Things I've learned Trading and Investing:

Yes, I do now make money at trading. However, it wasn't easy. First of all trading is not a way to get rich. It could be if you hit every trade right, got into the right instrument at the right time, got out at the right time, and then put all the profits back into the next trade. Nice Dream. In reality there are a lot of factors that can waylay you and you will learn a lot about yourself in the process. Whether you succeed at it or not will be determined by how well you control your fear and your greed combined with what you learn. Never stop learning.

You can even make a good living at trading if you have enough money to work with, and treat it like a business. Never use money you need to live on. You have to have a business plan and do what the plan calls for especially when your emotions tell you otherwise. Your emotions will betray you if you don't rule over them with truth & knowledge. Professional traders for clients and mutual funds consider themselves good if they make 10-20% per year on the money, and lucky if they make more on a consistent basis. An individual can outperform a professional if they have knowledge, and the knack for the combination of art and science required, and are able to control their emotions enough to follow a sensible plan. Why? because the money the individual moves won't move the market, while a professional has to be more careful.

I invested over 50K on various classes and travel to them. I got and used online tutorials. I joined a trading club. I learned about nearly every possible trading method, technical and fundamental analysis, stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, options, etc. I also traded at the same time. It would have been better if I'd followed the advice to "paper trade" first, then trade with small amounts as proof of concept. I got to where I knew too much without the experience to turn that knowledge into wisdom. Thus it was easy to have my multitude of plans to be shifting sands. I needed the thrill to stay interested. To bad it wasn't the thrill of victory often enough. This isn't trading, it's gambling. Acceptable risks are good and necessary, and a sizable percentage are rewarded. Excessive risk however is stupid.

I spent (lost?) another 100K+ in losses during my training period. Learning about loss cuts and emotions. This is where your either don't have loss cuts defined, or you don't take them hoping it'll go back up, but it doesn't within your timeframe, you finally take it, and then perhaps later it does go back up, and you wish you hadn't. Or it pulls an Enron. Yes, I rode Enron long enough. In the meantime your money is unavailable for better opportunities whether you took the cut or not.

The flip side is where I'd pick a winner. And I'd keep thinking it would go up more, and maybe it would. But eventually it would turn around. You have to have a target where you say that's enough and take the profit, or at least keep moving your stop loss up.... or we are right back to the prior paragraph. Makes for great stories, but it's not stories we are after. We should be after profits. Consistent profits. To do that we will also have consistent losses. Part of the plan needs to be keeping the losses smaller than the gains.

There was a time when Virginia was in the hospital, and and our money had run out. We had no insurance. At this point I had been educating myself and trading more than full time for well over a year. I had all the best equipment, all the videos and books, and yet I was still losing money because of my letting emotions get the best of me on a regular basis.

It was then that I gave up, I asked God for wisdom, direction, continue or quit, get a job or keep at it. Two days later God gave me a specific trading plan. It seemed too risky. I told God, ok, I'll do one trade and if it works, I'll follow this plan for 3 more. And if those work, I'll keep doing it. Well they worked, and nearly every trade was a winner for months. 15K turned into 150K in 7 months. The only trades that were not winners I had broken the rules on.

During the seventh month God told me twice to stop using this plan. It's season was over. I didn't get it, I didn't believe it. Well, He'd warned me, but as always he allows our own free will to rule. God didn't force me to stop. All of a sudden the losers were bigger than the winners. One was horrible, costing me over half of what I'd made in those 7 months in about 2 weeks. I should have listened. But this is always the result of putting our will ahead of God's. God knows and wants what's best for us, but he gives us the choice to cooperate or not. And then cause and effect will rule.

I look forward to the season for this plan to come around again. In the meantime I have resorted to a very cautious plan that makes small but consistent gains by using technical analysis to enter into trades, cutting losers short and moving stop losses up under winners while having a target in mind for when to take it. I get only into trending stocks, and get in on pull backs turning again. I watch trends in industries and economies. I make very few trades, and monitor them very closely.

Because of the amount of money we took out of the brokerage accounts, and spent while going to school I cannot currently take more money out of the brokerage accounts without terminating any trading, and closing the accounts. They need time to grow, and perhaps God will again show me a super success plan for a season and a specific purpose. For now, slow steady growth is best. God clearly agrees, witness his principle of sowing and reaping, mentioned throughout the bible.

Well, God got my attention. I decided to go to Bible College to learn more about him, to build personal relationship with him, to hear from him. School hours were the same as trading hours; therefore this was a big leap of faith to give up my livelihood for a substantial amount of time. Regardless of the possible financial consequences, this was the most important thing in my life. To know that I can trust him that he loves me and has my best interests in mind. If I can hear from God, what else matters? How would you like a friend that both loves you, and knows everything there is to be known?

Emotions are to make life enjoyable, and to warn you of potential problems. To allow you to make connections with others that last. They are not intended to guide your life, or to be used when making decisions. This applies in all areas of life. It is intended that we learn, and live our lives rationally. Enjoy emotions, but make intelligent decisions based on knowledge of cause and effect. Do the cause, it will have an effect, for better or worse.

Yes, I continue trading, it would be a shame to waste all that I have learned and invested. But I have to put God first. So for now, develping my personal relationship with God, Bible School and Bible Study and this web site come first. I'm not trying to become wealthy trading. I'm just being confident that God does not let us go through anything for nothing, that he finds ways to use what we enjoy doing. I serve him, and trust that while I do what I know to do, according to his will and word, he'll take care of, and even prosper me beyond the necessities.

Click Here to see links to some of the "Best of Class" trading resources I still use or would recommend out of the hundreds, if not thousands I tried. Some even pay subscriptions for. I am also testing the waters with a small amount of money on a number of Online Internet Income Opportunities. Results so far have been mixed, with more recent efforts being more promising than earlier ones.