This is the first episode of Aaron Fifield’s Chat with Traders podcast. In the introduction Aaron discusses how he got into trading and why he decided to start a trading podcast. Aaron notes that the main reason for starting the podcast was so he could fast-track his learning curve as a trader by learning from successful traders. In this episode Aaron interviews trend-following trader Jerry Robinson. Jerry provides some insight on how he got started trading in his early twenties during the dotcom era of the late 1990’s. He started with a trading account of only $700, which he managed to quickly lose. Jerry provides an overview of how he trades today and what works for him. Then interview focuses on the things that entry level traders can do to improve their chance of success as a trader. Jerry discuss how he believes that trading is the best business in the world because when you succeed as a trader you have the ability to work from anywhere in the world. Jerry believes that anyone can succeed as a trader if they put in the effort and time. There are no ways to short cut this process. It takes time. The traders that don’t succeed look for shortcuts. He would recommend that new traders seek out a mentor or coach to help reduce the learning curve. Jerry discusses that to be successful you must develop a systemized trading system or a set of trading rules. It took Jerry awhile to develop and fine tune a trading strategy that was profitable and that he was comfortable with. He talks about how he uses both technical and fundamental analysis in his trading strategy. Jerry talks about different trading time frames and notes that he believes that you can make more money by swing trading or long-term trading versus day trading. Jerry does not day-trade anymore as he found it too stressful. In the interview Jerry notes that his favorite trading related book is How to make Money in Stocks by William O’Neil. He indicates that this is a good resource for learning how to read charts. This episode is actually a good advert for the Voodoo Trading Journal as the trading strategy covered in the journal checks all the boxes of what Jerry thinks is required to be a successful trader.
Trading advice from the Podcast that will make you a better trader:
- You can’t call yourself a trader until you have experienced a really bad loss. That is your tuition on Wall Street
- Avoid listening to other people’s ideas and stock tips. You need to become self-sufficient to succeed in trading.
- It is hard to pull the trigger after a big loss but you can’t second guess yourself. Even after a losing streak you must be able to trust your strategy and continue to follow any signals that it generates.
- If you try and stop and start following your strategy you will not be successful. Consistency is key to your success.
- Print out the charts for all trades and draw on the chart (trend lines, support and resistance etc.) to figure out what went right or wrong with the trade.
- You need to understand why you made money or lost money on a trade and learn from each and every trade.
- The reason most traders fail is they do not have a trading system or strategy. You need to develop a trading strategy that works for you.
- You should develop a screening process to build your watchlist. Try to minimize the number of stocks on your watchlist.
- You need to always trade with a trailing stop loss.
- You need to know your exit strategy before you place a trade.
- As soon as your entry is confirmed you need to place your stop loss order.
- It is also extremely important to have an exit strategy for winning trades.
- The majority of stocks, usually 3 out of 4, will follow the trend of the overall market. It is difficult to make money on the long side if the overall market is trend down. During those times you need to either short the market or wait on the sidelines for the market trend to change.