dwot (99.50)

How do I do this again?

August 17, 2011 – Comments (4)

I got out of the market at the top in 2007.  I had not intended to get out completely, but the problems I had with my trading company in that it took them 3 months to move some money just made me feel uncomfortable.  I was at a new job, in a new community and I really didn't like what I'd been seeing in the market.  I still don't think the structural problems that solidified my decision to be out of the market have been corrected, but I have moved a bit of my money back into a trading account and I had a look, and omg, I feel like I am starting over.

One of the things about when I got seriously into trading before was that I did research and tracked stocks for 3 months.  I actually made one trade based on talking with my physiotherapist, and I made what was then about a month's wages on that one trade, but then I had more challenges with getting money moved to a more suitable trading company.  I had to fight with the financial advisor to get her to do what I asked and in the 3 days of fighting with her my purchase I wanted got $400 more expensive and she told me that she didnt't feel comfortable with what I was doing and that she felt her reputation was being affected by what I wanted to do and she would feel better if I found another advisor.  I insisted that she do what I asked now and I would work on getting the account moved.  So, this 3 months of monitoring stocks wasn't about self-control, but more about getting my account moved.  I tried to move to the self-directed trading platform with the same company and I had an error on my application and they didn't call, they just left it in someone's to do box.  I was being patient and when I finally called to find out what was going on, well, I was choked that they wanted me to fill all the forms out again a month after I'd filled them out the first time.  They didn't think they had any responsibility to tell me it was just sitting in someone's to do box.  Meanwhile, the stock I bought did as I thought it would, I got the advisor to sell and went shopping for another company to do my trading.  And I will nickname the advisor dipsht, so in that process dipsht made $400 in commission.  She never outperformed the market a single year I had her yet my first trade outperformed every year I had her.  Dipsht's reputation is solid with me.

Contrary to what I read about what not to do, I was a trader.  I must have done 100 to 200 trades, maybe more.  I wasn't so worried about the cost of trading, but rather what I made above costs on each trade.  My longest hold was about 4 months.  I have never done a short in real life, although you would not be able to tell that from looking here.  Any trades I did on the US stock market I also had to consider the currency conversion costs.  A downfall about trading US was they insisted the money be converted back to Canadian so US trades were expensive.  I'd sometimes buy based on a little information I read and then that night I'd look much more closely and there were a few times I was out in the first trade of the morning.  Where I was trading it only cost $10 to trade, so very cheap to quickly correct a mistake, especially in light of financial advisors who lose 30-40% of your portfolio.

In any event, I just had a look at the trading platform, and omg, I am starting over here.  I think the events that led to me tracking the market for 3 months before diving in were fortunate.  There will be no diving in today, lol.  And with school starting next week, and still having crap to deal with over the break-in, well, I might not even be able to set something up to track potential choices for a bit here.  But, some first steps are done here.  Funny how it feels like starting over...