Here was an interesting mail from the person who was the first student of Nick's. He got the TWADJ-system to try out when it was just invented.
He recently wrote a letter. Here is his story.
(Holy wall of text, Batman!)
Well worth the read, though...
How I became a professional financial trader
As an introduction, my name is
Graham Aldous (Aldy to friends/family) and
this is my story (from Jan 2000 –
to date) of my journey to becoming a
professional financial trader. I have
always worked part-time at trading, I
have absolutely NO desire to ever work
full-time, so trading the markets
suits my ambitions fine.
I have referred
to my market diary/log that I have kept since I started
trading, to make sure
dates etc. were reasonably accurate.
To those of you who do not know who I
am, I was the first person to train as
a trader using Nick's “Evening”
trading system, which his son (Max) has
re-named Trade With A Day Job.
I
first met Nick (Markets Mastered) through a mutual friend at a party
one
evening in Burnham-on-Crouch (Essex) where I still live (part-time) and
Nick
had a house at the time. This was then January 2000; I was newly
married, 34
yrs old and working in London at a small insurance broker
connected to
Lloyds of London. My day started at 6am with a train to London,
and I was
usually back home just after 5pm after working a straight 9 hours
without a
break
My prospects were ok, and probably one day I would become
a partner, but
that was probably 20 years away. I always had in mind that I
needed a second
income to be able to live the type of life I (and my darling
wife) had always
dreamt of. I had tried to build up a small property portfolio
from when I
was younger, and at the time I had 2 flats in the town which I
rented out
for a small monthly income. That was as far as I had got in my
money making
schemes.
The night of that party I was talking to Nick's
best friend, a builder
called Richard, about an idea of selling my 2 flats
and buying a building
project he had found to develop and hopefully make some
extra money. It was
at that time that Nick introduced himself and we began
talking of other ways
of earning extra money when being tied to a full-time
job that you could not
afford to give up.
Nick had been trading full-time
for a few years at that point, and suggested
that learning to trade may be an
answer to earning some extra money while
keeping my job in London. This
appealed to me, as I was never very
comfortable about selling the property I
already had and risking it all on a
large tumble down house that would need
constant supervision when restoring..
We had a good chat that evening and I
put it to the back of my mind as the
more we talked about it, the more I
thought I would not be able to learn to
trade. I had met bank traders while
out in London on Fridays evenings, and
they all seemed far too clever to me.
There was also talk about needing a
computer to trade, and at that time, I
must admit, I did not own one. I used
one at work very rarely, so knew the
very basics, but the thought of basing a
business on one daunted me slightly,
so due to all those reasons, trading
part-time was put on the back-burner so
to speak.
About 2 weeks later (end of Jan 2000) I met Nick again (by
accident) in the
The Anchor pub, and we started talking about part-time
trading again,
although I did express my concerns about starting a business
that is run
completely from a machine I knew virtually nothing about. When we
parted
company that night, Nick said he would enjoy designing a simple
trading
system that would work in the evenings, be easy to learn for a
computer
phobic and so suit my situation. I must admit at the time, my wife
was more
interested than I was in the idea, I was having a stressful time at
work, so
my mind was on that and not on extra money-making ideas.
At work
the next day, I mentioned the idea to some colleagues and they all
seemed to
think it was an ideal business to be run from home part-time, and
encouraged
me to give it a go. This enthusiasm finally made me decide to
give it a go,
and I went round to Nick‟s house that evening to see if we
could get started
on the concept.
Nick had already designed the basics of what is now the
“Evening” trading
system the previous week, had back-tested it for 12 months
and was then
involved in forward trading it. He had a strategy that he used
to day-trade
the FTSE already, but this new one was completely different (and
I now know)
a lot more simple. I have since found out he had a friend who
worked on the
Chicago Mercantile Exchange many years previously, and the two
of them
worked on the strategy on a 3 day trip Nick took to New York that
January.
(He only told me this a few years ago!) I cannot remember the name
of this
ex-trader but he was a floor trader on the exchange and he traded
just the
S&P500 index for 15 years – so he had a lot of experience on the
workings of
the instrument.
It was now the beginning of Feb and it was
decided that while Nick worked on
the testing, I would spend the next 2 weeks
learning how to use a computer
and also gain knowledge of the IG Index
trading platform. The guys at work
were a great help, and we all spent the
next fortnight on that project and
hardly any normal work went on! I also
spoke to IG Index, and they invited
me up to their offices (which were near
Buckingham Palace at the time) and I
spent 9 hours there – spread over 3 days
– getting used to their trading
platform.
Nick came up with me as he knew
Stuart Wheeler, the boss of IG at
the time. Two of the traders there also got
involved in the testing, and in
later years (before they moved offices) Nick
did do some training evenings
there. I have written in my diary – Thursday
10th Feb 2000 ~ “too hung-over
to go to work after a night out with Nick,
Stuart Nigel and David (2 IG
traders) at Stringfellows in Covent Garden” ~ a
night I will never forget. I
also remember Stuart going on afterwards (at
3am) to play poker, which is
his full-time hobby/job now!
I do remember at
that time the spread betting companies demo trading
platforms were quite
useless, so it was decided that I would "paper" trade
instead. I picked up
the manual on the Saturday 12th Feb and spent the
weekend reading it over and
over again, until the concept was firmly
embedded in my mind. There were two
things to watch for on the chart, and
when they happen together, that's the
signal to get ready for a trade.
One of these "things" was happening around
35% so I just had to keep in mind
whether it was occurring at any time or
not. That's what made this strategy
so simple, and even then when I was a
complete novice, it was easy to
realise when there was a possibility of a
trade signal. Looking at my diary,
I would say that learning the first bit of
the system took around 3 days of
watching the charts, and the 2nd bit of the
equation meant learning a sheet
that Nick supplied to me (now part of the
manual) and I developed a strategy
to commit it all to memory, so that took
another 3 or 4 days of working with
it.
Anyway, when the markets opened on
the Monday, I took the day off (sick) and
spent the whole time in front of a
live charts of the S&P500, Dax, Dow Jones
30 and FTSE watching the price
movements around at Nick's house. At that
time, he had a bank of 6 screens in
his office, so it was very easy to watch
all the charts at once. I must point
out that for the “Evening” system you
need watch only ONE chart, that's all.
Certain things happened that were
described in Nick's manual, and it was all
slowly coming together. Because I
had learned the two occurrences off by
heart by the Wednesday of that week,
it all began to make sense, and the next
thing I had to concentrate on was
making sure my trades were executed with
100% accuracy. This means that
every trade that showed up on the chart, I had
to enter exactly as I was
shown in Nick‟s manual. This is the part that I
felt needs the most
practice, because you will sometimes miss a trade signal
because you are
doing something else instead of concentrating on the
chart.
Over this first week, I was getting home a few minutes after 5pm and I
was
immediately switching on the computer I had just bought (£1800 would
you
believe – outrageous!! I had to get it on HP) and getting the chart up
to
watch for the 2 occurrences. My target was 15 pips per evening to start
with
but in that first week of paper trading I found my main problem was
not
being able to concentrate long enough to spot every trade that occurred
in
an evening. I was very frustrated and had to ring Nick to see what we
could
do about it. He came over on the Thursday evening while I was trading
to see
the problem at first hand. His solution is something I used for the
next 5
years, he made me set an alarm (on the computer) to go off every 9
minutes.
When the alarm sounded, I checked the chart quickly (5 seconds) and
if there
was no upcoming signal I just went back to doing whatever I wanted
(usually
reading) until the alarm went off again. It was such a simple answer
and
after a while, I did not need the alarm as I could guess 9 minutes
quite
easily.
In those first few weeks I managed 15 pips most evenings
and I would say
that after 4 weeks (middle of March 2000) my "paper" trading
had reached a
level whereby I was confident enough to start using real money.
When I put
this to Nick, he disagreed and insisted that I carried on "paper" trading
for another 4 weeks, so that I was almost trading subconsciously –
you know,
the same as when you drive to work and you get to your destination
without
remembering how you got there – and at the same time I upped my daily
target
to 20 pips.
On the 10th of April I was ready for trading with real
money. In the
previous week I had placed £1000 into my spread betting account
(I had saved
that amount over the past 2 months while I was practising) and I
had my
first trade with my own money that evening. In my trading log I
have noted
that I earned 19 pips at £1 per pip – my first day trading
properly and my
first profit (£19.00).
I am an extremely cautious person by
nature (I was engaged to be married for
6 years) so it was always my
intention to trade at fairly small levels and
build my trading bank up very
conservatively. In those first few months I
was earning around £80 per week
from my trading and I did not touch one
penny, I kept it all in the account
so I could compound my earnings.
By the middle of July, I had exactly doubled
my account balance to £2000,
which should have meant that I could then start
trading at £2 per pip, so
doubling my weekly earnings, but against the advice
of Nick, I stayed
trading at £1 per pip.
I made another £500 by the end of
August that year, and I then started
trading at £2 per pip. I was having a
monthly meeting with Nick to evaluate
my progress and at our get together on
the 31st August it was decided
that we did not need to meet about the trading
anymore, Nick was
happy that the system was performing as it should, and both
of us were
delighted with the way my trading was developing. At that point I
really
felt I was a properly qualified financial trader, and to reach that
stage
had taken me just over 6 months, and maybe due to my caution it was a
bit
longer than normal, but I was happy with my progress and felt that
no
short-cuts were taken.
Because I was trading very conservatively, I had
no problems with the
amateur traders 2 enemies – fear and greed. I would like
to note that for
anyone starting off in this industry, there must not be any
financial
pressure whatsoever when you start trading with real money, if you
feel you
have to earn money every day, you will fail – that is an absolute
certainty.
You have to be totally relaxed while trade every day; I liken it
to being an
athlete who is "In The Zone" while performing. There must not be
any
distractions while you work, you need to concentrate on the charts and
have
a totally clear mind. I had a full-time job that was paying
(approx.)
£22,000 per year, so there was no need for me to dip into my
trading
account, and if I did not earn any money from the markets for a few
months,
this would not matter one bit. One piece of advice I would have for
anyone –
if they are contemplating leaving their full-time job to branch out
on their
pwn in self-employment, you MUST have at least 3 months wages
stashed away,
so that there is no pressure to earn money in the early days.
When you don't
have to earn – sods law says YOU WILL!!
By the 22nd
December 2000 I had £5080 in my account and I was trading
completely
faultlessly, and consistently earning 20 pips per evening. I then
decided
that I was going to give Nick's modified “Evening” system a try, he
had added
a few bits to it to enable a trader to earn a bit more than the
normal
target. In the New Year I was going to try for 25-30 pips per evening
if
circumstances allowed.
The new year of 2001 started well, I was trading at £5
per pip and over
January/February I was averaging £125 every evening, with
hardly any losses.
This was more than I was earning in London and I had to
pay for train fares
as well. This really made me think about life and really
did cause some
turmoil in my mind. I had a safe, secure job with a company
that had been
established over 90 years, it was virtually a job for life,
but I could also
see that my home based small business (trading in the
evening) I had
started was beginning to give me the profits I had
only dreamed about, and
it was all tax-free. Should I hand my notice in and
go full-time trading or
should I carry on as I was?
I look back at this
time in my life - and the fact that I am a very
cautious, conservative person
probably contributed to my indecision over
what I should do about my two "jobs". I spoke to Nick about my problem, and
he did encourage me to work for
a few more months to build up my trading
account and then go full-time
trading plus he offered me his daytime system
that he used himself. What to
do??
In the end, I decided to stay with my job and just trade in the
evenings
after work, as originally planned. My wife was disappointed with my
decision
and I think we then started to grow apart as she was frustrated with
my
apparent lack of ambition. Looking back now, I think she could see the
kind
of lifestyle that we could have if I traded full-time (ie Nick's
lifestyle)
and desperately wanted it. By June 2001 I was still happily
trading
part-time but unfortunately we had separated.
I had moved on to
trading at £12 per pip, so I was earning around
£250-£275 per evening and
still compounding the money in my trading
account. A month after my
separation, after our house was sold I
bought a flat in Wapping (East London)
to be nearer to work, but I
was still able to socialise in Burnham at
weekends as I stayed in Nick's
annexe. I truly believed I had a really good
life, I was single, had a
good job and more importantly, I had a small
business that was growing
at an alarming (good) rate every month.
Things
just plodded on over the rest of 2001 and a note in my trading log
says my
trading account stood at £76120 on 31/12 2001 and leading up to the
end of
the year I had settled on trading at £50 per pip instead of
increasing it in
line with the amount of money in the trading account. When
I started trading
with real money I had dreamt of trading at hundreds of
pounds per pip, but
when it came to it, I really was happy trading at £50,
as I did not need to
earn any more. I had seen what Nick trades at, but I
was not really
interested in earning that much, my needs are a lot more
simple than his.
During 2002 I built my account up to £100k and after that, I drew out
(once
a fortnight) anything over that amount while still trading at £50 per
pip.
In those days, I used a lot of surplus cash to put down as deposits
for
flats to rent out, the market was rising a lot and buy-to-let mortgages
were
very easy to come by – especially from Northern Rock!!
(I did that
for about 3 years, but eventually I started leaving money in the
trading
account as I could not spend it all)
The problems of working full-time reared
its head again this year, as my
work started to suffer due to the fact that
my salary was extremely paltry
compared with what I was earning from my
trading. My heart was not in it
anymore, and I started to discuss the
situation with my future with the
company. We tried a few different
strategies at work in London including
flexi-time and then working 4 days a
week, but eventually, by
September 2002 by mutual consent it was decided that
I would leave
work permanently.
Myself and Nick debated how my trading was
going to progress, he was keen
for me to trade full-time and he gave me his
“FTSE DayTrading” system to
learn. This was the strategy he was trading at
the time, and although I
could see he was very successful with it, I was more
interested in working
less after 9 years of commuting and long hours in an
office making other
people rich.
So on Friday 13th September 2002 (I know
– unlucky!!) I left full-time
employment for good. I must admit, those first
few months of being at home
all day really made me relax after working long
hours in an office for so
long. I would get up around 10 o'clock, fetch the
papers, then go out for
lunch (I was still living in London at that time) I
would get back to the
flat just before 5 o'clock so I could switch on my
laptop to trade Nick's
Evening system. Once I was done for the evening, I
would usually go out on
the town for a few hours. That was my life for about
9 months, but I did
eventually tire of all the going out, so it was time to
change something.
Around that time (June 2003) Nick had bought a tumble down
property in
Portugal in a small fishing village called Carvoeiro, and his
builder friend
Richard was going to spend 3 months out there restoring it. I
volunteered to
go out with Roger to live there and do some labouring as long
as I could
finish work in time to trade the Evening system each day.
To be
honest, it turned into another party time, there were 4 of us out
there and
most evenings we were out drinking, so build progress was very
slow. We
probably did about 3 to 4 hrs work a day, but I was still able to
trade every
day (weekdays) so my trading account was building up nicely as I
had no
living expenses at all, Nick paid for everything in return for the
building
work we were doing. He would come out every fortnight to check on
the work,
and most Saturdays when he arrived his face was an absolute
picture!! There
was never as much work done as he imagined, but I don't
think he really
minded, and we were having the time of our lives.
Well, in the end, to cut a
long story short, the build took 9 months in the
end as we ended up restoring
the property next door as well. It turned out
that I had met and was going
out with a Portuguese girl (who later became my
wife even though she is 17
years younger than me) so I was not that keen to
come home. I rented Nicks
place (which was now completely finished) for 6
months so that myself and
Catelina (Cate) could live together while she
finished college.
I
obviously carried on trading each evening and during the day I developed
a
liking to golf, and as you probably know, the Algarve is packed full
of
championship courses. I was once again very happy.
Shooting forward to
2005, I had bought a farmhouse just outside Carvoeiro,
which I was restoring
while we lived there and Cate was a full-time sculptor
after finishing her
course at college. We also got married out there.
We carried on this
lifestyle for a couple of years, me still trading each
evening and playing
golf during the day, and then at Easter 2007 we decided
that we wanted a base
in the UK as well, where we could live in the summer
months and then stay in
Portugal in the winter, so we could have sun all
year round.
It all worked
out very easy in the end, I bought Nick‟s house in
Burnham-on-Crouch which he
had just put on the market so I was back
with all my old friends.
That is
our set-up today, I still trade just Nick's Evening system, and the
rest if
the day is spent either sailing or playing golf wherever we are –
Burnham or
Carvoeiro – and my trading account has crept up steadily over the
years, and
now stands at £673,600 approx. Overall I still trade at just £50
per pip, but
if there is a large purchase I am after, I will trade at £100
or £150 per pip
to earn a bit more money. I just trade Monday-Thursdays now
as I am often
away for long weekends. I truly believe I have an ideal
lifestyle all thanks
to being able to trade the markets for a few hours each
evening. Ah yes – and
my wife's happy too!! Very important.
As a postscript, in the summer of 2008
while a whole party of friends were
at my place in Portugal, Nick eldest son
(Max) came up with the idea of
making Nick's trading systems available to a
wider audience. After all, it
had worked for me, so why couldn't others learn
as easily? He then set about
designing the website and all the associated
software that was going to be
needed. It was Max's first venture into
self-employment, even though he was
only 18 yrs old at the time. He has since
added many other income streams to
his media/advertising company – and he is
still at University.
Thank you for reading my brief history/journey to become
a professional
(part-time) daytrader. If anyone is hesitating about whether
to do it, my
advice is....................
Graham (Aldy)
Aldous
Carvoeiro, March 2011
I find this quite motivating.
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