What was your entire journey to become a full-time independent trader?

Posted on 18 October 2018

I have answered this question many times so what comes next is copied from what I have already written.

To start with few mistakes I made and difficulties faced: -

1. I knew nothing about trading.

2. Understanding finance terms was a challenge. Especially economic times. Subjects were alien to me.

3. Most difficult part was understanding call and put options. Different combinations of those still are. I know how the option geek works but never found them useful.

4. Always underestimated money management.

5. Should have been first but I think it comes with experience. Learning to take a loss and get out of the bad trades. Either hitting a stoploss or exiting when something seems fishy.

6. Trying to be right than to accept that I can make a bad trade.

7. Trying to cover losses with a single good trade. When it goes wrong, holding on to it.

8. Taking a trade without proper reason and not having an exit plan or a worst case scenario.

9. Looking for tips and services. Now all are in blocked list.

10. Never trust the brokers call even if they call you specifically and tell you that you are very special client and it is a star call. Believe on your analysis.

11. Not keeping a journal of the trades. It helps you analyse whether your method is working.

12. Fretting over wrong trades.

Story Part; -

I graduated. Came home. Father showed me profit of a single trade in one day. All of a sudden I knew this is what I wanted to do.

• I started trading without knowing any thing. Foolish move. Blew my account.

• From a popup add I ordered some day trading books. Read those and that is when I changed my broker and started using charts. Made some profits but blew my account again.

• Headed to some trading forum looking for ultimate strategies while ignoring common business sense. Without back testing any indicator started trading and blew my last account again.

• Still solid, opted for study and pursued MBA Finance for knowledge. Didn't help me in traded but made me a better version of my self. Got a job in second year but side by side kept tracking stock markets. Started many time with as little as 10k but ultimately blew it in the hopes of making castle out of it.

• Then finally had to do job from 2012 till 2017. Side by side working on strategies. Paper trading. Then whatever these books teach, I found out in my 5 year back testing. I made some methods which gave me steady 4 to 5 % risk free profits on capital traded. This is the time when I learnt, diversification, mitigating loss, cutting bad trades, risk reward etc and kept improving. But returns were not so much that it can sustain my expense and saving. So kept waiting for money.

• I got married in between and knew its now or never. I had to take a leap of faith in my self. I knew my steady and low profit way was not sufficient but real time market scenario may give more profits and I might succeed. I resigned from the job. Arranged money in my notice period. And started trading.

Its my third month. Its my 6th month as a full time trader. I have been bear, bull and sideways during this period and it turned out fine. Profits are increasing every month.