The 100-Pip Traderguide me from a mental standpoint from then on. I was deter-
mined to never fall into a trance on a losing trade, what I call
possum trading, where you sort of fall asleep and act like if you
don’t watch it, it will all get better. I promised that I would never
let that happen again. That was the big goal, and it took 11 months
not just to figure out entries and exits, but really get to the point
where I could trade on a practice account consistently enough that
I wasn’t gambling with the account any longer. And so the central
goal became to never lose the starting capital. If I could keep my
capital, I could stay in the game. Trading is a game of survivability.
Q: What was the process like in terms of teaching yourself?
Did you teach yourself basic chart reading, or did you learn about
fundamentals first?
A: I exclusively started with technical analysis. Economics in-
timidated me, so I at first avoided fundamental analysis. Instead
of reading about economics, I took a copy of Alexander Elder’s
Trading for a Living, and I read about moving averages. During
that 11-month stretch of time, I literally sat at the charts and back
tested and experimented exclusively with moving averages. At the
end of 11 months, I actually remember somebody asking me if had
chosen one of my moving averages as the 62-moving average be-
cause it was “Fib” ratio and I asked them, I didn’t understand what
the word “Fib” meant. I hadn’t actually done much other analysis
except for my own testing and experimentation with moving aver-
ages. I would plot moving averages on the charts. I would move
forward one candle at a time. I would experiment with different
timeframes, different currency pairs, until I had accumulated just
an enormous amount of research of my own in how price inter-
acted with those moving averages and what I could expect from
a given type of trade. I wanted to be able to open a trade and
answer the questions: What could I expect to lose? What could
I expect to win? And when those win/loss ratios became accept-
able and I could trade the strategy consistently week after week
after week—profitably—then I knew I was defending my account.