I spent 25 years working for a big company. It was a great job, but like most big company positions, it eventually wore me down and burned me out. I happened to talk to my dad one day after a particularly stressful day, and he asked me about work. I told him, “I can’t do this anymore.”  He asked me what I would like to do, and I told him trade full time. So he said you should quit and do it. Two weeks later I submitted my resignation, and started my career as a trader.

I had been trading and investing as a hobby for several years with varying levels of success.  I had read all the standard books (How to Make Money in Stocks, the Market Wizards series, etc) and had recently started day trading on Fridays, which was one of my days off, and found that I really enjoyed it.  I knew the success rate was very low, but fortunately I was well capitalized, and had two rental properties that provided me some outside income. In addition, I left my old job on good terms, and knew I could go back there if I needed to.  

My first training was thru a well known trading education company.  I diligently attended the online classes, talked to my trading coach, but wasn’t getting anywhere and didn’t feel comfortable with the direction of the training.  I talked to my Performance Coach (which I soon figured out was just a salesman) and let him know I was mostly interested in Day Trading.  When he bluntly told me Day Trading was stupid, I realized it was time to move on.  In the meantime, I was losing money 75% of my days.  

I had been following another popular trader for a while, and learned about an Active Trader course.  I immediately signed up.  Once again, I diligently went thru all the videos, took copious notes, and then joined their active trader chat room.  I gradually started to break even with my trading, but still was not making money and didn’t feel totally confident with the material and the way they traded.  One day in the chat room someone asked if I had ever read The Playbook.  I had not, and had not even heard SMB Capital.  But it turned out to be the day my trading career started to turn around.  

I read the Playbook, bought One Good Trade, started to follow the SMB blog, and then signed up for a free ten week class SMB offered at the time. The big thing that clicked for me was Mike’s focus on finding your strengths.  It was a “Doh” moment for me because I used to facilitate a class at my old company based on the work of Marcus Buckingham. I was at the end of the year I had given myself, was still not consistently profitable, but was not quite ready to give up.  When the next SMB class came around, I jumped at the chance to take it.  It was without a doubt the best return on my investment I had ever made.  

There were multiple things I enjoyed.  The other Active Trader class I took was all video and workbook, so there was no chance to interact with anyone or ask questions. The fact that in the SMB class you have the chance to interact with Steve, Mike, and Shark made a huge difference.  The combination of videos, “homework,” and live interaction was just a fantastic way to learn.  The classes were well organized and presented in a logical order, each one building on the previous class.  I ended up with 40 pages of notes (which I have since edited down to 22).  Learning about Stocks in Play and seeing real life daily examples and Trading Psychology were incredibly useful.  My favorite was the Trade Review session with Shark, where not only did he share how he does his daily trade reviews, but also outlined his entire day.  What is funny is at the time my least favorite session was Technical Analysis with Spencer.  He basically admitted that he did not use a lot of the standard technical analysis tools, but instead focuses on important price levels.  I thought it was silly he was even facilitating that portion.  It turns out that once I really started focusing on price levels and eliminated junk from my charts, my trading moved to a different level.  So Sharks’s session and that one turned out to be the most valuable to this point.  

I completed the class at the end of January, and since that time I have only had seven losing weeks, and no losing months.  I am generally profitable four of five days per week.  Each profitable month I have increased my trading size by 10%.  I have actually had several days where I made more in a day than I took home in a month at my old job.  I know it is about the process and not so much about the money, but when you have bills to pay, it is nice to be making money.  I can say without a doubt that had I not gone thru the SMB class, I would not be trading today.  

But, lest anyone thinks it is easy, it was not – I put a lot of time into it, probably averaging 65-70 hours per week between trading and preparing for the classes.  And I continued to put in 55-60 hours a week well after the class ended.  What is most exciting is I know I can be a lot better.  I regularly review my notes, and am continually adding visualization exercises.  I also know that it is a never ending learning process.  Just because I am consistently profitable now does not mean I will stay that way without putting in the work.  And being over 50, hopefully I can prove that you are never too old to start.  

Sorry for the long note.  I guess if I had to encapsulate everything, I would simply say, “SMB is the best investment I have ever made.  If you are willing to put in the work, it can turn you into a consistently profitable trader.”

This testimonial was not compensated – no relevant positions