We would like to introduce Andrew who recently completed our In-House Intermediate Program, and is also on his way to becoming a full-time trader!
Below you will find out more about his journey.
Introduction
My name is Andrew Casey and I’m originally from New Zealand. My wife and I moved to Melbourne back in 2007 and built a house in the western suburbs – we feel very settled here and have no plans to move back anytime soon. I have worked in the oil and gas industry for the last 12 years and have a degree in Economics. I’ve always had an interest in how markets work.
Brief background about your trading
In my younger days I spent a lot of time playing video games and surfing the internet. I stumbled across an advertisement back in early 2010 for Forex trading from one of the larger brokers at the time. I quickly signed up to a demo account and started my journey of learning how to trade not knowing what I was doing but I felt a lot of excitement from watching prices go up and down.
After signing up to a course on price action I picked up some useful tools, one of which is that I should be keeping a journal of my trades. After a very rocky equity curve, I went through a phase of purchasing robots thinking this was the easy way to riches. All of these robots lost money over time. I eventually worked out I would need to work on myself to get ahead.
I’ve since realised that trading is not a get rich quick scheme and takes a lot practice and effort just to become a break-even trader. Over the years I have taken a few courses, read a number of books and listened to numerous podcasts which have collectively shaped me into becoming a much more consistent trader. My trading has moved from discretionary to fully-automated where I use risk management and trading systems that have an edge in the markets.
What have you learnt at Trade View?
The biggest takeaway for me at Trade View was the introduction and hands-on training with respect to building Expert Advisors in the In-House Systems Building Workshop. I have studied a few courses on how to program in Metatrader 4 but it was hard going and it didn’t excite me enough to push on. The skills learned in the workshop allow you to test new trading ideas very quickly without needing to program. I have come away from the workshop with a framework that I have developed into a mean reversion system that I now trade live.
One of the best pieces of advice I have ever received was from Eddie at Trade View. It is to understand why your system works and what could cause it to “break”. To me this is much more important than the technical aspects of your system – i.e. which indicator to use.
Please share some of your successes and failures while learning to trade
Towards the end of 2010 I opened a small live account with a $500 deposit. A few months in I got lucky and made a trade in silver netting $600 – I was ridiculously over-leveraged and this trade could have wiped me out (but didn’t). I wouldn’t call this a success as such but it definitely contributed to my learning. I am quite thankful that I started early on with a small live account as this has helped me to grow my mental fortitude over the years.
In terms of failures – for me it has been robots and trading signals. I would definitely advise against purchasing any type of commercial robot unless it’s one you have helped to develop and understand how it works. The same principle applies for following trading signals, I have not had a lot of success following other people and I believe it’s vitally important to trade in a style that suits you.
Below is a sample equity curve since attending the Workshop:
Conclusion
What are your future Goals?
In the short term I want to develop additional systems to trade in my portfolio. With respect to performance, I want to push on and my annual target is to achieve in excess of a 20% return (around 2% monthly). I would like to be financially independent within the next 10 years and through trading, this will help me to achieve that.
