He goes by the name of ‘Nate’ and he is a respectable and permanent fixture in our daily Live Chat sessions. Somehow he is fully functional in the earliest hours of the morning and, from what he tells us often, he extracts the necessary energy to operate at full capacity each day by consuming several servings of tacos and eggs throughout the day.
Apparently this boy can eat, a 22-year old college student about to graduate with a double major in Biology and Chemistry. Or maybe it’s just Bio-Chem??
Who knows? College degrees are over-rated anyway as I’m sure he will attest.
He’s on track to graduate this year after finishing all the required courses such as Racquetball and Swimming. (Yeah I dunno, this school of his apparently equates biology with racquetball, you gotta ask him I got nothin’…)
And so starts our first trader interview…
Lucci: How did you get started trading?
Nate: I made my first trade when I was 16! YCKM was the stock. When I signed up for a Scottrade account they sold my email to other trading systems out there and I started to receive tons of emails from pump and dumpers.
Lucci: How did your trading progress after that?
Nate: I read and studied a lot. I started to trade larger cap companies and then last year I tried the Sykes’ method. I found your site around November and made my first options trade soon after.
Lucci: How did the Sykes’ trading method work out for you?
Nate: It’s a lot of research. Tim spends hours going through SEC filings and studying companies to post watchlists filled with stocks to buy or sell. He advocates, though, for you to do the work when it comes to trading it. I found that making a trade based solely off his alerts leads you to problems. Many moves seem to happen because he has so many followers. If you use his watchlists simply as trading ideas I think you would do much better. I don’t think the penny stocks really fit my profile though.
Lucci: What turned you on to Sanglucci?
Nate: Sang trades the big cap stocks that I was used to trading by then. Plus, it didn’t seem like that many people out here are daytrading options. I like to go where the least amount of people are.
Lucci: What are you short-term/long-term goals concerning trading?
Nate: In the short-term I’d have to say just to be a more consistent trader and to NOT lose money. Also to not over-trade. In the long-term, I’d like to pursue trading as a career for a period of time. I like the flexibility it offers.
Lucci: What are some things you’ve learned from being on this site or what things do you need to continue to work on?
Nate: Well first off, don’t listen to Sang LOL. Also not being too impatient. So if your option tanks a quick $.10 don’t panic, generally you can sell at a much better price than where you do if you panic. Not sticking to mental stops sometimes hurts. I use mental stops not physical stop limits. Scottrade believe it or not, wouldn’t allow stop limit prices within a given price range that they would predetermine. It was weird, I dunno. I’m with Think or Swim now so I may start using physical stops.
Lucci: How have you been doing thus far in your trading since moving over to options.
Nate: I started off very well but unfortunately have been on a bit of a losing streak. I’m still net positive but I’ve found that optimal times to trade options vary just like everything else. Sometimes the market rewards you, other times it rewards other methods of trading. I just have to wait it out and be patient. I will continue to stick to options though.
Nate also has been playing the guitar since he was 7 and loves riding bikes, Kawasaki Ninja status! Hope you’ve all enjoyed our first trader interview. We’ll continue to explore the lives of the traders who frequent this site and showcase their stories. Going forward, we plan to record these conversations and post them as audio files!
Stop by the Live Chat room one day to chat with this up and coming options trader!
Check out todays news.
Largest refinery in Iraq gets bombed
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12586852
Saudi unrest begins. The country has a 50% unemployment. People are homeless while Saudi royalty spend millions for custom license plates to go on their Phantoms and Ferrari’s.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/0226/1224290928849.html
Then on Fri we had new lower GDP revision. If the market wasn’t so oversold it could have been ugly just on this news.
U.S. Real Growth GDP for Q4 2010 Revised Lower to 2.8% from 3.2%
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article26553.html
Easy – Joe… You still beating that OIL drum (pssss – No pun intended – my friend)… Watch this silver – she is going to 35 this week.
Nate, good answers to some of these questions and thanks for taking time to answering them. You and I have similar backgrounds.