I am definitely not a gambler. I have lost a lot of money over...

I am definitely not a gambler. I have lost a lot of money over many years by trying to trade when not knowing what I am doing. I have learnt a lot mainly during the last 3 months due to life changing circumstances. But the collective knowledge over previous years I believe is serving me well right now.

I have had an extremely busy business and social life until recently. Also, I have suffered from an alcohol addiction for most of my adult life. I am on a new medication for this problem that seems to help me. This addiction has caused me loss of family, friends, businesses, finances, freedom, health, and many other things too numerous to mention. Every day now I seem to be seeing a clearer picture of things, and that includes the markets.

Your posting at first glance seems abrupt and dismissal. But as I read it a third time I could read more into it. You are obviously a smart person who knows what they are talking about. You certainly know a lot more about trading than I do. I appreciate your feedback and hope it will continue.

I know that nothing you say is advice, I am always careful to state that I have taken "things on board" as I did regarding cutting the dead wood. What you said made perfect sense so I did that and my day was made extremely busy by doing this.

My strategy involves watching the HC DTT on one screen, Birdseed and in particular a couple of traders I follow on another screen, My Commsec trading account on the third screen, together with my excel spreadsheets. I put my buy orders in at generally 10% below what the market consensus is at the time. I only ever put an order in for $800 worth of stock in any one share. If this varies, it is usually because a stock has been drastically sold down on bad news, and I adjust my stop losses accordingly. I usually spend a couple of hours at the end of each trading day going through announcements and updating prices etc. I am up at 4am every day (WST) of the week so I can see what happened on markets overnight. I also have a small position in cryptos.


I set my stop losses at 15% automatically, but this usually has to be manually adjusted according to price of stock, liquidity etc. Trailing stop I normally set at 40% but at EOD I normally go through these and adjust accordingly. These stops are set at time of purchase so that if I have to be away while the market is open I am kept safe.

I only work my day job on weekends when I can get away with it, so if I can start to make a living from trading the markets it would be my dream come true. I still potter in the shed and keep myself fit as I believe it is good for my mental as well physical health. I am comfortable now, with no need to be rich, just a need to be able to maintain my current standard of living.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to read this, and for your feedback, it is much appreciated.
Rick