Who

Who is the Faceless Trader?

Maybe this is a mistake.  Maybe I shouldn’t be writing at all.  Maybe

But there are things in life where you just believe that you’re truly yourself once you’ve written something down.  Something’s amiss when one doesn’t write.  Even before the advent of blogging and social media, I’ve always kept notes whenever an idea pops into my mind.  I quickly forget things. That is why a paper and a pen proved to be my handy notes guide, as I was growing up.  Whether there’s an audience or none, I just have to simply write.  That seems to be my default ADHD.

What I love is how words in their simple act of telling stories, enables me to think and know myself even better.   Through the digestion and the processing of information, writing actually illumines a gradual unfolding of a long and thoughtful tale, of the private communion of how my mind works.

This is how I make sense of my world – through writing. 

Thus, I’ve officially launched this blog:  The Faceless Trader.

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First things first, let me address who I am. 

Who am I?

I’m just one of the millions of nameless, faceless traders.  The market doesn’t know who I am, nor does it care who I am.  I do not have an apparent or obviously special gift for trading the markets.  In many respects, I’m indistinguishable from other guys.

What I do have is a huge interest in learning as much as possible about the skill of making money consistently through the financial markets.    After years of trading the markets, I have no ego left to boast.  I know how much I’ve failed as a trader, and this a story of a failure who is determined to rise from the ashes.

I have tried several methods.  I’ve tried to spend my time as near the screens as possible, trading every tick from the 1 minute to the 5 minute to the 15 minute of the chart.  I’ve read myriads of books I can get my hands upon, as I deemed my lack of knowledge to be the primary culprit of my initial trading losses.    I speak no lies when I tell you how many nights I’ve lost sleep, nor lost my eating habits thinking about my positions in the markets.  Looking back, perhaps this speaks much to my amateur mistakes, which I’m still paying very dearly until today.

I’m not a market veteran.  I’m not a huge professional money manager.  I do believe I have a story, equally interesting to share, and perhaps more relevant to most people.

Perhaps, it is because it’s authentic, and speaks to 90% of all beginning traders.  I speak as the faceless trader, but perhaps you can also call me the failed trader.

Sometimes, when I think about the years I’ve spent trading the markets, I think about how much time I’ve wasted, and never seemed to have moved at all.  Gone are my dreams, my youth and more importantly huge sums of financial capital.  I begin to give up and cry silently.  It’s embarrassing, but that’s perhaps the thing about the markets.  You’re not the only one who fails.  You think you’re the only one going through it all, but you’re not.  I realized there’s 90% of us who fail at this game.

When things don’t quite work out, we force ourselves into a tough and painful acknowledgment that we may not be in the right career after all.  Tough times force many people into necessary reevaluations that lead in the long term to more fulfilling lives.  Whether I turn out to be a good money manager someday, I do not know.  I do know that while my failures have made me weak inside, they also forced me to think about formidable, actionable measurement plans and goals to make things better.

I swallowed my pride.  I acknowledged my mistakes, and perhaps it’s through this acknowledgment that I’ve increased my trader IQ points one notch, and began to see the light of day, at least gradually.  I’ve started to overcome the game’s mental aspect.  Yes.  I’ve realized that trading is not a game of financial prowess.  Your degrees, designations etc are not going to be a sufficient trading advantage over the rest of the market participants.  It’s all in the mind.  I may sound like a voodoo specialist, or some psychological whacko, but I’ve learned that more than studying the charts, or the company’s fundamental positions, the more important thing that trading entails is the aspect of knowing yourself, and complementing that personality to the unique trading system that you’ll eventually use to enable yourself to be a better and consistent trader.  Only by then, can one be considered part of that 10% elite team of super traders, where performance and results are the only keys to financial success and more importantly, self-gratification for achieving a worthy goal for oneself.

How I wish that I can one day write in this blog how my success story played out.  For now, the journey is still well in the beginning, I’m lucky enough to have your eyes and ears by visiting my blog.  Thank you and I wish for a same fruitful journey with all my fellow travelers in this path.

As Minimalist Trader once wrote, “Trading is a path to build wealth, a road to ruin, unending entertainment when you’re clueless, crushingly boring when done right, enlightening window to the world and a glimpse of humans at their worst.”

Only traders can identify with me.  I’ve seen my evil, and it’s not a beautiful sight.    Cheers and let’s travel together in this path.

Take this empty cup and fill it with some innocence,

The Faceless Trader