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You can never get too much of the classic fool’s gold syndrome. Most veteran traders have had this syndrome at some point in their journey (myself included), and most newer traders have it right now. The key is, the sooner they realize it is the sooner they can begin to improve away from it. Our guest, Roland, takes us through the beginnings of his journey where he had some success, assumed he was a diamond in the rough and had it all figured out. Of course, this was actually NOT the case and he had to get kicked in the teeth via Mr. Market before realizing he needed to change his tactics and strategy. Roland has come a long way and is now focused on being a swing trader due to his day job. The journey he’s been on to get him to the point of, so far, 13% account growth on the year is one filled with nuggets of experience we all can benefit from.

Notes:

• Today we interview community member Roland. After college, Roland ended up at a desk job and his father suggested that he look into the stock market.
• After doing some options trading investigation via Investopedia and Stocktwits, he opened up a paper trading account. Unfortunately, he was trading with an unrealistic size and saw a 40,000 dollar gain in just a few days so now his interest was really piqued.
• Roland caught a low float runner that made substantial gains. He did capture some of the moves but after that initial success, he had more confidence in himself than he should have. After that great trade, he had a string of losers that were an eye-opener.
• After speculating on TWTR earnings, and averaging down, Roland took a big loss but the difference is that he accepted responsibility for his mistakes instead of trying to blame others.
• With Roland’s work schedule, he started to get interested in swing trading futures. He kept making deposits into his account and took it from 25 to 40 thousand dollars. This year from trading January to May he made 13% of his entire account value.

Quotes:

• My dad said options were a great way to make a lot of money with a little money. Just buying calls and puts.
• I tried to learn on my own but everything seemed kind of jumbled and couldn’t get a good grasp on things.
• I knew the whole ‘let your winners win and cut your losers fast.’ I sold everything at 6 with a stop loss but then it kept running.
• I didn’t sell because of greed. I could not do any wrong. I was just going to keep going.
• I had a 40k account when I started trading futures more seriously. Just trading patterns and can make a trade plan that works for me.

Links:

• Trading In The Zone by Mark Douglas http://amzn.to/1P1TRKP