STR 158: Finding ClayTrader Through Word-of-Mouth

Published: March 26, 2018, 4 p.m.

We’re going on a journey with a member that begins back in the 80’s! I don’t mean to insult your intelligence, but that was 35 years ago! Our guest from the community, Fred (‘FredSC’ in the chatroom), takes us from the start when he used to get physical newsletters his mailbox to present day where technology has changed the game quite a bit for him. He’s traded several asset classes and discovered much over the years and he doesn’t hold back in sharing the ups and downs that we can all learn from. I always enjoy these discussions as they present a unique viewpoint from someone who has seen a whole lot more than myself. Come along for a stroll through the past 30 plus years.

Notes:

  • In today’s episode we speak with community member Fred. He ended up using multiple newsletters in the 1980s which contained various strategies. Fred actually ended up buying near the bottom of the market crash and got a great entry.
  • He was not impressed with brokerage recommendations at the time so he continued to focus on putting money into his 401k. Eventually he opened a self directed brokerage account and decided to focus on gold miners.
  • After hearing about the Robotic Trading course, Fred decided to join the community and start his education journey. He quickly realized that there is more to the puzzle of trading than just one course so without much hesitation, Fred joined University.
  • Fred paper traded forex for a while but had trouble dealing with the spreads from TD Ameritrade. This led him to take a look at options. He gave himself some time off from work to also try day trading.
  • Something Fred needs to continue to work on is his stop loss placement. This is something that takes time to develop especially if you’re going to focus on a basket of stocks you’ll be trading often.

Quotes:

  • Somehow the idea got in my head ‘now is the time to think about buying.’ I just kept plugging money into the 401k.
  • This buddy of mine said he made 1000 dollars in a day with this Robotic Trading thing! I went home and up comes Claytrader.
  • First I’m up then I’m down. Then it comes down and hits my stop loss. I had FOMO going on big time. Back to paper trading.
  • You put it together, look at what happened and then you tune it or you say ‘no that worked’ and leave it alone.