My journey to becoming a trader

I came to the US approximately 10 years ago looking to do my masters in Electrical Engineering. During my study, I interned for a gentleman who was working in risk management for an electrical utility company. He was the one who introduced me to the world of futures trading and I was hooked right away.

After my internship ended, I went back to school and eventually graduated. Soon thereafter, I landed a decent job close to college and started working in the same field as my studies. As I was working, trading was always in the back of my mind and I tried getting into it myself. I opened a brokerage account and tried playing around with it. In 2007, I came across the mypivots forums and was intrigued by all the conversations and discussions going on. My brokerage account was not going anywhere because I was not yet fully dedicated to trading and not very surprisingly, I ended up losing ~20k. Me being a single guy and not having a care in the world, shrugged it off and kept telling myself that eventually I will get back to it.

In the meantime, I got married to a wonderful girl and we were in marital bliss. With both of us making just about figures each, life was comfortable and I kept telling myself that I will get back to trading. The two of us often talked about I always wanted to trade and that I should pursue it but life was too comfortable and I kept putting it off.

Then in 2012 we decided to start a family and in 2013 we welcomed a wonderful little girl in our lives. Life was hectic beyond belief and I was somewhat mad at myself for not having pursued trading more aggressively as that would have given me more flexibility in spending time with my family. My wife ended up switching to part time work to make things work instead. But bygones were bygones and we went back to our normal life.

In early 2014 the company I worked for was acquired by another company but I was fully confident that I was in no danger of losing my job as I had stellar performance and was not necessarily the highest paid employee in my department. That was until one Monday morning in May 2014 that my director called me and laid me off.

All of a sudden I was out of a job and my wife was only working part time. Our daughter was in a wonderful day care where she was very happy and we did not want to pull her out even though it was expensive. Luckily for us, we had a bunch of money saved up and I had ~3 months worth of severance pay coming in.

We were at a cross-roads. Do I find another job? If so, it was very likely going to be farther away which meant either I commuted more or that we move. Moving was not option because of my wife's work and my daughter's daycare.

That is when my wife suggested that maybe this was the time to becoming a full time trader. We realized that this was not an ideal situation to be in. I know that I need to have a clean emotional state if I were to trade and the pressure to take care of my family was too high. But my wife suggested I take up trading and she will go back to full time working. That we will have to make it work and we will give it some time. We had our rainy day money and right now it was just about pouring down.

This was about 4 months ago. I am still working hard to make this work. I have had profitable days and weeks but my account is still overall in the red. I can feel the tide is starting to turn. It has been very stressful yet rewarding.

I realize this is not the ideal way to start trading. But I need this to work to provide for my family and I am going to work as hard as I possibly can to make it happen.

Which brings me back to mypivots. Starting from 2007 to now, the members here have been very very gracious and helpful. They have always been willing to help me, answer my questions and in general provide great guidance. A lot of them are not active here any more but that does not mean they have not helped me. I have spent a lot of time going over past threads and learning from them.

So thank you to Bruce, DT, Paul, Aladdin, duck, sharks57 myptofvu, pt_emini, CharterJoe, koolblue, Lorn, MonkeyMeat and everyone else.

No matter where my journey takes me, I will forever be in your gratitude.

Originally posted by day trading

Originally posted by CharterJoe

...I was going to shoot you a private message, but seems Its been disabled. I'll have to check that out later...

That's because you've disabled receiving private messages. i.e. you can't send someone a private message if they can't reply to you because you've disabled receipt of private messages - hopefully that makes logical sense.

If you want to change that then go to your profile (drop down menu top right) and click on Edit Profile and then on Edit Email Settings. Let me know if you need more help. Normally I'd have sent you this in a private message but... you've disabled it.

CharterJoe: I see that you re-enabled receiving private messages. Problem is that the email address on your account is bouncing, presumably it's an old email that you no longer use. So even though you can send private messages to others and they can send replies to you, you won't get notification that a new private message has arrived. BTW, you have a new private message. (I'm posting this here because there's no other way to get hold of you.)

I think one of the best ways to improve as a trader is to be exposed to a community of people that are not only knowledgeable but also very passionate. You seem to very committed and have a clear goal and vision, so I think you are in the right place. Seems we are pretty similar!

Great! Your journey inspires. I wish you greater success ahead.