About Me

I'm 27 and live in Kinsale in the south of Ireland. I graduated from a four year Bachelor of Science course in Music, Media and Performance Technology in Limerick in May 2010. The whole world knows about the current economic situation in Ireland, so this, along with a few other things influenced my decision to pursue trading. Admittedly this sounds a little naive and is probably the first mistake that every trader makes, thinking it'll be a quick road to success and riches.

My interest in trading had been growing steadily since about 2005/06 when my Dad first bought the Tradeguider software and introduced me to a few things he was doing. He had also given me a Point and Figure book during my second year of college around 2007 to 2008. I leafed through it but didn't really take to it. I was supposed to get work experience for college through the summer of 2008 but I dropped out of college and went through a bit of a tough time. I eventually went back to college, picking up where I left off with all my old class mates and a few extra projects to complete to catch up with the rest. Having the same faces around was a great help but I still wasn't particularly fond of the course.

It wasn't until the summer of 2009 that the fire was really lit, so to speak. I spent that summer reading, studying volume charts, constructing Point and Figure charts in an excel sheet and watching videos. And yes, I dabbled in a bit of trading. Needless to say, money was lost.

This was right before my final year of college so I had to put the trading on hold so I could concentrate on my final year and thesis. Finally, May 2010 came around and as trading had been a dominating thought for the past few months I once again started. I paper traded a "strategy" (note the inverted commas) for June and started trading for July and August. Once again I lost money.

All the time I had been watching videos, reading forex websites, forums and gathering any information I could about Volume Spread Analysis. I had long been convinced of it's merits from watching the VSA London Symposium with Tom Williams (VSA inventor), Gavin Holmes (CEO of Tradeguider), Sebastian Manby and Mike Elvin. Having said this I just wasn't quite getting it.

I spent the first two weeks of September 2010 sitting down and trying to nail a strategy based on everything I had learnt to date. I finally ended up with a strategy I paper traded until the end of 2010. I finished paper trading as of Christmas Eve 2010 and started with my live account on the 3rd January 2011. I spent the first few months of 2011 trading it live before changing it based on a friend and respected poster over at Forex Factory. The strategy was changed to the "trigger numbers" method in March 2011 and tweaked further again in November 2011 to incorporate Fibonacci on high volume bars. I actually finished 2011 in profit which I considered a feat for my first year trading live. After a lot of testing throughout an up and down 2012 I ended up coming full circle and back to the Point and Figure side of things, this time incorporating volume and the Fibonacci zones. My updated strategy can be found here.

2013 was a short trading year for me. I traded the first six months before heading off traveling around South East Asia for four months. I had intended to be out there for six and a half months but I ran out of money whilst over there. A little too much spent on beer! On arriving back to Ireland at the end of October it took me a while to get set up again. I traded a small bit at the end of December but it wasn't really until late January of 2014 that I really got back into it. As of April and May 2014 I've finally regained my focus and am very much set into a routine with my trading. I have shifted my focus away from the longer term Point and Figure trading towards a scalping style. I am still sticking with the VSA, Fibonacci and Point and Figure aspect but I'm using smaller time frames and seeing some very promising results from testing.

Cheers,

Liam

Updated April 2015