Introducing myself

Hey everyone, I made a n00b mistake and didn't tag my first introduction post correctly with the introduceyourself tag, so I'm telling myself that's why nobody read it! Am I violating some unwritten SteemIt law by trying it again with the correct tags? I hope not, it's not the same post or anything. I'm really excited about this platform and using it to share my journey from a developing trader and writer to hopefully a successful one. I never got into the whole Facebook thing, I did use Myspace to get laid in high school though if that counts. So social media is still very new to me and I viewed it as a complete waste of time and brain power as well as a violation of my privacy until I heard about Steem! Perhaps social media has something to offer me after all.

Moving on, I'm a 29 year old aspiring stock/crypto trader and writer hailing from the beautiful Pacific Northwest United States. I finally began my trading journey in September after a life long interest in the stock market. Because I am starting with very little capital, the Robinhood app with its zero commissions is a godsend to me even though it has its limitations. I find some of these limitations can be overcome by opening a free account with TD Ameritrade in order to use their ThinkorSwim trading platform to do my analysis and trade monitoring, while using Robinhood to actually execute trades. My first trade was a complete disaster of course because I had no idea what I was doing, knew nothing about technical or fundamental analysis, and more importantly knew nothing about risk management and trading psychology. I picked the first stock, AAC, based on the fact that they ran a bunch of rehabs and we are in an opiate crisis right now. Also I had watched the stock go up every day for a week before I bought it, so I assumed it was going to keep going up and I was missing out (FOMO), and of course it immediately went down once I bought it! I had lost 15% of my starting investment in one go and was now determined to figure out what I did wrong. I began to research and educate myself, every single night after work. Hundreds of hours of studying, and I have only learned enough to know that I have so much more to learn. I stopped watching TV and playing video games in order to devote more time to learning trading, after all some sacrifice now will pay off in the future. I have finally started to make some profitable trades (as in netting more then 5 dollars in profit) just recently, and its a good thing to because I got all the way down to 50% of my initial investment before I started to fight my way back up.

Regardless of whether I win or lose, I am fascinated by trading and how different markets work. I believe I have found my calling in life because I have never been this passionate about anything before, other then writing. It's really hard to pay the bills with writing though, so I figure if I become successful trader I'll eventually be able to devote some serious time to my writing without having to worry about where my next months rent is going to come from. I'm lucky because I live on the West Coast so the markets close at 1 pm and my day job doesn't start until noon every day so I can trade for most of the time the market is open and still go to work.

Some advice for new traders that I see repeated often is that you should keep a trading journal so that you can go back over each and every trade and learn from them, so I am going to be using this blog as a sort of public trading journal as well as writing up whatever else I feel like sharing with the Steemit community. If anyone has experience in stock or crypto trading and has some advice for me, I'd be grateful!

Some things I enjoy are; writing, computers, gaming, reading anything and everything I can get my hands on, making and finding new ways to make money, learning new things, sci-fi, well done hamburgers, coffee, and cigarettes. I am strongly opposed to the War on Drugs and I believe that it is one of the most destructive and misguided policies ever implemented by any Government in history. I strongly support privacy protections and free speech. I'm not currently a member of any political party, I just go my own way instead. I have wasted a large portion of my life I believe and have just recently gotten my act together enough to even began to try to build a future for myself. I enjoy helping people because it makes me feel good. I dislike dishonest people, ignorance, and bigotry. People who stick to their word are the kind of people I want to be around. And above all else, my freedom is the most important thing to me.

Thanks for reading!