Archive through 15 December, 2002

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spider

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Post Number: 10
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Monday, November 18, 2002 - 04:20 pm:

Trading can be a solitary profession. It would be nice to have someone to talk with who understands trading, doesn't have to be too heavy, more of an excuse to get together with like minded people. I live about as far East as you can get and still be in Melbourne, but I do have wheels, so we could meet almost anywhere. What do you think?

dicky

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Wednesday, November 20, 2002 - 03:30 pm:

Hey spider.

I live in the Frankston area, but i wouldn't mind travelling a bit for meetings. I think the benefits would certainly outweigh the travel time.

spider

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Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 03:00 pm:

Yo Dicky, read your post, Frankston not that bad, I spend a lot of time in the city, maybe we could split the difference. You can e mail me by clicking on my link in the left margin - then select CLICK HERE. Hope it has been a good week for you. Spider.

Administrators note: please do not include email addresses in your posts - you will get a huge amount of spam if you do

(Message edited by colin_twiggs on November 21, 2002)

spider

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Friday, November 29, 2002 - 01:12 pm:

Eastern Suburbs group (got to get an acronim for that that, or even change the name as the Spider seems to be the only one from the eas!) is meeting on Wednesday at Ptony pizza on Clarendon St South Melbourne opposite Coles, pizza, parking, and cold beer what else could you ask for? We are currently only a small group, but from the sounds of it enthusiastic (most are traveling a distance to get there) so if you would like to joint us you would be welcome. Nothing heavy, just a chance to get together and swap some stories. Spider. PS. please let us know if you are coming.

spider

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Post Number: 39
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Wednesday, December 04, 2002 - 11:06 pm:

The Melbourne Eastern Suburbs group had it's first meeting tonight.
As I expected, we are a diverse group of people with a common passion for trading. The pizza was good and the conversation was better, heard some great stories, told a couple as well! Three ladies present as well as eight fellas. This was an amazing turn up considering the short notice. Will probably need a bigger venue for our next meeting (January 12 Sunday at 1.00pm venue to be decided)
I read somewhere, that if you want to become a good person you should associate with good people, well that was what I was lucky enough to do this evening!
We found out where each of our usernames originated from, each member said what their focus was at the start of a trading session. There was lots of discussion as to what shares were 'hot' or 'cold' , and plenty of talk about trading style and prefered indicators.
Several members expressed a strong desire to focus on trading issues. Partly for that reason we have shifted our next meeting to a Sunday arvo to give us more time. The discussion was still roaring along when I had to leave. For all I know it's still going!
Carn't tell you what a pleasure it was to be amongst a group of people that I could talk to and not have to explain every second word.
I hope everyone had as much fun as I had, and I look forward to our next meeting. Spider.

uturn

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Thursday, December 05, 2002 - 05:54 pm:

Great night spider!

Some people talk too much.....wait on....
I think it was me!

Cheers.......

dicky

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Friday, December 06, 2002 - 08:34 am:

I totally agree Spider.

I must admit, from the short time we all had ( well it seemed short to me ), it seemed we had a very dynamic and diverse group. Unfortunately sitting in the middlish area of the table, sometimes i didn't know which way to turn my head, the only downfall of the night.

I also drove home and all i heard in the background were little voices saying " W & M's .... W & M's". Fortunately these voices have gone now, but i'm still intrigued by these little things, there seemed to be a LOT of discussion about them lol.

As for the 12th, I'm working :-(

. Got home and checked my calender to my disgust. It's the LAST Sunday i'm working though so i shouldn't be tooo disappointed.

Anyway catch you all later.

P.S. Bill, next meeting i show up to, if you'd like, we can sit down for an hour or so and go through your stochastic idea in metastock to see if it works in there.

spider

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Sunday, December 08, 2002 - 11:34 pm:

I've been thinking a lot about this lately, particularly since we had our first traders group meeting.. We all need mentors in life in general and in trading in particular.
When you were a little tacker did you have a particular teacher(s) who took an interest in you, someone who you 'clicked' with. Did it make a difference to your life, it sure as hell did in mine! If you were lucky maybe your mum or dad had the time to be one of your mentors, or maybe it was the bloke next door, as it was in my case, who saw something special in you and took the time to encourage and guide you. It doesn't matter where they came from ,it only matters that they were there.
HOW DO YOU FIND A MENTOR?
Trading is a little different to most professions,we are by necessity, solitary creatures, a bit like possums! But we do need encouragement and direction if we are to succeed.
The obvious place to start is with the written word, and if you are a regular visitor to this site you will be familiar with some of the books that other traders have found useful. These books represent the trading style of the person who wrote it, so in a real sense, they can lead you.
Finding a "real live" mentor can be a bit more difficult. Chris Tate and Louise Bedford have started a mentoring program but, these are busy successful traders, so their help (rightly so) does not come cheap. So if you are starting out as I did, with less than zero bucks, this option is probably not for you, at the moment.
The IC forum could be a way for you to receive some of the support that you need, I have been amazed by the level of knowledge and the willingness to help ,that people on this forum exhibit.
A bit of 'face to face' doesn't go astray either, so if you get the chance to be a part of a traders group go for it. The energy and drive to succeed in our little group is amazing, you cannot help but be positively effected.
You may believe that you do not have anything to give because you have so much to learn, you might be surprised by how much you already know!
If you get the chance to help someone then do it, but remember that it is a good idea to wait to be asked.
There is a very old, and wise , saying that if you want to learn how to do something then go teach it to someone else. I have found this to be true! Whenever I have received an e mail asking me about some area of trading, I have found that I have to think very hard about why I do do things a certain way. Conversely, when I read another persons post, it forces me to think about how I would approach that situation.
If you have the time I would love to know how you got started in trading and, who have been your mentos along the way.The Spider has two sore fingers from typing so thats it, with eight legs you would think that I would learn to type with more than two of them, "old spiders/new tricks".
Looking forward to hearing from you so get to it dudes. Spider.

dicky

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Post Number: 12
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Monday, December 09, 2002 - 05:56 pm:

Ok .. for the long story ??

I first got started in "Shares" about 12 years ago. I work for BHP and they started an employee shares scheme. Basically they sold you 1000 shares, but then gave us all a 20 year interest free loan with which to pay it off. The only condition is that the dividends had to go to paying the loan off. In essence we didn't pay a cent, money for Jam. Anyway i've been with the company for 13 years now and have taken up all their share offers, have seen the splits and spinoffs and never had the urge to sell the shares. It was purely investment and i've seen my shares more than double. Although i should have probably made a lot more.

About 6 years ago i started putting money in an investment management fund ( NEVER AGAIN ) and basically my money was stagnate for 3 years before i woke up to myself. NEVER EVER AGAIN.

3 years ago i opened up a trading account. At the time i was going to just invest money. My first trade was NAB at around $21. I was going to hold these for years. Well a few days later they went to $23 so i sold them for a quick buck. Of course they came down again and i rebought etc. etc. This was my trading style for years. Still is to some degree. I never used indicators, moving averages or even charts. Just the price history.

So now for the future. I've never really got out of that old mentality. I don't stress if stocks go down, because i deal with mainly blue chip stocks and they nearly always bounce back. So i haven't lost money, but i haven't made as much as i possibly should have. I work at around 15-20% p/a. Better than a bank tho.

My problem now is that i face the very real prospect of being laid off from work. My hobby could very soon become my full time profession. A lot of things are going to have to change, which is mainly why i was so interested in this group. The steep learning curve is going to have to get steeper. More importantly my 15-20% will have to increase a little bit.

Anyway i've rambled enough. This has to be a record post for me lol.

ciao

spider

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Monday, December 09, 2002 - 09:09 pm:

Yo dicky,
cool that you took the time to post. I don't think you realise how successful you have been. You saw a golden opportunity with the offer that BHP put to you and you grabbed it, VERY COOL!
And how about that p/a! I know traders that would give an arm for that return on their trading pool (helps if you have heaps of arms like the Spider!). I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry to change your trading style, you've got a system that works! Your 'laid back' style has probably contributed to your success, stay with what works. The 'option writing' that we spoke about might be one way to add to your already successful system.
Your mention of 'per annum' return brings up an interesting point. This is the first time, on this forum, that I have heard anyone mention percentage return!
The Spider aims for a 20 to 30% increase in his trading pool. I know this doesn't sound like much, but I have found that this level keeps me from "trying too hard". You know what I mean............ going for marginal trades, chasing things that arn't there, and then watching my profits disappear in costs.
So here is another question for you dudes....... What is your profit target for a year (%) and how did you arrive at that %figure?
I know that the Spider is a 'sticky beak', but I get bored sitting in this web all day, I need a little diversion. Spider.

dicky

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Monday, December 09, 2002 - 09:46 pm:

I don't have a profit target for a year and to be honest if i didn't have to do tax returns i'd probably never know where i was ( I'm a hopeless bookkeeper). But basically i have a pool of money, let's say $100,000 ( it's not that figure by the way ), in my trading account, comprised of shares and cash. Divide the money i make over the year into it ( rises and dividends) and hey presto. I don't add anything i haven't sold because i don't believe i've made any money until i've sold it. I have a margin lending account but use it so rarely it wouldn't count for anything.

I don't know if that's right or wrong, i know the figure would be a lot higher if i annualised each individual trade, which i've seen some people do, but i couldn't be bothered. The main thing i've done is seperated my trading money from my real money to make life easier.

Things may change if i make a career out of it tho ... HMMMMM ... scary thought. May actually have to sit down and do a trading plan one day lol.

arthurbach4

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Wednesday, December 11, 2002 - 11:20 am:

Being a newbie means you are forced to ask questions you know are going to have people cringing with embarassment.

But what the hey.

Spider, if you annualise lets say 30% for the year and you are a full time trader - doesn't that mean to make any sort of decent living you would need to have at least $100,000 as your base capital??

ie. 30% of $100,000 = $30,000

If this is correct, how do people scratch together that kind of dough to be able to live soley off trading????

Is my maths correct or do I need to be slapped in the face by a German maths frauline (good spelling)

Peter.

spider

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Wednesday, December 11, 2002 - 12:26 pm:

Yo arthurbach4,
there is nothing wrong with your maths.
Firstly this is my goal now. When I started I had $800. My first trade turned this into $5000. (Bull market, three months worth of research, only checking the price once a week in the paper, and a very interesting situation that I did not find out about until 18 months later.... one day I will tell you that story).
I took that amount, bought a wiz bang computer and charting package, and away I went.
I built my trading pool slowly, got wiped out after about two years, stopped trading for a year, saved up some more money and traded again.
Even though times were extremely tough during these years I put every cent I could lay my hands on into my trading pool.
You asked how do people scratch together that kind of money? Have you ever heard of the 10% rule? In a nutshell it is this...... say you start work at 18 and you put aside 10% of everything that you earn, you put it into an account so that it earns interest, or you invest it, always reinvesting the interest, by the time you are 45 you would have between $300,000 and $500,000 depending on the rate of interest you got! If you are not amazed by that you should be. Einstein said that the most powerful force in the universe was COMPOUND INTEREST!!!!!!!!!!!
I only discovered this 12 years ago, but even in that short time it has enabled me to build on my trading pool.
Also, in the early days I broke most of the money management rules. I had to. That is why I got wiped out once, but it couldn't be helped, I had to be more aggressive, I don't have the advantage of youth, compound interest is at its best if you apply it when you are young.
This is a business, what would you expect to pay for a business that would allow you the freedom that trading does. Even a small franchise could cost you $250,000 plus.
I know it sounds daunting. But I also know that if you focus on the money it changes the way you trade.
Do whatever you have to do to get your stake and then take it one trade at a time.
There are other ways that you can get access to capital especially if you have equity in your home, but I would not suggest this until the money is no longer important to you! Sounds dumb doesn't it? Essentially I would say that you should never risk money that you cannot afford to loose!!!!!!!!!!
The Spider's trademark is patience and persistence. One trade at a time, one dollar at a time, do whatever it takes, and as Winston Churchill said, "NEVER GIVE UP!!".
Watch out for those German chicks! Spider.

dicky

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Wednesday, December 11, 2002 - 02:27 pm: