From never having built models to finishing on the podium in the International Trading Championship, Alison’s trading journey is a remarkable one. Learning to build Systems with Trade View was a part in Alison came in at Second Place in the 2018 International Trading Championship, missing out on the top prize buy the slimmest of margins with a 96% profit. Not bad for someone who stumbled across one of our webinars in 2017.
Introduction
My introduction to trading started very early. My mother said she put me through private school by trading Woodside Petroleum. We also played a board game at home called Stock Market. (I usually won!)
I am a naturally competitive person and have enjoyed competing in all sorts of ways. I used to compete in music Eisteddfods as a child. I now play competitive bridge and table tennis. It was my bridge partner who got me into trading. Naturally, I was very interested and entered the Trade View International Trading Championship in 2018.
For most of my adult life I have been a professional orchestral musician. When I had my two daughters, I became freelance to give me freedom to work and be a mother.
About 20 years ago I began studying Astrology when I met my current partner who is an Astrologer. This gradually morphed into studying financial astrology when I began my own trading journey. I have spoken at Astro conferences in Australia and the USA on my research on financial astrology.
Brief background about your trading
I traded penny stocks to start with and not having much trading knowledge, didn’t do that well. It was around 2006 when my bridge partner suggested we learn to trade Options. We were both hooked. The market was in a great bull run and I did OK. Unfortunately early success, bad techniques and not much risk management led to big losses later, so by late 2010 I decided to give up option trading.
In 2011 I started a currency trading course and learned a lot more about risk management and technical analysis. I also was introduced to Algo Trading then but found it too technical with not enough support, so let it slide despite being keen on the idea.
I was watching an IC Markets webinar in June 2017 with Eddy demonstrating Trade View X and decided to give EAs another go, attending a workshop the following month.
“Trade View has taught me to be very systematic with my trading.”
What you learnt at Trade View?
The courses, conferences and Trading Talk series have also introduced me to trading concepts which are professional and outside the normal retail trader’s ideas. Trade View has given me confidence in my trading because I can test things thoroughly before I put my money on it. I have had to learn more about indicators so I can use them in my systems. I have gradually learned to trust my models rather than interfere with them which was tough lesson for me.
Please share some of your successes and failures while learning to trade…
My greatest profitable trade was in November 2007 when I bought a call option in RIO and a few days later RIO jumped $20 and I made $17,000. This was terrible for my trading as it brought over-confidence. 2008 brought some more success when the bear market was obvious, and I did well with puts on RIO and BHP. The following year I kept buying puts and of course, the market kept going up and my puts expired worthless every month. This soon drained the coffers.
My trading competition success in 2018 with second place was very sweet with 96% profit. This was mostly made in the last three months. I started very badly and after crashes had to rebuild my portfolio a couple of times. Being able to discuss my trading models with the team was very helpful..
Conclusion: What are your future goals?
My main goal is to become financially independent with profits from trading. To help this I aim to build more models so I can have a broader range of systems to run in the competition portfolio and so reduce risk. I will give my trading more priority so I can move forward more swiftly. I will set up a VPS so that I can keep my models running no matter where I am. Lastly, I would like to increase my fitness so that I have more stamina to work on my models and pester Trade View with more questions.
