“My experience is trading, and it has been ever since I left school, maths was a strong point for me at school and it was a suggestion from the careers office that maybe I should go into the financial markets, and it led on from there. I left school at eighteen and had some friends that had already left school at sixteen and were working in the city and that appealed to me, so, I got into a financial institution and made it aware that I wanted to get into that front office and trade.
I slowly worked my way into that environment and initially I was the tea boy, getting lunches and running errands and withing a couple of years I got my FSA licence and I started moving into the front office.
At that time, I met a guy who ran an emerging markets equity derivatives desk, which meant I was trading South African futures and options on their version of the FTSE 100 and that’s where I spent the next decade, working in London, trading with them. I also spent a few years in Hong Kong doing the same thing, starting as a junior dealer, and worked my way up to become a senior dealer. I started getting a bit disillusioned with city life – that early morning wake up call, working late, seeing people around me burn out with the high pressured stress environment and I decided I didn’t want to be ‘that guy’ in twenty years’ time. I was thirty-one, had no kids and I decided it was a good time to make that move.
So, I quite the city life, but still had the passion to be a trader so decided to trade for myself with my own funds, that was in 2014 which leads me to where I am today”
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Having left school at 18, I have spent my entire career working in the financial markets. I spent many years in both London and Hong Kong, registered and regulated by the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority), SAFEX (South African Futures Exchange) and HKSI (Hong Kong Securities Institute).
After more than a decade working in London and Hong Kong, I decided I wanted to go it alone and trade for myself. The consequent steep learning curve taught me a lot about myself, not just as a trader, but also as an individual. I decided to find a mentor early on in my trading journey and took everything to heart. I quickly realised that the secret to long-term success in trading did not lie solely in making the big returns, no matter what the risk, like all the internet salesmen, would have me believe. There were way too many ‘traders’ out there who were much better salesmen and marketers than they were traders, promoting reckless trading with fool-proof, ‘holy grail’ systems that would never stand the test of time.
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