what is your trading story?, page-40

Great topic timbo and very interesting listening to peoples stories.

I'm early 40s bought mys first shares in the late 1990s based a broker's advice, all his tips went down so I decided to start doing things on my own with online broking.

I had some friends also dabbling in the markets during the late 90s "tech bubble" period. At the time the craze was penny miners turning themselves into tech companies (most of it turned out to be smoke and mirrors in the end) but I saw stocks double/triple or more in days on nothing more than rumours. By the time the bubble had burst I was down quite a bit.

I didn't return to the market until 2005 when a friend of mine was doing well with mainly spec mining companies. I followed some of his tips and had some good results, started do a bit of research but still only part time as had a very busy day job.

Like most poeple I got hit badly during the GFC but luckliy I hadn't gone all in so still had some funds when things started to receiver in 2009. For the past 2 years I have been pretty heavily into the markets and now hold many stocks.

I would class myself as more of a mid/long term investor rather than a trader, altough I have learnt to take some profits when things go up to fast to quickly and also cut my losses when I pick an dog. But if I find a good stock (especially if it pays good dividends and is well managed) I'm happy to hold it for years, if not forever, examples would include IVC, TGA, ASL, CCP.

I still work full time but do think about going full time trading investing, in fact this time last year I was seriously considering quitting my job, but in hindsight the last 8 months have been very tough so the timing would have been wrong and it would have been very stressful going through 2011 without a regular work income. I will stay working for now but if a decent market upturn comes again I may think about quitting so I can put all my energies and effort into the market.

Luckily i can take regular breaks during my job and have access to some good market data software so Im able to monitor things relatively well and quickly duck off and trade on the iphone if I see some movement (isn't iphone fabulous for this kind of stuff during work hours :-)

A big thing for me over the last 6 months is too really follow the off used advice DYOR and I have started to really dig into stocks - annual reports, presentations, director buying notices, background of management, debt levels, ROE, PE even things like analysing competitors results etc. By doing this I am more confident on finding good undervalued companies early and getting set, rather than waiting for the to run and pickingup the tip on HC.

Some advcie from me is

1. Always keep some money in cash (at least 30%) you never know when a Black Swan events going to occur which will spook the markets and present smoe opportunities. Japan earth quake was a classic example this year

2. Learn about basic technical analysis ( a book I recommend is Charting made simple by Roger Kinsky). Even though I'm more of a fundamental analysis trader it is good to be able to see trends, MACD lines crossing etc). I read once that 90% of trades on the makret are made by traders not investors so you need to know a bit about how the opertate.

3. Learn about market pyschology. It something I'm only just learning about myself but I think it is very important in understanding how and why markets move the way they do often on fundamental human insticts - fear, greed, goin wihth the pack etc.

Another book I'd recommend for those new to investing/trading on the stock market is The Naked Trader by Robbie Burns, very down to earth and written in laymans terms.

God lukc to all in 2012 and Merry Xmas