April 14, 2013

• The Elusive Successful Blogging Retail Trader

  

   

  In the past I wrote a blog asking where are all the retail trading blogs hiding, as they have proven hard to find.

  The results of my searching have led to some discoveries/assessments:

   

  I’ve found several retail blogging sites but the vast majority of those who are still in the “struggling to learn” stages of trading. They haven’t reached consistent profitability yet. There are many more blogs that have become abandoned ghost towns of someone’s attempt at active trading/investing. The trading ability fails to improve to profitability and eventually no new posts are entered, leaving one to assume that the venture has been discontinued.

  Looking for successful retail traders that blog is a much more difficult search, reflecting the difficulty in becoming proficient in trading. The search for good traders that blog and aren’t “selling” anything is like looking for water in the desert – very few and far between.

   

  However, my extended search has uncovered a few successful traders that blog. Here are two currently active ones:

  1) Jules in Jumbles

  Jules will always have a special place in my memory since she was the first successful “small trade” retail trader I encountered that posted her entries and exits on charts using down to earth methods similar to my own like support/resistance trend lines.

  Her blog stands out since during that time, I was also among the struggling traders trying to get consistency and was quite far from feeling confident enough to start posting performance stats. It was that struggle that prompted my search for other traders. After a while and string of mixed results of trading hits and misses, I started to wonder if it were actually possible to make a living by trading on a smaller scale like I was doing. I knew folks who traded 1000′s of shares daily and earned five and six figure profits on a daily basis, but that wasn’t my trading style. I didn’t want to trade in that frenetic style of catching slight moves using heavy leverage and thought it was possible to make money on bigger moves without needing as much if any leverage. Problem was my short term trading wasn’t going that great and needed improvement. My long term trades (investments) were okay, but I was going to have to get good at shorter term trades if I was going to be able to make a living from trading.

  That little negative voice within started asking me if I should continue and maybe I should just give up since it wasn’t possible. I couldn’t turn that voice off with my own skills at the time, so I thought the next best thing would be to find someone who was trading on my scale and being successful, which would prove the concept of it being possible, and therefore achievable. Searching for other trading blogs turned up lots of folks in my same situation, struggling to be profitable- not very encouraging. I didn’t need to read about another blogger having trouble with trading- I could just read my own for that.

  Then I found Jules’ blog. What struck me is that while she had mixed results of winning/losing trades, the majority of trades were winners. This was when the majority of my short term trades were not. I looked at her older blogs and saw she had completed a positive year of trading gains. That was a big inspiration for me as my returns in short term trading were, um, less than positive for the year.

  That’s all I needed to see to shoo that negative internal voice away and I knew that my methods could be successful with the proper mix of time, effort and perseverance put in. Eventually I made it through the more difficult parts of the learning curve to get more consistent results and built up enough confidence in my methods to go public with stats. Part of the reason for my trading blogs is to also “pay it forward” by showing others that it’s indeed possible to succeed in the retail world of trading despite all the negative press from naysayers.
  

  Jules’ potential in my opinion is only limited by her mind. She reminds me of Neo from The MATRIX. She’s posted a few blogs where she “claims” she can’t really trade but I know better. There was an incident where she made a bad trade and another trader questioned her ability to recover from it. In response, she traded daily for a month making nothing but positive trades each day. It was very impressive and shut the doubting trader up pretty good. To trade everyday for as month with only winning trades is not an easy thing to do by any means, and even rarer to do it by force of will. 

  She is considering taking down her public blog at the end of the month, so if you care to visit her site, be sure to do it before then just in case.

   

  2) Baby Sun’s Future Trading Diary

  I met this blogger on another site of a very successful trader, who was positing four figure winning oil trades on a daily basis. Someone eventually questioned his posts as being suspect even though he wasn’t selling anything. In response, he made his blog private and that was that. 

  Baby Sun told me she doesn’t need to look at a chart to trade real-time which I think is fascinating. I use my charts like GPS roadmaps and definitely need them for my style of trading.

  I have her to thank for motivating me enough to upgrade my trading methods to incorporate hedging and range trading. I always knew I “should” incorporate hedging into my strategies, but never got around to it. She helped “motivate” me when I was stuck in a wrong way trade while she was posting nice profits every week. I said to myself  ..”and why am I not making anything for weeks on end while I wait for my expected move to happen when I could be making money regardless of the market direction?”

  
  Like Jules, she’s also modest about her trading ability, but the facts speak for themselves. She once posted that she had made some trading errors and was in trouble and worried- only to end the month with record profits. Sounds like a pool shark to me…don’t get tricked into any trading contests with her.
  

   

  I find it interesting that the two active, successful retail traders I know online who are not selling training or books happen to be women. The stereotypical “trader” is often portrayed as male but this should be a boost to all females who ever considered engaging in active trading/investing. Both have been in the trading zone this year with great performance.
  

  Similarly, both have occasional considerations of not continuing their blogs, which helps to explain why successful non commercial retail trading blogs are on the rare side. 

   

  It also bears noting that none of us trade the same way. There is no “SECRET” trading method that works for everyone who is successful. There are many ways to make the market work for you, you just have to find/develop one that’s a good fit for your trading preference and risk tolerance.
  

   

  • 4:10 pm
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