“You can always scale up later” @CT-Jaguar
In Members in Profile, we interview stand-out members that show strong aptitude and work ethic. Our goal is to highlight different folks so that you can see the effort that our members are putting into their trading and hopefully learn from their experiences of the Convergent Trading Community.
We hope you enjoy hearing what @CT-Jaguar has to say!
What brought you into trading?
In 2016, I began dabbling in a few swing trades, taking some positions in my 401k account, and just trying out a few things here and there.
I was working in a marketing job and simultaneously studying for the GMAT – thinking that I would go back to school to seek a masters in economics and go on to work for an investment bank. At the time, I thought this was the best route to “professional investing”.
Around this time, I was lucky enough to catch the tail-wind of the crypto-craze in early 2017. What an easy period of time to have been an investor… Slowly my focus shifted from going back to school to shorter time-frame day-trading. After a very profitable 6 months, I quit my job, and proceeded with exuding over-confidence into what would become probably the most difficult period of my life.
What do you like most about Convergent?
I really enjoy the Group Mentoring Sessions – I think those sessions represent some of the highest value that can be derived from Convergent. They’re not only useful for receiving the feedback from Head Traders, but I find that traders must be more critical of themselves when explaining their issues out-loud and having to answer questions that they’ve yet to think about critically.
I’ve also noticed that participants in Group Mentoring have other members reach out to them more often to be accountability partners/groups. This is because those members relate to your story, personality, experiences, or trading issues. It’s a great way to make progress but also to build connections and in-grain yourself into the community.
How have these aspects helped you grow as a trader?
Sometimes when you are working through a trading issue, it feels like you really cannot put your finger on the source of the problem and potential solution. However, when analyzing another trader, often those ideas & solutions come much faster.
I think being in a community where so many of us are willing to put ourselves out there during times of struggle is so advantageous. Because this helps you to understanding that these issues are not unique to you and they are not the result of you being some inferior person. In reality, there is another trader out there who has your same flaws and has made it work. Whether that is in mitigating those errors, working around them, seeking therapy, trading different products/timeframes, there certainly are solutions out there. Oftentimes I think we over-complicate things for ourselves, where we would offer someone else some very simple advice.
Do you have a favorite community quote or webinar?
Some of my favorite webinars are the Trading Process Series 1, 2, and 3 from Mid 2020:
- Pre-Market Preparation Process and Planning
- Stalking the Market and Taking a Shot
- Managing Trade Objectives and Resetting
We’ve covered some of this same material in more recent webinars since, but I was coming off another cycle of over-confidence where I was very successful during the covid-crash. As volatility was normalizing over the summer, my over-confidence quickly switched to under-confidence. I was taking more losses with lower R-factor winners and really needed to revisit my overall plan. This webinar series happened to be great timing for me to refocus on the process in a practical way.
Do you have any advice for new traders?
In trading, you can sign up for death by 10 cuts, death by 100 cuts, death by 1000 cuts, or death by 10,000 cuts. It’s completely up to you. However, it seems pretty intuitive that if it will take 10,000 cuts to kill me, I have MUCH more time to figure out how to survive. You can always scale up later, but once you get too many devastating wounds there’s a much lesser chance of survival.
I can tell you from first hand experience, when you blow up an account and can’t trade for however long, you are dramatically and unnecessarily regressing in your trading progress. Recently, I discussed this in a YouTube video here.
What is your favorite non-trading activity/hobby?
I love playing any sports when I have the chance. I really enjoy poker and try to play as often as I can. I’m also a gear-head (cars & motorcycles), essentially anything fast with 2 or more wheels, sign me up.
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