The hard way

So after many good trades and plenty of bad trades in probably one of the toughest market years, I have been able to gain a lot of experience.  Like a lot of people out there I have lost money overall for the last 12 months, but nothing big. I went into this experience with a small chunk of expendable money knowing full well I would probably lose most of it, but in reality didn't actually lose as much as I would have thought. I am now moving on to gain more knowledge on the other side of stocks, which is the technical analysis. I belive that a great trader must be able to understand both the fundamentals of a stock and also be able to read the technicals of a stock to have a better advantage of understanding where a stock is currently at in the market. 

I have also been a huge fan of the power of stock options and the ability to use options as leverage in your trades. I of course know the huge risk that is involved in using leverage in your trades as we have all seen the collapses of many companies and hedge funds who got greedy and went broke using it.

I am currently enrolled in a technical analysis and options course to begin gaining knowledge and experience in options. Since options are so risky, I will be using OptionsXpress to do virtual options trading until I can consistently get 80% of my trades profitable before I begin trading options with real money.

I will of course continue to use this blog as my way of tracking my performance and history. It serves as a great way to remind me of by successfull and unsuccessfull decisions.