Making Hay Whilst The Sun Shines
ByWell, just trying to catch up with myself again after my folks came for a long weekend. So lovely to see them and we had what I call a good old-fashioned family get-together which I love. However, it’s back to the real world and I realised that I’m guilty of not keeping up with my blog posting – so if you are following my progress – I apologise for the long gap and I’ll try to keep up in future 
Well, this is a story of last week. I’m still on a voyage of discovery here and it’s probably one of the most exciting things I’ve been involved with for a very long time. I need to explain a few things so you’ll understand where I’m coming from – and more importantly, where I’m going, as I develop my understanding. Because this is SO much better than I have given it credit for up to now.
The essence behind this wonderful trading system is that ‘less is more’. A couple of weeks ago, we did a few days on money-management and I built a kind of plan for myself based on what I thought was an extremely conservative trading performance.
Last week, it hit me how clever this is. Instead of spending hours and hours trading our socks off to get as many pips as possible. We are taught to be ultra-selective. In fact, it sounds daft – but we are told to sit down NOT to trade at all, unless ALL the criteria we’ve been trained to look for is present.
This is more difficult than it sounds, because my instinct is to get in there and trade for the sake of it. The clever bit – once it dawned on me – is that instead of trading willy-nilly and treating like a game of chance, where losses go hand in hand with wins, I’m actually not risking my capital at all – I’m preserving it until I see something REALLY good. When I do, I take advantage of it and make hay while the sun shines.
At this stage of my apprenticeship, I’m allowed to take three trades per session (about an hour and a quarter for me) or, I stop for the day after my first positive trade. If I follow the rules laid down – and why wouldn’t I? – Win lose or draw I am never risking more than 1% of my total capital.
The clever part about this whole system is that by following this simple structure – I had a positive week last week. I traded four mornings. One day I didn’t trade at all because I didn’t see the criteria. One day I traded for 20 minutes to get my positive trade – and shut up shop. And the other two days I was at my computer for just over an hour.
The end result was, had I been a real-live trader, I would have made my money work for me to make a profit last week. But more importantly, I would have compounded my capital so that this week, trading the same percentage of what would be a bigger capital brings in more profit – for the same number of pips. This is compounding working in a magic way – because the plan is this.
I start with X amount of capital. I trade in the manner described and take no money out until I have compounded my capital to the point where I could take out a salary, but even after taking it, I am still compounding (growing) my capital, month on month.
Now if that isn’t making my money work for me, I don’t know what is. What’s the drawback? Quite honestly, it’s me. Holding myself back here is so hard !!!!!
But . . . I’ve been warned that ‘over-trading’ (that’s just trading on and on to get more and more) is a recipe for disaster. Apparently most people throw away ALL their gains by going mad and becoming possessed by the need to trade. I have to treat this like a business, be controlled, patient and disciplined. However hard this is for me – I can actually see that if I get this right – I really can change our lives.
Sorry this was so long – but it’s a much bigger thing than I realized when I started. Let’s see how I do this week
Sam
PS – It’s my birthday today! 25 again!
