Preparing for training course: Intro

This is my first post and right now I am set to start at a proprietary trading firm in April on a 4 week training course and I am aiming to get backed by them although I appreciate it is going to be a tough challenge. I am spending my time learning as much as I can whilst taking some time to relax and enjoy waking up whenever I want. You can see my background on the right, I don't want to discuss it too deeply as I don't see much need too but a few thoughts can be found below.

I am new to trading but I am not approaching this as a way just to make money, I really want to master trading and I am already hooked on watching the markets each day. I am a person who finds it hard to only give half my energy to something, for me it's either everything or nothing. In poker I gave it everything, at first it was just about achieving and progressing and working towards the lifestyle I wanted. Unfortunately it eventually became all about making money, specifically to pay rent and afford nights out and I ended up losing my passion for the game. Although I hope to one day be reliant on trading, I do hope I do not burn out from it as fast I did with poker.

It appears to me there are similarities between both trading and poker and it does seem to attract similar people but I will definitely approach trading (or more precisely short term trading or in my case I believe scalping) with an open mind. Sometimes you can just read a post on a forum by someone who is about to start on something and it is just so obvious he is destined to fail. His attitude is often too geared towards the end result or they simply believe in themselves just a little too much. I can just hope this blog does not sound like it's going in that direction!

Going back to poker, although poker has helped me to graduate debt free, it has also put me through some really intense times. The first $5000 I made I lost back in about a fifth of the time it took to make it and I have been broke twice in my life already and I am 23. Going broke as a poor student isn't so bad but there was one point in my life where I had to pay about £900 for tuition and rent and I had less than £400 and about 3 weeks. I got to a point where moving down in limits (playing for less money) would have been sensible but there were simply not enough hours in the week to do coursework and make enough money at poker. So there have been some degenerate moments in my life but it is these moments that I have learnt the most and all in all I have learnt a lot about myself, money management, financial pressures and many other things. Although I feel I am about to learn a whole lot more!

More recently I have been studying what is going on in the world as well as trading. Although 6 months ago I new almost nothing about either of these. I have been following politics and the markets generally but have become quite interested in currencies and gold because of the recent events and my interest and belief in Peter Schiff from which started also about 6 months ago.

Just to finish with GL HF (good luck and have fun), updates to follow shortly!