07 Aug Where do you start to learn how to trade?

Points to take away from this read:

Be pas­sion­ate about trad­ing and just get start­ed some­where. Anywhere.

Learn it. Teach it.

My approach to learn­ing how to trade

You might have read why I start­ed learn­ing trad­ing in the first place. If not, I sug­gest you have a short read here: A Pas­sion for Tech­ni­cal Analy­sis. When I start­ed trad­ing I start­ed togeth­er with a friend of mine. We would meet up at a cof­fee shop and learn trad­ing togeth­er. We then decid­ed to each pick a top­ic to study and teach it to each oth­er. This is where it started.

Pas­sion…

This proved to be a lot of work. Jug­gling work and per­son­al life can be very demand­ing. My friend just couldn’t put in the efforts that was need­ed and at the same time he didn’t want to hold me back. I am in a for­tu­nate posi­tion that I am sin­gle with no chil­dren and I have a lot of time on my hands to ded­i­cate to study­ing trad­ing. This might prove dif­fi­cult for you as well as it did for my friend since you might have a fam­i­ly to take care of and a full time job to jug­gle along with that as well. I see this as a your pas­sion being chal­lenged. In this case your pas­sion for trad­ing. If you are not pas­sion­ate about trad­ing then by all means stop read­ing right now and go do that what makes you hap­py as opposed to what you think that might make you hap­py. Time is pri­or­i­ty. Even if you only have 30 min­utes a week to spend on trad­ing, you can only do it if you’re pas­sion­ate about it. This is the most valu­able les­son of all. Do some­thing that you love doing even if you’re not being paid for it. I am cur­rent­ly los­ing mon­ey on trad­ing but I still love it and am deter­mined to the process of learn­ing it, I am not forc­ing myself to do this to make a lot of mon­ey. Mon­ey is not a strong moti­va­tor for the long haul. You need to love what you’re doing. If you are pas­sion­ate about some­thing, you will have the time, means and ener­gy to pur­sue it. The mon­ey will follow.

Start some­where

I am the kind of per­son that can have a clut­tered mind when it comes to approach­ing any­thing. Be it clean­ing my house or, of course, trad­ing. When I start clean­ing, I often don’t know where to begin. I see dirty dish­es and I want to wash them, then I see the floor needs to be vac­u­umed and mopped and I feel like start­ing there. Bot­tom­line is… start some­where. Some­where is bet­ter than nowhere. Which is often the case for some peo­ple. You don’t know where to start so you put off start­ing at all. I learned to just start some­where and work my way up, down, left, or right. It doesn’t mat­ter. This atti­tude has helped me so much in life. Because of this I tried a lot of things and found out real­ly quick­ly if it was or wasn’t some­thing for me. Just start.

Tub­ing…

For me it start­ed with watch­ing videos on YouTube. I found a few chan­nels that I liked watch­ing. I find that, like all rela­tion­ships, you need to find the one that res­onates with you. Basi­cal­ly, most chan­nels will tell you the same on any giv­en top­ic but the way they con­vey their mes­sage to you needs to res­onate with you. At least, it has to be like that for me. I don’t like cer­tain per­son­al­i­ties that sound like a shady car sales­man and talk in a way that you know they’re try­ing to sell you some­thing. I like the ones that con­fi­dent­ly explain the top­ic in a detailed way with­out leav­ing cer­tain aspects out because you need to sub­scribe or buy their course to get the rest of the details. Teas­er videos I call them. So which chan­nels do I like? I wrote an arti­cle on the Youtube chan­nels I watch over here so if you’re inter­est­ed please go over to have a look. So just start look­ing at a few videos and get famil­iar with some of the top­ics that they’re talk­ing about and do your own research on them. Do keep in mind that in the begin­ning you might think that it’s so easy and that the way vol­ume indi­ca­tors and charts are being explained that it’s an exact sci­ence, well let me burst that bub­ble here for you. IT’S NOT. After build­ing expe­ri­ence with cer­tain tools you will get a bet­ter ‘feel’ for it and know when and how to use it. That does mean you need to learn the basics first.

What­ev­er works…

For me it was after I saw some videos I start­ed look­ing at books I could read to start learn­ing. I googled for ‘top books on chart pat­terns’ and ‘best books on chart pat­terns’ and came up with a list. Then what was seem­ing­ly in the top for most peo­ple that had read them I decid­ed to start with ‘Get­ting start­ed with Chart pat­terns’ by Thomas N. Bulkows­ki. Because my aim was to be able to teach my friend in a way he would under­stand I would high­light import parts and then take notes and put them into a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion every time I fin­ished a chap­ter. This helped me to recap what I had just learned and then refor­mu­late it in a way I could pour it into  pre­sen­ta­tion to be able to teach my friend. Now this might seem like a daunt­ing task to be doing and regard­less if you fol­low my approach or not, just know that for me by putting every­thing in a pre­sen­ta­tion for­mat I was indi­rect­ly putting puz­zles togeth­er and I was real­ly under­stand­ing instead of just read­ing. I find that read­ing is like observ­ing some­thing, where­as you con­nect an action to it, it becomes a part of you.

Teach it

If you can teach it to some­one else, you must know the top­ic in and out first right? I found it to be a great way and it lead me to start this blog as well. I under­stand though that it’s not for every­one. So take a note­book and write what you learn. Draw it out. What­ev­er works for you, you know bet­ter than me on how you learn best. Just do it. Find some­one to teach it to. If you don’t have any­one. Email me! Leave a com­ment here. I’d appre­ci­ate it a lot. I would love for this blog to be inter­ac­tive.

Thank you for reading.