I have been trading for 10 years, but I hate telling people I trade.
This one time, I had moved to a new place.
It was a quiet afternoon and the front door of the house was open.
So my neighbor took that opportunity to walk in to say hi and hello.
He looked at the TV, which was showing stock prices on a business news channel.
And he immediately asked if I trade stocks.
I said yes.
I pulled out my phone, opened my running positions and showed him my current profit.
He took my phone and stared at the running trades for a while.
And then asked me to meet him later.
And I instantly regretted showing my profit, because I knew what he wanted to talk about.
So we went out for a walk around the neighborhood.
It was a cold evening, and turns out, he trades from time to time too. So we discussed how we started trading.
He mentioned losing a little bit of money a few years ago.
And I shared how I lost a big amount within just a few minutes once.
We laughed at our stupid decisions.
But then he asked me how much profit I made this year.
And when I showed him the number, he got really interested in how I trade.
So I explained to him my strategy and why I took the current running positions.
He then asked me how much money he needs to make good profit.
But I told him that I have been trading for many years.
And the account size requirement is like 10 times more than what he was expecting.
He was a bit disappointed to learn how long it took me to become really profitable.
But then he mentioned he has a friend who trades with a smaller account.
But he doubles it within a few months.
As soon as he said this, I knew I had made a mistake telling him I trade and showing my profits.
Because if my neighbor starts trading, I 100% know that he will regret it.
But why would I say that with such high confidence?
And since I have been trading for 10 years and have experienced a lot of pain doing so, do I regret trading?

Well, I have been doing business and entrepreneurship stuff from the start, even before i started trading.
In the beginner stage, I was trading the entire day to learn faster.
Because I saw many people who could not be profitable even after 10 years.
So trading more at the learning stage was important.
But once I gained enough experience, I was only trading for a few hours a day.
And the rest of the time, I was gaining new skills that grow over time.
But if 90% lose money, why did I think I would not lose?
Personally, I have never been scared of data that says 90% of traders lose money in trading.
Because I have been doing risky things, like everything that comes with entrepreneurship and businesses, from the start.
I do not know if it is true, but I have read data that says around 80% of businesses fail in the first year.
Which is not much different than in trading.
In most things, I started simply by copying what successful people before me have done.
And avoided what people who lose have in common.
So when I got into trading, I was not thinking that it is too risky.
My main focus was to see what actually makes people lose.
And I did that by taking a lot of trades in a really short amount of time.
That experience taught me what works and what does not.
So it is not like anything special, or like I have a secret method I found.
It is just that I gained more experience and did what data showed worked.
Do I regret not just investing in long-term things like the stock market index that give good returns with low risk?
Well, I started trading with the smallest account possible, which was $10.
And I only added money into the account after growing that previous amount.
And for like half of my trading journey, I had more money in investing.
There was no reason for me to put everything into trading when I was still learning.
Even now, I have a separate account for investing only.
Even if trading makes higher returns, investing is just simple and gives better peace of mind.
It is like when you do not make money from trading in a year, your investing profits can result in total profit that year.
So I will keep on investing forever.
Do I regret not having a stable income for years? And what about now?
Well, since I was always doing business-related stuff, I never had a stable income anyway like a job.
I used to take a small portion of my total profit as income.
Stable income does not exist in trading.
You have to run it like a business and take profits like businesses do.
Do I regret spending 10 years in high stress, anxiety and bad sleep?
Since I started with the smallest account, I do not think I had that much high stress compared to other things I was doing.
There was one time I had to take an entire month off from trading.
Because the stress was too high after losing around 30% of my bigger account size within a few minutes.
Since I do more swing trading now, the stress is even less.
Do I regret not quitting earlier?
I mean, there were times where I quit temporarily, especially in the beginner stage.
But then I learned something new and realized my mistake.
And then I came back to trading with a better mindset.
And after a while, when I had enough experience, I do not think there was any thought of quitting.
I knew profitable trading was possible when I stopped losing continously.
I just had to get to the next stage where the profit graph moves up.
Do I regret staying because I had already lost so much?
I did not lose so much in most of my trading journey.
because I never put so much money into the account in the learning stage.
So no, I do not regret this.
Did I lie to myself that I am a good trader?
Trying something that has a low probability of working requires a bit of delusion.
We traders are already delusional enough to try something that we know for a fact most people fail at.
So I would say yes, I lied to myself that I am better than 90%.
And that delusion kept me longer in trading.
But there is one very important thing that actually made me profitable.
I was testing strategies and only using things that worked according to data.
Did I ever hide losses from family?
I remember this one time I was trading with a small account.
And I had blown it up within a few minutes in the learning stage.
And I told that to my family and they said, good, now go to sleep.
So since my losses were so small, I did not care that much.
And my family did not care either.
I was paying such a low amount to learn something that was risky.
Many people come to trading with a really big account with their entire life savings.
And they pay that as a cost to learn at the learning stage.
When I lost 30% of my bigger account size in a matter of a few minutes, yes, my family was shocked.
But since I was profitable for multiple years at this point, they were not that angry about it.
And I managed to make that profit back and even more after that point.
Since then, I have not lost big in trading.
But my family is now used to experiencing the ups and downs of the market.
Did trading buy you the freedom to work on anything you want?
This is 100% true.
This is one of the main advantages of becoming a successful trader.
Back in the old days before trading, I was trying new businesses or doing things that had a low chance of success at the start.
The thought of not having income to feed myself and my family was very scary.
And that affected how I ran the business.
But because of trading and investing, I can live off dividends or a portion of my investing profits.
This gives more freedom to try new things that have a low chance of working and will probably not make money initially.
How many accounts did I blow up before it worked?
I started with a $10 account.
And I only added money into the account after making like 30% profit on the previous amount.
So in the early days, I blew many $10 accounts.
And then a few $100 accounts.
But I remember at around the $1000 mark, I was pretty good at trading.
What was the lowest point in the trading journey?
I would say the early days when I would make good progress, only to blow up the account in a matter of a few trades.
And then later, the time when I lost 30% in a few minutes.
Will you ever blow up your account in the future?
Right now, I do not take big positions because my profit expectations are now lower as the account size has grown.
If the stock market goes down 50% or more in a matter of a few days, then I will probably blow up the big account.
But if the price is crashing that fast, something really major has probably happened in the world.
And many people are getting fired from work, and survival is probably the highest priority.
So I do not think I’m going to care about how much money I’m losing in the market when it is a life-or-death situation outside.
All this will probably never happen, or will have a very tiny chance of happening.
So as a result, I’m probably never going to blow up my trading account in the future.
Will you ever recommend trading to others?
No, even though I have made good profits from trading.
I never recommend anyone try trading in person, and I never will.
Because trading is just riskier and takes a lot more time to get good than most people expect, just like my neighbour did.
Would I start trading again if I went back 10 years?
Since one of my goals when I started, was to have an income source that will never get competition and ruin my probability of making money, I would say it worked.
If I went back 10 years, I would probably tell my younger self to start trading and investing.
Because it will give you freedom in the future to try riskier things that give a way bigger reward.
What would I change if I started fresh again?
I started with the smallest account, traded a lot to learn faster from live experience, and only used things that worked according to data.
And I would do exactly the same things, because that worked for me.
I would not change anything.
So was trading worth it in the end?
Because of how compounding works, trading and investing, when done right, will have a really big impact on your life in the long run.
And the best part is we do not even have to make high returns consistently.
Small returns over a long compounding period will definitely change everyone’s life.
So yes, everything I did over the last 10 years in trading and investing was 100% worth it.