you want to shine, put in 10,000 hours

A new book by the Tories’ favourite sociologist claims practice is the secret of success in sport, business, art and science"

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article4969415.ece

I turned the corner when I learned to totally let go of the individual trade as completely inconsequential in the big scheme of thousands of trades during your career. Once I learned that winning percentages don't mean much, that good risk / reward ratios where your winners are bigger than your losers are much more important,  that good trades you entered per your rules can and will end up losers sometimes, once I learned to accept that losing is just a cost of doing business as a trader, once I learned to simply play out my edge the way it is supposed to be played out, not get upset by losses nor euphoric by winning trades, that's when I turned the corner.

I made it once I learned to let go.

Wu Wei...

Doing without doing.

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