A free education

Monday, 27th September 2010 14:50 - by Boredmum

I was recently chatting with a good trading friend of mine. I told him that I was “a bit fed up with trading”. The reason being that, in my first year in the markets I lost about 50% of my funds and it was hard. The following year I went on to make a 300% increase from there and that was fantastic. Now here I was in my third year of trading, 9 months in, and had no increase to show for it. Of course, within the year there were many increases, some of considerable amounts. Unfortunately, there have been about 3 or 4 occasions where I have been knocked back down. Some have been through no fault of my own and some through stupidity. So, my friend (the voice of reason at times) says to me, “Take it as a free education. You haven’t lost anything, but you have received an education on the markets for free this year”. He really does talk a lot of sense at times. He was absolutely correct. I had been educated and learned many things in how to trade - or rather sometimes how not to trade. This education would be wasted if I didn’t put it to good use, so now was the time to get serious, the time to stop being so flippant and to really think my decisions through and to trust my instinct. I have been lucky. I have learned from many great people on the chat boards and I have also learned the hard way through mistakes. I haven’t lost anything this year and I’m sure that may be better than many have fared. If you have learned from the markets, don’t let it be for nothing. Please put it to good use.