Not so long ago I had a one-to-one session with a friend of a friend who wanted to get into financial spread betting. Although he was more than happy with what he paid for the “education” I provided, I could tell in his eyes and in his voice that he wanted something else, something that I didn’t give him. That something was “excitement”.
Ah, I remember it well – those days when I to dreamed of quitting the rat race to make millions from the comfort of my own home after having read just a few books about financial trading. How I imagined myself metaphorically shouting “buy” into one phone while simultaneously shouting “sell” into the other phone. Yes, that’s what he was thinking too.
I was sorry to have to tell him, and I’m sorry to have to tell you, that it really isn’t like that. It can be a hard and costly slog learning the spread betting ropes, and you can take two steps backwards for every three steps forward on the road to achieving any degree of consistency. And when you think you’ve got it cracked, the market will humble you once again. Or even worse, it won’t, and you’ll think you’re the master of the universe that you always believed you were.
And yet, I have found that if you forget about the excitement and the lure of the untold riches, and concentrate on devising an approach (like my preferred position trading approach) that reduces risk (perhaps using stop orders) then one day something good might happen. It might surprise you with how big it is and how fast it happens. How exciting! But then you’ll have to sit back, persist with your strategy, and be patient while you wait for it to happen again.
I know it’s not what you want to hear, but it’s the way it is.