I began trading during the last year in college.  It was 1985 and I started with $1000 in my account.  I placed my trades on a dedicated connection via dial-up modem.  And I did most of my preliminary research using the Investors Business Daily newspaper.  All I was concerned with was the Moving Averages of the technology stocks I traded.  With some basic knowledge of buying trending stocks I managed to nearly match my annual salary in profits.  For 5 years I did this on a part-time basis while working full-time in tech companies.  Later in 2000 I decided to pursue my personal passion of trading by becoming a stockbroker.  This is where I began my "insider" education in stock trading.  I gained understanding of the workings behind IPOs, investment banking and analysts' research.  Soon in the early 90's PC-based charting programs began to appear.  I utilized my background in programming to design custom scans and wrote code for my own buy/sell indicators. These personally designed indicators, based on statistics and volume analysis, were a hit with my customers. Suddenly I gained recognition for being the charting stockbroker and was the only person with this expertise in my firm.  Additionally, upon completion of MBA Business classes, I was able to analyze financial statements to give me a further edge in understanding cash flows and stock price valuations.  Then I took my trading career to the next level and became an Institutional Sell Side Trader where I specialized in trading telecom stocks.  Several years later, my self-taught trading ability led me to obtain the highly sought after job of Market Maker Trader during the Dot-com explosion.  As a MM I traded millions of shares per day with skys-the-limit buying power.  Then before the Dot-com crash I decided to go out on my own, convinced I could easily become an independent trader.  Unfortunately, trading just my own account was more difficult than I had imagined.  Though I had obtained invaluable on-the-job trading experience I had a difficult time transitioning.  It was at that point I immediately realized I had to step up my entire trading game, in particular I had to improve my mental focus and discipline.  Also, I realized that mastering the psychology of the trade was the key to consistency and longevity.

With this blog I intend to share some of the intuition I gained over the past 30 years to help traders persevere.  The goals of this blog are to assist the novice trader in becoming profitable, to provide invaluable tips to all traders on how to self-improve, to help take traders to the next level, to assist in the recovery of traders on a losing streak, to expose some of the unforeseen traps which lead to trading disaster, to shed light on the trading of actionable information in real time, etc.

This is just the beginning...  Welcome to my world!

I attained the following FINRA licenses:

Series 7 General Securities Representative
Series 8 General Securities Sales Supervisor
Series 55 Limited Representative-Equity Trader

I've held the following professional job titles:

NASDAQ Market Maker
Head Trader, Proprietary Trading
Institutional Sales Trader
Proprietary Trader
Registered Representative (stockbroker)
Branch Manager

My expertise in trading has evolved from interactions with:

Trading
Investment Banking
Mutual Funds
Hedge Funds
Proprietary Trading
Institutional Funds
Mergers and Acquisitions

© 1 Trader and jcspe85.blog.com, 2015.