Happy holidays!

It's that time of the year again.  My wife and I have been getting the house ready for our first Christmas as a married couple.  Exciting!

Between work, home, and side projects I haven't had much time for blogging lately.  I've restarted Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom because it's very dense and I'm still very new to this.  I'm learning a great deal, though.

I've also dusted off my budget software (YNAB) and put myself back on responsible financial track.  Weddings are expensive!

Saving a few quotes from the book that I don't want to forget:

"You don’t trade or invest in markets—you trade or invest according to your beliefs about the markets."

"To accept both the positive and the negative, you need to find that special place inside of you in which you can just be. From that vantage point, wins and losses are equally a part of trading."

"Good traders usually make money on less than half their trades. If you can’t accept losses, then you are not likely to want to get out of a position when you know you are wrong."

"Most successful conservative investors are contrarians. They do what everyone else is afraid to do. They buy when everyone else is afraid, and they sell when everyone else is greedy. They have patience and are willing to wait for the right opportunity. This also requires internal control."

Information overload... and I like it!

Well, here goes.

I am a software engineer.  I've been writing code for over 25 years now, and I'm thinking about making a change.  Not because I don't love coding, but because I've found something that may be a better fit for me and my needs from life.

I've made this blog for me to track my progress and collect reference material as I learn about how to become an effective day trader.

I currently know next to nothing about trading.  I've dipped into the stock market a couple of times, and that's resulted in a net loss for me.  (BTW, OTC stock is a terrible long-term investment, in my admittedly limited experience.)

A friend from g+ has provided me with a beginner's reading list, which I will place here:

Trade Your Way To Financial Freedom ~ Van Tharp

High Probability Trading ~ Marcel Link

Trading In The Zone ~ Mark Douglas

And I also highly recommend the Market Wizards series of books.

I'll also mention that many successful traders rereadReminiscences of a Stock Operator every few years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reminiscences_of_a_Stock_Operator

I'm not certain what protocol for mentioning people by name on the web is these days, so out of default respect for privacy I'll leave his name off of this, for now.

I have purchased and downloaded the first book on the list.  I will summarize what I've learned from it, later.  Currently I'm struggling with the fact that I have no context to connect the words I'm reading to real life.  I tried filtering YouTube videos, but there's too much out there that reeks of fortune telling.  Here again, my g+ friend chips in:

Successful traders can work very differently from each other. But there are some common characteristics. There's a series of books by Jack Schwager that highlights those by contrasting and comparing the approaches and methodologies of different successful (and famous) traders: Market Wizards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_Wizards

I've downloaded several Android apps purporting to be day trading simulators, but I don't even know enough yet to interact with them effectively, let alone gauge their usefulness.

I've also downloaded NinjaTrader, which is free until you start doing live trades.  I've got some time before that, for sure.