The beginning of my new life as a trader

Let's start at the beginning shall we?

It was a chill spring day, and I'd just been experiencing my first lesson in greed from trading shares. I'll not embarrass myself by explaining it in detail, but suffice to say that I got burned for a significant amount of my initial seed capital.

This could have put me off trading in stocks and shares, and...in a way...it did.

What it did succeed in doing was pointing me towards Traders University's 'Secret Millionaire' seminar. During this FREE seminar, so they tell me, I would learn all of the skills to be a succesful, rich trader for the princely investment of 30 minutes of my time each day...or thereabouts.

They did enough during this seminar in the middle of March 2009 to persuade me that it was genuinely possible to take a small amount of money (like what I had left over from my initial dabbling in shares) and turn it into a real fortune!

Obviously, to achieve this would take much more 'training' and 'coaching' and (amazingly) they did have the forms at the ready for me to sign up for their full-on, intensive training course at their Fulham headquarters. Give the guys their due, the product sells itself well and it wasn't a 'full-on' hard selling experience - which actually worked in their favour as hard selling really puts me off.

I signed up almost immediately...the wife and I had a discussion about the sales tactics used, the psychology of the seminar (timing and use of words was pretty slick and persuasive), and eventually decided that the gains from attending were likely worth it...and thus began a period of watching and waiting for something to happen before my course started.

Now, forgive me, but I must comment that the pre-course 'mentoring' that was offered wasn't exactly as I had imagined it being in my own head. I had visions of being walked through the process of setting up my accounts, detailed discussions on the pro's and con's of the various charting packages to identify the most appropriate, and probably a lot more personal contact than actually occurred.

It's my single largest criticism of the course, the fact that they recommend ShareScope during the weekend long course but don't make that clear during the sign up phase. I committed to ADVFN, the cheaper of the two options, based on price as the girl who telephoned me didn't make it clear enough that there was actually a preferred option.

However, ADVFN (so far) seems up to the job - therefore I'm not screaming quite just yet!

(update - 1 week after starting on ADVFN, I've dropped it in favour of ShareScope and I'm just not looking back - ShareScope is awesome by comparison)

The weekend of the course arrived, typically bright and sunny in time for us all to be sitting in a training centre in the middle of London rather than enjoying the blazing sunshine in a park with the dog somewhere. However, the course was so good as to make me forget the weather, apart from during the lunch break.

Which brings me to my second (small) criticism - I'm paying nearly £3,000 for a weekend training course and we're expected to pay for our own lunch!?! I've arranged training courses at work for a lot more than 40 people, and we'd be embarrassed not to provide lunch for delegates. Come on Greg Secker, surely there is enough cash in your deep pockets to afford a few egg mayonnaise sandwiches for your hungry delegates?

The course itself is intensive, impressive and inspirational. I heard that TU have reduced their course sizes from around 200 down to about 40, which means that the setting is ideally prepared to train you in comfort. The much advertised 'trading floor' is extremely disappointing, however, when viewed in person - I've got a bigger living room at home - but the people operating out of it more than make up for the lack of impressive demeanour of the room itself.

The trainer for the day...Sandra...was excellent. Extremely knowledgeable, motivational and emphatic. She clearly understands the topic that she teaches, and has a passion for it that instantly generates a positive feeling within you. I've never seen Sandra's trading record, but I'd guess that it's pretty good.

The course covered the fundamentals of momentum trading according to the gospel as written by Greg Secker. I'll say this quietly, but I was personally disappointed not to see the great man himself - my expectations were set by the free information & video available to download from the TU website, and I was looking forward to seeing him in action.

[Greg - if you're reading this, through any wierd twist of fate, I'd love to meet you face to face - not in a 'crazy stalker' kind of way, but to shake the hand of the man behind the myth that has, so far, inspired me]

The fundamentals of the course are to trade with the trends, having been shown various patterns to watch out for to time entry to the trades. We were shown the principles and application of technical analysis. Possibly the same kind of principles that might be available in, for example, Technical Analysis for Dummies - which costs about a tenner on Amazon. Nonetheless, I found this aspect of the course extremely fulfilling, as it is always helpful to have someone help you along the learning curve - which rarely happens with a hardback for a coach.

I've read recently a number of similar blogs criticising the course for offering limited techniques, some of which are widely available in other paper or hard back formats. While I recognise now that this may be true, I was not aware of this at the time, and cannot therefore judge this. I attended the course with an open mind, and was inspired to take up the trading challenge. I can't guarantee that reading a particular book would do this for me, but the personal approach taken by TU does achieve this.

If that doesn't work for you then I believe you need to Google 'Malcolm Pryor' - I did and will read his books over the next few weeks to develop further.

The key aspect of the course [for me, as a former accountant] was all about managing your risk, controlling your emotions, and trading within the rules. Oh yes, and that there were more courses available if people wanted to get into the 'real' money making trading...funny that's what I thought I had just paid for!!!

The risk management aspect of the course was essential, and simple. It's much, much harder to put the theory into practice in real life trades - especially using ADVFN trendlines - but I've now got a firm grasp of the principles, therefore am confident that I'll manage each trade I place in line with my trading plan.

I'll update this blog as regularly as I possibly can over the coming weeks and months...basically until I've made enough money from trading professionally that I don't need to worry about this anymore!

I'm happy to share my techniques, even my trades, with people who are genuinely interested. I believe in sharing information - there are enough opportunities to profit out there that I feel that I should give something back.