Route to professional (trading) attainment.
As a trader of over 20 years, I have spent time trying and testing various techniques. I have a book collection bigger than most public libraries and with all of the techniques, strategies, attempts I can now truly say “I know what works and what does not”.
My trading journey started at a young age, I actually had an opportunity to go on a school trip to New York. This was a huge deal coming from Wales in the UK. A trip across the big pond!
Why New York?
My history teacher was an aspiring trader, he had managed to wangle a trip for the benefit of history. We got to cover Washington and New York in a 10 day trip — seeing the eternal flame for JFK’s memorial. Going up the Empire state building!
However, the highlight of my trip was a guided tour around the stock exchange. From that day foreword, I knew trading would be my calling. A few weeks later back in Wales, the teacher arrives at a lesson with copies of the Financial Times for all of us students. Our task was to trade Monopoly money on any configuration of stocks.
Whilst some of my classmates chased brands they liked, others bought several stocks. It really was a mixed bag, for me it was the year 2000. Mobile phones where the craze, nearing Christmas. I bought 1 stock and went all in, not sure if it was genius or just being lazy? But at the end of the day, I won the competition by a clear mile. It was at this stage, I was beyond hooked!
Running in parallel to this, my father had an engineering company he had setup with his father. I really thought it was going to be mine to take over, however he ended up selling it the year I left school. I started my own firm doing the same kind of work, my grand-father used to drive me around and I would approach the customers that I had got to know over the years through my father. At 15 years old, they all seemed more than happy to help.
At 15, living with your parents, un-able to drive. There is not a lot you can spend money on. So I started trading, at first it was £500 here and there and as I tell my students today — I used to buy yesterday’s prices tomorrow, I had to take my pushbike to the bank, get them to call my mother to give permission to make a call to the broker. If the price was anywhere near what I had in the newspaper I bought!
I had some winners and some losers, but all give experience.
Doing this for a couple of years and the advancement in the internet, I found myself trading US penny stocks; Wolf of Wall Street style. Stocks nobody really wanted, but huge growth potential. I got very lucky trading some of these stocks. On one occasion, I had signed up to some newsletter online, you had a company sales rep call you, they would get their boss to call you. Something didn’t seem right. These guys where too eager to help you make money, when something seems too good to be true it probably is.
The scam was to put £5k into a company. After a lot of deliberation, I decided I would give it a go. The next day I get a certificate in the post, all seemed legit. Then a few days later, the boss calls. He tells me how the price has gone up 10% in just a few days, I should buy more! So I said, I would like to sell 10% in a few days seemed a great trade. He convinced me this was the way, compounding growth and they would expect a rally of at least another 25% in the next week or two.
It just felt like a lot of pressure, being young and stupid I though OK maybe he’s onto something. Instead of buying through this company, I decided to tell them I needed some time to think about it. They told me to hurry as it was likely to jump — I called my regulated broker I had now used for a couple of years and bought £25,000 of this shitty stock through my trusted broker. The company kept calling me and I ignored them. After 5 days he said it’s going up another 10%, I said OK I am in — I need 48 hours to get £50k together, he said it was a wise move and on the next look it had moved up 20% more. I called my broker and sold my full holdings. He said to me it had just pumped another 10% during the time we where on the phone.
I made a decent return on this. The other firm started chasing for their £50k, I said I changed my mind and wanted my £5k back sell out at this insane growth! It turns out it was a massive fraud, pump and dump! Fortunately for me it was my pump they where trying to sell and the growth was fuelled by others like me. So when I took my profits, the whole thing started to fall down for them. I ended up with a call from the Police and ended up with my £5k back as well.
So to say I have been lucky trading is an understatement.
A couple of years later, I found Forex. This was a high pace market that felt like it didn’t close. It was leveraged and accessible. In 2011 a good friend of mine wanted to know about my cars and what I was doing. I explained Forex to him and he was hooked. Within a Year we where up to London once a week working with several brokers and educators. We had this idea;
Starbuck bets (actually my wife’s thinking) but we wanted to provide training to people in Wales who thought London was un-accessible to them, the cost of training was too much in London for many over the other side of the bridge. So we setup forex education for people wanting to earn a little extra — hence pay for a Starbucks a day. We would run face to face education teaching the basics but charging 10% of what you paid in London for this.
In the background my other business activates had taken me more and more into technology where I ended up running a Venture Capital fund. So again various types of investing.
When COVID struck, I wanted to go back into education, now working from home and trading personally I was shocked by what was online. It was actually scary some of the information that was on Youtube. Everyone seemed to be providing signals (actually illegal, without proper permissions from the regulators) this is deemed as financial advice.
We started Mayfair Method as a server to help people take their trading to the next level and the emphasis is “teach a man to fish, not give him the fish”.
I am looking forward to posting some educational content here on medium, but wanted to set the scene with the history first.
Thank you for reading.
