Hey guys, I have seen a few journals/blogs about people trading at a proprietary firm, but none which have followed someone from the very start of training, i.e day 1. I myself was looking for a blog a couple of months back to give me an insight while I considered quitting my job as a software developer, but never found what I was looking for. I wasn't after the analysis of the market for the day, I was wanting to know what kind of journey this would really be. I am hoping this journal will help those who are considering taking up trading but still entertain the ones who like to follow someone else's progression. I am 23 and a graduate in computer science, I am the kind of guy who gets heavily into something (perhaps addictive personality) but who also loves to be clubbing with friends, pretty lazy outside what I want to be good at and needs a ton of sleep lol. I see trading as my second project to master, the first was poker. It took me 4 months to make my first $5000 in poker before losing all of it back over the next 2, where I found myself broke. I went on to play profitable poker for well over a year or about 300,000 hands and paid for tuition fee's and living costs with poker winnings, I came out debt free from university I was quite poor but was truly thankful to be able to make consistent money from the game and teach others around me. Below is my net profit from 888/pacific poker, I made a smaller amount on sites such as pokerstars etc. I soon burnt out from the game after graduating and lost all ambition to improve and quickly found a job as a programmer. During that time I was becoming heavily interested in the markets and global politics. I have always wanted to do a big bet on something with a ton of risk and I thought this time was the best chance I would get, as I was single and living at home. I leveraged myself with IG and put up everything I had (£5000) and on 4th feb (I recall) there was negative news about US jobs, more jobs were lossed than expected, not to my suprise. I saw this as good for gold and hadn't considered closing my bet after reading the news. Thinking about it now, it seems the US stock market plumets for obvious reasons and this causes a flood into the dollar, gold generally has an inverse relation with the dollar as it's priced in dollars so as the dollar strengthens and people also go to the dollar because of risk etc, gold takes a nose dive and people are probably shorting it too... I hadn't tied all this together, I was just bullish on gold for the very long term. Gold was already down on me and after the $45 drop that day I was closed out of gold making me broke for the 2nd time in my life. I was fully aware of the risks and thought I could afford to go broke, as I had a steady job. The following day I got an offer in London to train with a firm and there would be a small chance of getting backed by them after the training. Luckily I have savings tied away that I wasn't fully aware of and although I can make rent payments and whatever without an income I have had to budget myself massively. I do not regret anything and have spent ages mastering money management over the last 2 years and I always understood the bet could definately be considered "stupid" I am just pleased that my ability to control my emotions have really improved since 2 years ago, I hope this will put me in good shape to give myself a good shot at being a successful day trader. So, I start a training course at a prop house on the 6th of April. I do know roughly what I am trading and what strategies they use but I will write about this once I have more of an insight myself. I do not intend to mention where I am at, but may do at a later date. Updates to follow shortly, NoRhino