Were you still in school at 20? The answer is motivation, attitude, knowledge and endless determination. I assume success as a complete matter of course. Failure is absolutely intolerable and not an option. But that doesn't mean, for example, that I don't take trading losses within my system. Those are a complete matter of course, too. I don't worry about them. To me, losses are an indicator of likeliness of the next trade being a winner. To me, trading losses are the same as overheads in my other businesses. Every business must have overheads. My aim is to approach whatever I do with a determination of achieving excellence. There's no compromises, everything I touch, I want to finish. And I want to do it better than anybody else. Always. That's a minimum requirement. Otherwise I don't touch it. "Good" is not good enough. "Good" is for "good" people. I hardly have rolemodels, but I look at the absolute elite, study them and take in if they have something useful to say. And at the end of the day: Constant self-examination. I want to know all my weaknesses. And I want to work on them. Period. I never blame others or anything. It's all up to me. Everything that bugs me is my own fault, and I have to work on it. Period. I am aware that I come across as arrogant to a lot of people, but these are generally people who aren't bright enough, don't understand me, or envy me. Like-minded people I get around with in an excellent way, so that is proof enough. Everybody's darling is nobody's darling. If you want to be victorious in life, you can't always avoid pissing people off. Surround yourself only with the most excellent people, and avoid the others as much as you can. It's not worth it. You alone are the master of your reputation, life and destiny. It's your call. Also, I'm a great fan and student of diplomacy, but I prefer honesty, and to say what I think. This isn't always welcome or diplomatic, but it helps in the end. These are a lot of my personal secrets to success. I hope all this helps you in some way. By the way, I'm not the only person who's a successful entrepreneur at this age. Fast_Trader (as stated on this board) started a very successful IT company at 15. He's 21 now. We've become good friends due to our shared passion for trading and fast cars. jpomerenke (who's also an ET member) is also a successful multiple entrepreneur and futures/stock day trader. He's 19. I'm sure there are many others around. But us three are sort of a "club" here anyway. I only started JDM after school, as late as 19, (my dad: 16), but had various other (part-time) businesses since I was about 8. I also started looking into stocks at that age... Plus, I've worked as an IT consultant and network setup / administration when I was 14-17. My untamed hacking fanatism at the time actually proved itself useful in some way. I Started trading actively a year ago and am determined to enter the realms of Jones and Schwartz. Then I may move on to something else, but currently I love trading. I'm still looking for something really challenging in my life. I thought it was trading, but currently I'm figuring out that trading is really quite simple, once you've figured it out. I thought trading is for geniuses, but it's really more about discipline, knowledge and experience than about genius... See how we go. Currently, I focus on microtrading (very-short-term) and scalping. I might also go and study medicine, computer science and philosophy, subjects I always liked a lot (and I would have a headstart already). I probably would be a lot more successful as a trader already if I didn't have these teenage weaknesses for sports cars and living in a beachside house. So some of the things I have to remove now from myself are traces of societal conformity and materialism, that will be the next step in my personal evolution... I passionately practice Martial Arts (Shotokan Karate), as a means of discipline and health preservation, and am training towards the Australian Team to compete for the world titles. I am a notorious advocate of peace, compassion and love, and although I'm not religious anymore, I am a great fan and follower of the Dalai Lama. I am planning to open a charitable organization one day and that's a main reason for my trading, too. OK. This should be enough for you to understand where I'm coming from... Btw I'm not 20. I'm turing 22 in a few days... All the Best & Peace, Brother! Sincerely, <i>~The Scientist</i> P.S: vanilla, I love music, too! I play the guitar, what do you do?
Dear Fellow Trading Brethren! This message was moved from the "2nd job" forum, since it certainly went a little above the 2-liner limit of that thread. Brother inandlong decided to use the post to start a whole new thread on the subject of "Personal Background". Since this was a pretty elegant idea after all, we might as well add to this thread by having whoever feels like it add their own "personal background". I'll be looking forward to hear the backgrounds of other people and how you all eventually ended up trading! I also ask for this thread to be free of personal, off-topic and inappropriate discussions and posts! Deviations from this rule will die by inandlong's mighty sword! Many Thanks in Advance! Yours Faithfully, ~The Scientist
My Dearest Brother Scientist, Fantastic achievements at a young age... and, for the detractors, there is no law against achieving things at young age... Keep up the good work, my Brother... I look forward to the book that you have proposed writing... With the love that can only be experienced by members of the Fraternity, Candle P.S. Happy Birthday in advance of your 22nd...
Just curious that with all the time you spend posting on here, how you find spare time to manage your businesses, prepare for the karate world championships, enjoy your sports car, let alone trade your tits off around the clock?
Typequick 8.1! - www.typequick.com.au The best typing software I ever used. And I tried plenty. Got me from ~70WPM to ~110WPM in 32 days. Excellence is a wholistic approach! Save time wherever you can! This will save you gigantic amounts of time and stress. Plus you can focus on something else while you're typing. Like trading. I type my replies in a little window over my charting software to keep in touch with the realtime futures... It's great to be able to learn from ET during the boring trading periods. Since it's on-screen, it doesn't deviate your focus much, either. Brothers like inandlong agree on this concept, and he's even moderating during RTH! That's a much more daunting and impressive task than mine. No amount of time is ever wasted on exploring ways to save it. Time is the most valuable asset, and I seek every way to save it. I use hotkeys / shortcuts for as many things as possible, I have everything structured and in order all the time etc. There are also some great books out there on the subject of saving "making" time. "Make Time" by Kris Cole is one of the favourites in my library. One of the creeds I live by is: "Time is not equal money. Time is much more valuable than money. You can always make back every dollar you lost in your life, and more. But whenever a minute has passed you by - You'll never get a second shot at it..." I hope this helps you a bit and answers your question. I really recommend typequick. Any other questions - I will gladly answer. All the Best, brother Zentrader! Sincerely, ~Scientist
What biographies or autobiographies do you rank as excelleent or trivial? What did you think of B. Franklin's adjustment to make his stuff fit the calendar? Do you see any similarity to you up to this point? Have you ever had a buddy vis a vis getting the job done like B. did?
Dear Brother bubba7 / Jack, Regarding (auto)biographies; Stories, life-journeys, history - yes. But I haven't actually read that many autobiographies as such in my life so far. If you really regard this as a primary requirement, I will make an effort to get my hands onto a few. Which ones would you, as a well-seasoned reader, regard as excellent and which ones as trivial? If you could make any recommendations as to which biographies you think are the definite, most excellent ever written in your opinion, and which ones I shouldn't waste my time on, I would greatly appreciate it. It would definitely give me a head-start and make the selection a lot easier! I am looking forward to your list! Let's just explain why I haven't read many (known to you) biographies in my life: I have (had to) read a plethora of excellent biographies from my own family that greatly impressed me and changed my view of life in many ways. While there are several great biographies on one parental side of mine, there are literally hundreds on the other, supported by an underlying family tree that is fully documented well back to ~600 AD (>50 generations) and the copy I have at home is over 400m long. But I won't go into too much detail here.You get the idea - There's a lot of biographies - Including those of royals, politicians, clerics, merchants and bankers in our line.A lot of stuff to read, and enough for me to have enough of biographies for a while! So those in-family biographies by themselves were greatly inspiring - and don't get me wrong - They were of meaningful enough people. All 4 of my grandparents as well as some of their brothers/sisters and many of their parents, plus my own parents were people who in some way changed the world they lived in. This now is continuing in our generation, where my big brother is achieving exceptional goals, my little sister is right on her way, and I am somewhere in between. Although personally, I have achieved a few minor things, some stated in the previous post, I still haven't even published an official book yet, for example. Nevertheless, I have started writing a few books. Some of the titles/subjects I'm playing with are "The Pursuit of Excellence", Business, Real Estate, Computer/Network Security, and my latest to be, as you know, is a Day Trading Book. Also, I am planning to write more poetry and songs and then make a "compilation" of them, too. But this is currently on the back-burner. I feel that writing greatly expands my horizon, in that it challenges me to think about what really is important about a subject and how to put it into ordered, pronounced, 2-dimensional words. It seems that the process of transition from flow of thoughts to flow into font not only inspires so extensively by requirement for universal and comprehensive summarization, but also by the cerebral challenge of active recall, extensive review and research of all the sources previously studied and mentally regurgitated, both in my mind and in the things written down and re-edited on doodles, fiber-based and electronic diaries, as well as a vast library of books, often repeatedly read in the past and accumulated, greatful for all those books that I had the privilege of being able to keep to this very day. It is a lot like looking at paintings I did years ago... The whole perception changes. I saw the colours from a different, much more in-depth point of view, as a definite procrastination of what I initially saw in my mind before I put it into matter. It became the play of light and shadow, battling for supremacy to control and manipulate the initial colour of the object, as created by pigmentation. At some stage, however, I realized that colour is indeed relative and governed by these independent forces, giving us a virtual impossibility to describe a colour accurately. To say "this is an iron-oxide red" can easily be denied by applying different kinds of light to the object. Brightest light will lift the red to the lighter side, while near-darkness will make it look brown or darker, not to mention coloured light. So we would have to set standards as to which amount of i.e. lux of light / force and light amplitude / purity / spectrum is acceptable to call a colour a colour. But on the other hand - in the end it is the light itself that creates the actual colour in the first place. Without the initial impact of photons, pigmentation has no visually perceivable effect. This whole relativity can be confusing, since the more you look at the world, the more you realize that it seems to apply to almost anything. Thus, the more we know, the less we really understand, and the more deniable all truths become. This is one of my main notions why writing can become extremely valuable, in that you can record truths which manifested themselves through your present level of knowledge and understanding, and review them at a later point, to retrospectively deny or extend them by re-evaluation of how much your perspective changed from the past to this very day. Although I haven't read that many biographies, I have read the volumes of several people I consider geniuses, based on my personal opinion of their achievements only. Please find here a small list of 15 people in rough order of personal ranking whose work I greatly enjoyed and which fundamentally inspired me throughout my learning curve of understanding the universe we live in; These are all people I rank as EXCELLENT, I will not mention trivial people since the list would be endless... So, here some personal heroes and inspirators of mine; 1. Leonardo da Vinci. - Full stop. The Largest Genius ever lived and one of the very very few fully accepted rolemodels of mine - I cannot remember having ever denied or non-accepted any of his theories. He was an exceptional man, and with an immeasurable IQ (220+) beyond my personal scope and capacity of equal conceptualization. 2. Stephen Hawking - The only man to challenge the Einsteinian view of relativity and the master of quantum physics today 3. Albert Einstein - As an artist who discovered relativity by imagination and proved it with science 4. Jaques Lacan - The "opponent" or extension of Freudian Psychoanalysis 5. Sigmund Freud - The most important milestone in human psychoanalysis before Lacan 6. Carl G. Jung 7. Napoleon Bonaparte 8. Friedrich Nietzsche 9. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 10.Sir Isaac Newton 11.Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz 12.Emanuel Swedenborg 13.Kim Ung-Yong 14.Blaise Pascal 15.Edward O.Wilson While it looks like there is a strong bias on Germans (6 in the list), it has nothing to do with their nationality. Nevertheless, although I now posses some english translations, I grew up in Germany and therefore enjoyed the privilege of having been able to read the original-language versions of these geniuses, without losing meaning through translation. Nietzsche simply is better in German, period. Now, to come to an end here: No, I haven't read Benjamin Franklins biography etc - While Franklin, Lincoln etc.are very important and well-known figures in the United States, they aren't discussed or studied in much detail in Europe or Australia, which are my backgrounds. Nevertheless, would you sincerely consider his literature a must-read for somebody non-american? Thanks a lot. Regarding Franklin's adjustments to save time, or having a buddy 'vis-a-vis' getting a job done, as well as possibilities of similarity between him and me to this point are all unfamiliar concepts to me. However, they sound very interesting, and I would greatly appreciate a small elaboration of what you mean / how they could help me! Delegation is definitely something I will have to consider at some stage. I will be looking forward to your reply to my questions as well as your recommendations of the best biographies. All the Best and Compliments, ~The Scientist