We would like to introduce Mark who recently completed our In-house Systems Building Workshop, and is also on his way to becoming a full-time trader!

Below you will find out more about his journey.

Introduction

My Journey into trading began back in 2007 when I attended an Anthony Robbins Seminar. Here I was introduced to a smorgasbord of Trading and Investment companies, all pitching their content to either get you enrolled in their courses or to directly invest through their brokers.

I had a very basic knowledge of stocks at the time, having previously subscribed to an Investing course which would post a newsletter every fortnight (this was before the internet really kicked off).

The newsletter had some sound advice and tips for newbies and if I was going to take any of this advice on board, it was going to be that the market would likely have a sizable correction/crash every 7 years (on average).

So with this in mind off I went.

After the first day I was hooked and was blown away. I was like a kid in a candy shop. Little did I know I was the kid in the Candy shop without a toothbrush and was about to lose all my teeth!

Looking back I know it was pure greed mixed with an unhealthy dose of lack of knowledge and experience. I was like a rabid dog foaming at the mouth ready to dive in head first! I had just freed up a sizable amount of cash from the equity in my home and it all seemed like a no-brainer. Little did I know my bank account was soon to look like a USDCHF chart from the middle of Jan 2015!

Now I have nothing against any of the brokers I dealt with, even though I lost a lot of money. Looking back at these charts and knowing what I know now I realised there was no value at buying at those levels.

At that time I also enrolled in a course that focused on Futures trading, which led me further down the track to online trading of CFD’s, some Binary trading, and Options trading. This ultimately led to my favourite platform being Metatrader 4.

Looking back I have spent tens of thousands of dollars on trading courses, with most of them well worth the money. The only problem there is I’ve spent so much on courses it’s left me with very little to trade with.

The second issue for me is finding time to trade how I would love to trade, which is why I’m at this point in my journey. Developing my own trading strategies into an automated system, to trade for you 24 hours a day through Metatrader, is the only way I’ve found to make money consistently in trading (whilst having many other things to do in life!)

Brief background about your trading

I first started trading through leveraged shares, whilst using put protection. For me the main issue was because I’d gone in very heavy in my first 3 trades on a sizable margin loan (thinking at least one position would go into profit), monthly interest charges over 12 months quickly began eating into profits. Around the same time I had taken a course on E-Minis Futures trading where I learnt a lot of my basics to do with technical tools- such as Pivot points, Stochastics, Trend and Divergence. This was was all new and great, however most of the action was taking place when I really wasn’t able to trade (i.e in the middle of the night).

From there I was introduced to CFD’s which I began to trade during the day whilst at work (just on my breaks of course!).

Over the years I began to dabble in some Binary and Options trading, whilst still attending and studying other trading courses, as well as reading through all the trading forums, and watching hundreds of YouTube videos on trading.

But most of my time was still spent studying charts to the point of obsession. If I had one tip here to anyone starting out in trading it would be: Study your charts with an open mind!

The other thing here I feel I need to point out is the importance of having a trading buddy. One of my very best mates “Jim” who has been through just as much as I have early on has been fantastic to have around, as we’re always bouncing trading ideas off each other.

Over the last five years- I have been dedicated to trading through the Metatrader platform both via Manual trading, Semi Automated Trading and fully automated trading.

I purchased some of these automated systems, and programmed others myself. Now after attending Trade View’s In-house Systems Building Workshop, I’ve begun to create my own.

What you learnt at Trade View?

Trade View are the real deal.

The first day of the workshop was brilliant with Rob and the boys covering all of the essential basics to surviving in the world of trading.

It was great to be reminded of some of the most basic things required to be a successful trader ie:

• Having a trading plan
• Having sound risk management

I’ve heard this a million times before, but for some reason Rob seemed to be able to drive that message home better than anyone has before.

The big thing for me was the second day- that I was really blown away with.

That’s when the team teach you the basics of building your own Automated systems, and how to test them in minutes: to find out whether you’re on the right path to a profitable strategy, or if you’re barking up the wrong tree!

For me this was absolutely gold. With all the ideas that constantly pop into mind, being able to put them into your own system and test it all within an hour sometimes (depending on how complex your strategy is).

I’d also like to say that the back-up support from these boys is first class (special thanks to Bisher and Elay).

I often chat with Bisher on a weekly basis to catch up on how my progress is going.

What are some of your successes and failures while learning to trade?

My biggest failures are definitely from the beginning.

Putting too much faith in other people, but in a way I thank them because they forced my hand to search for better ways to trade.

My two worst trades were in AMP and Bluescope Steel. After 12 months of purchasing these shares they were worth roughly a third of their price. A tough pill to swallow but lesson learnt.

My biggest successes happened just recently when an Automated Strategy I had created pulled in over 12,000 pips in a month. Unfortunately this strategy took a hit the following month, and the challenge now is to apply some filters so I still have the big wins, but much smaller losses.

What are your future Goals?

My future goals is to create a steady and fruitful income from trading.

The lads at Trade View definitely know their stuff and my main goal here would be follow their advice and get a number of profitable Automated Strategies (that require minimum input on my behalf) operating in the background.

Again this is all towards making steady, compounding profits to allow me to achieve more goals in the future.

Being the manager of a business myself, I think of Automated Strategies like really good employees. If you put in the work and give them the respect they deserve, they will go about their business with minimum fuss and help take your business to new levels.