Back in 2003 I was working in a deeply boring and poorly paid job. On a weekend I would get the Observer as I particularly liked the “Cash” section of the paper.
I suppose I liked reading about making money by traditional means i.e. savings and shares.
However, one weekend the Cash supplement featured a spread betting millionaire who they described as a “hi-tech messiah who wants to spread his betting secret”.
There, on pages 2 and 3, was a large feature about spread betting the financial markets. It centred on the achievements of Vince Stanzione who had “… made £2m from internet gambling on market price movements”.
Now, I left university in June 2000 so I completely missed the tech boom. This is probably a good thing. Back in those days I was so skint that I had to pray that my Switch card would let me buy £5 worth of booze on a Friday night!
Around the time of the dot com bubble I had read about a group of amateur investors making outstanding returns through spread betting on share prices.
This feature was great, it really got me excited about trading. Of course, looking back now I realise that it was pretty much an advertisement for Vince Stanzione’s trading days but it worked on me!
On Googling Vince’s name I quickly found his website and read with delight the great secrets I could learn about from Vince i.e. “make £400 a day, tax-free”.
After a little consideration, I faxed off an order form for £297 and eagerly awaited my home study course. A few days later I had the course and read through it all, watched the video and got very excited about my new little cash-cow.
I was really pleased with the course, I thought it was great.
So, I registered for an account with Finspreads and loaded up some money – I think it was £1,000 at first.
Then I got started with Finspreads’ 8 week training course. Trading with pennies I didn’t really make or lose any money but soon I decided that I wanted to trade Gold.
To cut a long story short I traded for around 6 months and lost around £2,000. I did everything wrong, everything that Vince said NOT to do, I did.
I overtraded, I day-traded, I always wanted to trade Gold. I made a complete mess of it.
The only time it was going well for me was when I went on holiday and had an open long position on the German DAX 30. Every day I was checking the paper in Gran Canaria and finding that the DAX had crept up slightly. It was great!
By around June 2004 I had had enough and closed all my positions and emptied my account. One particular time I got a margin call at work and was terrified because I couldn’t get access to a PC! That was the worst point and when I finally realised that I was under-capitalised which caused me to make silly mistakes.
Since then I have done absolutely nothing with Finspreads but my account remains open.
What I had decided is that I wouldn’t trade again until:
(a) I had cleared all of my debt and
(b) I had built up some money which I could afford to lose.
So, in the last 2 years or so I have been reading trading books, watching seminar videos and DVDs and learning as much as I can about financial trading.
I’ve seen loads of Vince’s seminars – the 2000 and 2002 events from Milton Keynes, the “Seven Keys Seminar” from 2004, the Ed Downs and Martin Pring one day session from 2004, the huge two-day “Masters” workshop. I’ll admit, I got hooked on the learning process.
So, I’ve decided to start trading again but this time in a very boring, business-like and professional way.
The idea is that I will update you on my progress via this blog, or maybe via a new one. That way you can add comments etc and see how much money I (hopefully) make.
I made a site about trading whilst I was learning the ropes. You can see it here:
http://www.FinancialSpreadTrading.co.uk
Also, I found out that Vince Stanzione is holding a one-day event later this month so I decided to write a little about his Seven Keys seminar from 2004. Read it here:
http://www.BizOppsUK.com/vince_stanzione.htm
And, of course, there is information about Vince’s “Making Money From Financial Spread Trading” course on the site:
http://www.BizOppsUK.com/vince_stanzione.php
Stay tuned for more information about Ben’s spread trading exploits!
Thanks,
Ben