Hello fellow Profiteers!

 

My name is Alex and I live in beautiful British Columbia.  I have just in the last couple of weeks, taken my first real steps into the world of trading. I have made a couple of trades but I won't discuss them much here (I'll try and post them properly if I can figure it out), I just wanted to take a minute to say hi and tell you all a bit about how I got started and my journey so far. So here we go.

I discovered Tim Sykes almost a year ago now, it was mid January of this year (2017). I found him by complete fluke basically. I'm now in my mid-late 30's and I have never been a money guy. Never cared too much about finances as long as bills were paid, lousy at math and knew absolutely NOTHING about stocks and the stock market aside from the fact that they exist. Came home from work one day usual routine, hit the couch, hit the bong, flip open the laptop. Now I'm not sure where I was or how I came across it but something caught my eye about marijuana (because I'm stoned). It was a video, some bald guy going on and on about these 64 marijuana companies who's stocks rose %1000 or more in 2016. I thought it was gonna be 5-10 min long, it ended up around 30 min. I would never have watched something like that at all, let alone for so long but again he was talkin' weed and I was stoned.

Now by the end of it I was absolutely sick of hearing this guy and couldn't wait to get him off my screen. To his credit though, boring as it was he did get me thinking. With decriminalization and legalization happening in many parts of the US and Canada, I thought this could really turn into something big and if I did get some money in it maybe I could stop living like a broke ass, get myself out of debt maybe, start living a better life for myself already. I didn't sign up for the newsletter this guy started pushing at the end of his video. But I decided I needed to learn more.

Again I'm not sure what site I was on or where I went to from there (I've tried to find it again and I can't) but literally within a couple of clicks I landed on a page for this guy Tim Sykes and a FREE video called "The Trader Checklist". Not only was this video completely free but it was 11 freaking hours long!!!!  I was sort of bewildered that he was giving away such a long video for free but I had nothing to lose, and since I knew nothing I was bound to learn SOMETHING useful if this guy is going to talk for 11 hours, so sign me up.

I started watching right away, and I was immediately drawn in by Tim's no nonsense approach. He really seemed like he knew what he was talking about, he sounded genuine and passionate. Tim I really appreciate that you swear in your videos, keep it up! And at no time throughout watching did I hear anything that sounded fishy or scamy or that made me question Tim or his motives or his information. Everything he talked about made perfect sense to me as he explained it all. Remember, I'm new and know nothing so I could have been getting duped and would not have known the difference but I felt good about Tim and was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and my trust (at least until he gives me a reason otherwise). Boy am I glad I did!!

I watched I think the first 6 hours of Trader Checklist that night and I was already hooked! Came home from work the next day, I immediately watched the other 5 hours. After I finished I just kind of sat there, again feeling bewildered. But this time it was different, there was also this excitement, I was experiencing completely new thoughts and feelings that I can honestly say I don't think I have ever felt before. Tim opened my eyes to a whole new world of possibility that I didn't know I had access to. I always thought in order to make money in the stock market you had to be basically everything that I wasn't. I thought at the very least you needed to be money hungry like so much of the world is and I have never been. But beyond that I figured you had to be very driven (I smoke weed), be great at math (I suck at it), get up at 5 am (not a fuckin' chance I JUST finally got to sleep, thanks insomnia!!) etc, etc. But all of a sudden none of that was in my way, in my minds eye I could see a clear pathway laid out before me that led directly to all my dreams, to all the things I ever wanted or wished I could do. It was literally life changing. For the first time it felt like my life had a direction. I had a goal and I was shown exactly how to attain it.

Studying, studying, studying and more studying. I read tons of articles on investopedia throughout watching trader checklist. Read the pennystocking 101 guide, re-watched trader checklist (this time taking notes!), bought and watched "How To Make Millions" twice, then watched Tim's entire youtube channel. I had watched Tim's videos for 7 hours a day on my work days and 16 on my "days off" every day for almost 3 months (worked out to around 920 hours +). This brought me to the end of March, I was really hoping to get a trading account open by about this time but it didn't pan out as my dad flew out to visit for a week. This was a bit of a financial setback for me as I'm one of those paycheck to paycheck people and missed a week of work. But I started saving up again, I also took the summer off from the intense studying. I felt like my brain could use a break, I learned ALOT in a short period of time from knowing nothing at all. I still kept up on Tim's youtube channel and blog posts but tried to do summer things. I completely failed at that, should have just kept studying :)

So as summer starts to wind down, I'm slated to have my trading account open by the end of September. Then I get a text from my niece who wants to come out and visit for a week! Lol, just my luck. We had a great visit and I wouldn't have traded it for anything, however it did set me back again. So after she had headed home (now a few days into September) I decided it was time to get back to studying as much as I could. I re-watched the trader checklist and how to make millions both 2 more times each and started back through the youtube channel from the beginning (I'm about half way now maybe a bit more).

 

-side note-

This I want to mention too: In the summer a co-worker of mine turned me on to going to our local casino on Thursday nights. I'm not a gambler, I've only played slots once or twice with like $20, not into poker or any of that. What got me was the value. So on Thursday nights their restaurant does an all you can eat pasta buffet for $10 taxes included. They got like an omelet bar setup but for pasta plus salad, garlic bread and little desert squares. For $10 that's a good deal! But this is a casino, they want you to gamble. So once you've paid for your meal you take your receipt up to the front desk and they give you your $10 back on a card to play the slots. So now you could potentially get your meal for free and win a bunch of money on top of that, now that's an even better deal! But hold on now, this is a casino remember! So to really sweeten the deal they also do a draw for $1000 cash towards the end of the buffet. So you can see how this is kinda hard to pass up.  So I made it a weekly thing partly to get me out of the house cuz I never really leave it unless I'm going to work or shopping, partly cuz I wanna win some money. Again, I'm not a gambler so each week I only spend the $10 I get back from my pasta, I don't go and blow hundreds of dollars like most everybody else in there.

My point to this little side note, is from studying Tim's strategy (and being antsy for wanting to have my trading account open already) I thought I might try and "grow my account" with the slot machines. Yeah, yeah, I know I know. And I know how Tim feels about gambling and slots and that whole scene, and I agree completely. My intention was to treat the slots in as much as I could the same way as Tim treats penny stocks. I wanted to get myself into "the right mindset" as a sort of pre-training for my foray into the stock market. I applied as many of his teachings as I could. "Aim small, miss small", I'm only playing with $10 so I can't go broke. "Go for singles not home runs", I usually only played $5 at a time, if I went up to even $14 from my original $10 I cashed out and went home. I saved my winnings in a jar at home and only used that same money to buy my pasta again the next week. I even made a spreadsheet!!! Yup, each week I came home from the casino and jotted down every possible anything I could, how much money I took with me, what machines I played, bet sizes, all of it. It was great practice, kinda fun, and at the same time it let me know exactly how successful I was at trying to grow my account. In the end not very. I had a couple of nice little wins at the very beginning, those carried me through for a number of weeks, the wins became smaller and less frequent. Then I had my big ($100) win while my niece was visiting (I "dragged" her out, no she's actually kind of a slot junkie at home). That was more or less my last decent win, from there the house advantage took over and the winnings dwindled to zero, I "blew up my account" so to speak. Maybe I could have kept it going a bit longer if  I wasn`t getting sloppy and trying to win back losses with more money ("revenge trade") not following my own very small list of basic rules. But It wouldn't have mattered in the long run, because with casino's YOU don't have a long run, that's how they stay in business. And they do very well.

Even though my winnings were now all depleted, I still felt like I got the upper hand. In the end I had 15 FREE all I could eat pasta dinners, plus a few hours of "entertainment" if you are easily amused by flashing lights and dinging sounds, and I got to practice a bit of my "trading mindset". I went back for another 3 weeks after the blow up with no wins at all. Thanks to my spreadsheet I could very easily see that I was on a losing streak, 6 in a row I think it was. As a Tim Sykes student I know that I have to "adapt or perish". This is not working to grow my account, I'm not winning on the slots or in the draw. Time to change gears, even though the pasta is a good deal in itself that`s $10 each week I don`t need to spend.

 

-end of side note-

 

It now becomes clear to me that I must really make a push to ensure I get my trading account open before the end of the year. I can't miss out on a potential Santa Clause rally and subsequent January effect! Right around this time Tim starts really pushing a live webinar coming up from a friend "Teeka" who's into bitcoin and the crypto currency scene. A few years ago I knew of Bitcoin and Litecoin and that one or two others had sprung up as well, but I didn't really get into it. After seeing Teeka's webinar I really wished I had. The emerging crypto currency scene and marketplace presents many unique opportunities. There is a much lower cost of admission. Opening a crypto trading account does not require a $1000+ minimum just to open the account. There are no monthly fees for data packages. Unlike the stock market, cryptos trade like currency 24 hours a day. I don't have to be up at 5am (pacific time) to be ready for market open, I can just come home from work, sit down and see where things are at. Plus as an emerging new tech market there's tons of interest coming in (liquidity), but it's also still "currently" awaiting regulation to come in so there's plenty of speculation to go around (volatility).

This all makes the crypto scene very attractive to me as I have been trying to save up at least $1000 to open a brokerage account to trade stocks, but now I can get started with much less in a number of things that are all almost certain to go up in value very quickly.I decided to open an account at a couple of the exchanges. Once my accounts were verified though, I found I was unable to fund either of them easily. I opened an account at a third exchange only to run into problems again. It seemed as though the universe itself was trying to prevent me from trading cryptos, I started getting very frustrated. This was over the course of a couple of weeks and during that time I am watching the price of Bitcoin go from $6000 to $10000. I should have used my credit card to buy some the minute I had that coinbase account open but I was REALLY trying to be good and not spend anything on my cards until I'm debt free (years from now). On Nov 29 I finally caved to the FOMO and bought my first $100 worth of Bitcoin (thanks stupid Coinbase limits) when it was trading at around $11000, didn`t give a shit what price I got in at as long as I got in NOW!. A couple of days later I bought another $500 at basically the same price through this complicated and kinda pricey online method using vouchers. But this was still cheaper than using the only Bitcoin ATM in town that charges a $3000 markup + a 10.something % fee. Even more expensive was trying to go through LocalBitcoins and that shit just seems too sketchy! About a week later I bought me a whole LiteCoin. All in all I've spent $800 to get started, I will likely be putting more in soon. Don`t worry, I'm not abandoning stock trading, I still want to get that account open by mid January. There's tons of plays happening with blockchain related companies, not to mention all the rest!

As of this writing 11:ish pm now on December 24th 2017, I am up just over $650 in realized + unrealized in 3 weeks. At times I was up more, briefly I was just more than doubled but the crypto markets started dropping right after. This was during my staff Christmas dinner a few days ago, after which I lost my phone for the night. I got home to find everything was dropping and I couldn't sell because I have 2 factor authentication on all of my accounts and without my phone and the 2fa app, all I could do was sit and watch :( Got my phone back the next day but still had to wait until I got home after work cuz my battery was drained. Got out of my larger positions and in to USD, managed to protect most of my gains. I have made a couple of trades just to start getting my feet wet and understand the platforms. Not taking things too seriously just yet. Not using a trading plan or predetermined entry and exit points. Mostly just watching, getting a feel for how it moves, how long an order takes to execute. I have made a couple of shitty and hasty trades and lost some money, was down about $160 the other night. BUT, because Tim`s rules are basically burned into my mind, I know to cut losses quickly (when I can of course). And just about each time I make a shitty trade, I follow it up with a pretty darn good one right after and make back most of my money. Right now I`ve made back all but about $15 of my $160 loss. Also thanks to being Tim`s student, I generally see what my mistakes are the moment I make them, I recognize them and I know exactly what I have to do the very next time to not repeat it, studying does pay off!

So there you have it, you are now up to speed. Ok maybe that was more than a minute. If you made it all the way through, thank you. I`ll see if I can start posting my crypto trades here on profitly with all the details over the next few days.

Looking forward to watching all our profit charts grow!!

Peace all

Alex