Naked Trader seminar (2): A poorly chocolate-giver

Sunday, 29th March 2009 15:33 - by Resident IFA

I made it to the Naked Trader seminar in good time, staying in the local Travelodge turning out to be a masterstroke. Entering the room, the ubiquitous (well at least in the NT book!) ‘Mrs. NT’ greets you before you claim a chair. Then, a way into the room, I spot a diminutive bald chap surrounded by a few eager devotees…it must be the man himself. Robbie, the Naked Trader, is exactly what he purports to be…just a normal guy. Bless him, he was very poorly with a cold, doing fantastically well to drag his bones out of bed to talk to the likes of me. I guess it helps that he has, above all, a passion for his subject and helping people…oh, and the seminars are a nice little earner if you count the heads and do the sums! First things first, Robbie gave out the chocolate and ran though the fire drill...summed-up as ‘Run!’…the most common-sense fire instructions I have heard yet! I was particularly disappointed that I am a boring Snickers man, when something more exotic (?!) such as a Toblerone would have been better in hindsight. One fellow got a huge bar of Dairy Milk…lucky beggar! After spending good money to attend, I certainly won’t give out all Robbie’s tips ‘n’ tricks here, but will give you some brief headlines. What I will do is say that it is money well spent for the smaller/part-time Investor and recommend you attend one of his seminars when you have saved enough pennies to do so. After the ice-breaking, chocolate-throwing frenzy, it was time for a bit of psychology best summed up as ‘Stay focused. Don’t do anything silly.’ - such as investing with money borrowed on credit cards. This bit of reading-from-a-sheet over, it was then time for Robbie to come into his own, doing what he does best with practical displays of using Level 2 prices and data. Level 2 takes a bit of getting used to, but is vital if you really want to ‘x-ray’ the market, reaching the underbelly of Market-Makers, Robot trades, and Direct Market Access behind the prices, volumes, and trades you see on your Level 1 consumer trading platforms. The Market-Makers were euphemistically coined as ‘The Bastards’…a bit harsh, but containing more than a modicum of realism and truth I am sure! At 1pm, we went for a tasty lunch and prepared for the afternoon, having learnt about ADVFN’s systems (Boo, Hiss!), Share auctions, how companies move around the FTSE categories, ISAs, AIM stocks, CGT and off-setting losses, etc., etc. Little did we know that Robbie was going to put a Herculean shift in the afternoon that took us from 1.50 pm to 8pm…although we did get one short break! What a trooper. A cheerful and diverse bunch attended the seminar, some of which stayed on with me until well past the witching hour! In my next, and final, Naked Trader seminar Blog I will name-check a few as a ‘thank-you’ for their company into the wee small hours. Until next time…