Trading is tough. How many more times can you sit and take another red day – down $50 bucks, $100 or even a few hundred or thousand.
When you’re down at the end of the day, it’s a deep-seated ill feeling that you could be wasting your time, money and energy into something that everyone else can already see is a failed project.
But, when you’re up, you’ve got it, you’ve made it, and you’re never going back to losing ways again.
Throughout my trading journey over the past ten months I’ve constantly flip-flopped between these mind-sets.
In just ten months, I’ve already seen faces come and go, I’ve shared many commissaries with people who’ve lost but I’ve also shared a fair share of euphoria.
Throughout, I’ve made some incredible realisations through a number of occurrences which I can only describe as waves of learning.
I can’t understand how anyone can ever give up – or quit – trading, for me, the feeling of progress is so satisfying it outweighs most other sources of happiness – if not every source.
The only thing that comes close is family, love of a woman, and a strong bond between friends.
In the past 10 months, learning with Tim Sykes on Silver and roughly now 4 months in the challenge, I feel I’m ready to shed my wings – fly into the unknown so to speak.
Tim Sykes, Mark Crook, Tim Bohen and Tim Grittani have taught me how to trade stocks. I’m self-sufficient now. By that I mean I trade the same stocks as the aforementioned, I see most patterns the same way and I find myself in similar stocks as the team on the challenge.
My battle now lies with myself, becoming more disciplined, being more selective in my trades, waiting for the right set-ups. I’ve defined a set way of making money and managed to stay profitable or flat over the past 6 weeks. Only this last week I became reckless because I knew I could take chances on otherwise positive month on months stats.
Any loss has been purely based on a lack of discipline in a quiet market. So, to get me to this position, I fully thank Tim Sykes and his team for doing a brilliant job of teaching me to trade stocks.
He has 100% committed to fulfilling his promise to teach me and has over-extended himself to help me. I’ve never met anyone who replies to emails as fast as this man.
But in reality, the next half of the journey is on my shoulders.
Of course I will still watch every webinar and video lesson obsessively – because I love them and you always pick up nuggets of information and it helps identify market changes. But I know now, genuinely, the last stretch to profitability lies on my own shoulders.
We are told from a young age: ‘get off that’ or ‘you can’t have this toy or go out with that person’.
Our entire life we’re used to being denied things in life. Then, in front of the market, it’s our first sense of true freedom, able to indulge and trust our self with no limits.
We’re free to chase that feeling of euphoria that comes with correctly predicting a trade or taking money from the market – making a gain as another man makes a loss. The vindication that we were right all along when others didn’t give us a chance.
But unfortunately, the market is actually the one place which requires discipline more than any other environment.
I believe it isn’t technical analysis, but rather true discipline, that separates a losing trader from a winning one.
In reality you need both, but now I need to focus on my discipline and I know once I do, profits will flow.
Lastly, I want to say that I’m so grateful for this life-changing journey. I’ve learnt that hard work can bring incredible results.
My YouTube channel will shortly cross 100k views – an achievement I never thought I could possibly manage. Thanks to you guys. So, thanks I guess.
And thanks Tim and team – you guys have been awesome and when I’m profitable I’m going to shout your names until my dying days – which I hope will be far, far away as I have way too much to accomplish in the next 50 plus years.