Hello, I'm new to this forum. Glad to be here. Been trading off/on for over 10 years. My trading success has been spotty. No great successes to report and I have not been consistantly profitable. I have used a number of trading systems both manual and auto-trade. What I have discovered is that this trading business takes practice, practice and more practice. Therefore I am dedicating myself to practicing more using the ninjatrader platform and the market replay feature.
Have also allowed the "experts, gurus, and other assorted trading geniuses" to trade my accounts in the past with much less success than I have achieved on my own.
Looking forward to exploring this forum and learning.
Thank you.

Hello fellow traders,

Here's my story. When I was a child I was fascinated by TV shows live from the stock market pit: people acting frantically, plenty of figures written on a big board...alas, I was too young to trade. I didn't choose to study finance, as a geek I chose computer science. Soon after I graduated, internet stocks were all the rage, and I was hooked again. Thanks to deregulation and web brokers, I opened my first account in 98 to trade stocks based on news, “funny mentals” and guts. Then came the crash. My portfolio almost collapsed due to excessive leverage, concentration and short-term focus. Big losses were not the most damaging: psychological damages turned me, a gunslinger, into a chicken.

Then I decided to have a break for studying money management and technical analysis. In the process,I discovered commodity trading systems. Due to my computer background, I thought it could be easier to get an edge in this area. So I started writing systems and trading futures long term, with some success. Encouraged by these results I turned towards stocks again, studying every investing method I could find and finally developing my own long-term stock investing systematic method (growth/momentum). After that recovery, I focused on short-term trading again. Back in the discretionary game but on different beasts: bonds, oil, stock indexes, major currencies. Alas, I still feel the consequences of my early losses, avoiding too many valid setups, trading too lightly after a few losses etc...Although I am making some money (trading is now my main revenue source) I am still struggling with my psych. However, things improve slowly: I can feel my confidence coming back month after month. I am amazed by how much money I have left on the table by being overcautious.

I have developed good day trading methods and efficient tactics to avoid any severe loss; I am experienced enough to get a good feeling in some markets, I am well (enough) disciplined. I need to make progress in detecting trading opportunities, developing my confidence, paying attention to my feelings, keeping my ego in check. I also intend to pass the CFTe exam (personal challenge), and open a blog to help casual stock investors.

I am an irregular reader of futures.io (formerly BMT) forums for a long time. I won't connect every day, but will try to post a few times a week if I can help/propose things for thought. After 15 years in the game, I think it is time to give back to the community. I am well-versed in Amibroker so I can help in this area too. I use it for backtesting, charting, detecting setups, stock investing. Previous user of Ninjatrader, some Perl scripts. Last, I am French and live in Paris. I hope my poor English is understandable.