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[Ciaran]

Thanks for the good wishes Derek, much appreciated.

Off to the doctors tomorrow to see him tut like a builder and shake his head with 'Hmmm this whole walls gonna have to come down!'

Ciarán

[jorgy]

Financial trading George, Forex or Foreign Exchange to give it its correct title. It's the biggest market in the world, $3 trillion traded every day!

I still do a bit now just for fun. Well I was doing a bit just for fun but I've just changed over to Linux and it's a bit of a challenge getting the software to run. Should get it sorted in the next few weeks I think. Loads of info on the net just Google "Forex Trading". Be careful though if you have a dabble, you could lose your house, and more!

Hi Dave
Interesting to know, I've never done currencies, just stocks -one of them markets is more than sufficient as a pastime, I think u will agree!-. Were you ever into this professionaly or just an amateur? When I was at uni and a complete beginner, I knew of a guy same age that was doing transactions about daily -I don't know if he eventually gained his degree but probably (I hope...) he didn't care anymore about it!-. I've never reached that point as it has to become your life if u want to have any chance of success. Only doing medium-term moves. Do u use technical analysis at all?
cheers
G

[demag]

Hello George,

Wow thought I was the only trader on here. That is a surprise. Well I've got the software to run now I was only ever an amateur George but if I have a break I always end up coming back to it. It gives me a buzz and its 24 hour trading 5 days. I'm an engineer on automated warehouse systems by trade so this is something different.

I have used technical analysis but these days I usually trade on price action alone. Usually called KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) I have been trading about 6-7 years now, so not that long. Some traders say it's impossible to trade without indicators and call price action traders "The Dark Siders"!! Each to his own I say. I enjoy it. I don't think I'll ever retire off it but as I said it's a bit of fun really. The software is Metatrader Mt4 charting software. If you want to have a play you can download a demo account and have a practice. I usually have a couple of demo's open to try different things on.

[jorgy]

Wow, so u r a real trader so-to-speak. Are you making any profits from it overall through the years? I should really try this kind of software at some point of time, although I'm not sure I could take the hang of intraday trading -instead of taking a buzz I may have a heart attack!! , and then not sleep all night because of the money I'd lost!-.

For my medium-term activity I only use consolidation patterns (triangles etc) and resistance lines -all of which I draw myself on Excel-, volumes, and -always- good old fundamentals; all these are usually sufficient to do a move say, each month or two, per stock. I also like to take advantage of extreme market moves that I think are not justified -e.g. in the case of a one-off unexpected event like this crisis now-. So e.g. in mid-Feb I bought for 12.5 a (good) stock that I follow for years now, and sold it last week for 18.06 -although it reached 8.8 in the meanwhile, but I knew this level of price was just ridiculous and was about the bottom, pure market exaggeration (it had come from a historical peak of 45)-.

But basically what I like most is the real business-aspect of the thing, i.e. I always look for stocks that might be underpriced because of some strategically good development that is about to happen or could happen. Betting your money on this is of course very risky as you depend on 1 million independent factors in play for your senario to eventually happen. The typical error I've been doing in this is to enter the stock too early, i.e. before the "good development" has really been guaranteed to happen. But I've learnt to cut my enthusiasm down -and my risk and profit also- and enter just after the price explosion has happened. Overall, I've always been intrigued by business ideas and plans and deficits, rates, and policies, etcetc, and I follow up these news daily just because I like to, so applying my info in stock markets just comes naturally I guess.

I think the best thing I've earnt from acting in the stock market is various lessons on human psychology (my own psychology, first of all!): it's so damn difficult to separate affect from logic!!
Also, the paramount rule that is soooo difficult to see in the beginning: don't be greedy, you'll loose it all!!

cheers & "good profits"
George
ps. I'm involved since 1997