Remember Nick Leeson?
The original rogue trader. The guy who broke Barings Bank back in the 90’s…
Well, in a strange twist of fate, it was meeting him that first got me hooked on trading.
At a breakfast meeting in Manchester, he spoke about his trials and tribulations. I think it was meant to be a cautionary tale, but he had me spellbound from the start. The way he told it, I had visions of traders clambering out of the pits, literally clutching armfuls of cash!
The light bulb above my head had been well and truly switched on, and there began my own journey into the markets.
Like most people, I had to figure things out for myself. I still had the mortgage to pay and food to put on the table after all.
So I educated myself the hard way – testing, trialing, and experimenting with my own hard-earned money. I had some early hair-raising exploits spread-betting the FTSE 100 and Forex before finally setting up shop on Chicago’s futures exchanges.
And that’s when my REAL education began.
I was lucky enough to find two grizzled veteran traders willing to give me a leg-up. They showed me how professional traders go about it. And I tell you now… the stuff these guys were doing, I have NEVER seen anywhere else. It was like being on a different planet.
And I did it all over the years… scalping Bond futures to the point I dreading the weekend coming around because the markets would be closed. Riding the seasonal trends of the commodities… wheat, live cattle, pork bellies…
But these days, my own trading outlook is a mix of long term position plays and close-to-the-action short term stuff. See, the thing is, once you get a feel for how markets move, it becomes an ingrained skill. You’ll find you can transpose strategies from one market to another with just a bit of tweaking and fine tuning.
The markets have been kind to me over the last decade… I live with my wife and three children up here in a nice part of Cheshire. I feel privileged to have seen the things I’ve seen so far in the markets and to have met the people who have shared so much of their know-how.
And I feel just as privileged to be able to pass some of those techniques on to you here today.