Hi folks,
My name is Gary and I'm a wannabe Fastlaner. :smug2:
I'm a bit more "experienced" than some on the list -- pushing 55. I've been on a hybrid Slowlane / Less-Slowlane for a long time.
I went to work for Hewlett Packard straight out of college, back when HP was one of the best companies to work for. Thought I'd hit the jackpot. My buddies and I rolled around lots of ideas for starting our own companies but we had no idea how to accomplish that. Wish MJ had written his book 30 years ago!!
After a dozen years as an employee, I jumped. I've been self-employed for 20 years. Mostly consultant/contract gigs, which is just glorified hourly wages. But it's worth it to not have a boss!
I had a brush with the Fastlane 10 yrs ago. I got interested in financial trading, specifically futures/commodities. I attacked it with my nerd skills, writing programs to analyze the market and find winning strategies. After a year or two of poking at it and losing money because I wasn't smart enough to follow my own systems, I finally got serious about it in 1999. From 9/99 through 3/00 I took a $27k account to $188k. That was fun!! After the dotcom bubble popped it slowed down, but my system continued making money.
For a while in late 2000 a partner and I traded $10MM for a bank. Then the bank closed all its discretionary trading, and we opened up a commodity fund. (Like a mutual fund but trading futures.) Based on my personal track record, we were able to raise another $10MM in about 9 months. Trading conservatively, we returned over 30% for our investors that year. Unfortunately we were small, and had to cut a lot of deals, and had a lot of startup expenses, so we didn't actually make any income for ourselves that year.
By late 2001 we had reached the "launch" point. "Next month" my partner and I each expected to clear about $20k apiece, and it would go to the moon from there as our fund continued to grow. If I had done in 2002 what I'd done for the 3 previous years, I would have made at least $500k, and who knows what 2003 would have looked like.
Unfortunately "next month" was 9/11. My system wasn't as robust as I thought. The seismic market upheavals and deep psychological changes that followed the 9/11 attack blew a hole in my strategy. We went into a drawdown in 2002 and closed the fund later that year.
Due to extreme domestic stress -- my wife despised my trading, considering it little more than a gambling addiction, and never admitted that I actually made good money during my trading career -- I gave up on trading and went back to the consulting gig. Which was OK money but definitely not what I loved.
Fast-forward 9 years or so and I decided to get back into trading. I miss it and I really think I can make it work, though I'm not sure if I'll go the client-money route this time. Unfortunately that was sort of the last straw for my wife -- who unbeknownst to me had been unhappy in our marriage for years -- so now I'm in the process of a divorce. Guess I won't have anyone complaining about my trading but me.
I *LOVED* MJ's book. Wish I had some of those insights years ago. I'm trying to figure out how I could interest my two teenagers in reading it -- maybe give them some incentive to do something besides play video games.
And I'm thinking about other Fastlane pursuits I could work besides the trading. Between working full-time and doing trading research, not to mention being a dad (though that will go to half-time very soon), my time is limited. But I have a few ideas cooking that might work as part-time cash-generators to reduce the amount of time I have to spend whoring myself to a company.
Now I just have to be careful I don't get addicted to this place and spend all my time here!!
My name is Gary and I'm a wannabe Fastlaner. :smug2:
I'm a bit more "experienced" than some on the list -- pushing 55. I've been on a hybrid Slowlane / Less-Slowlane for a long time.
I went to work for Hewlett Packard straight out of college, back when HP was one of the best companies to work for. Thought I'd hit the jackpot. My buddies and I rolled around lots of ideas for starting our own companies but we had no idea how to accomplish that. Wish MJ had written his book 30 years ago!!
After a dozen years as an employee, I jumped. I've been self-employed for 20 years. Mostly consultant/contract gigs, which is just glorified hourly wages. But it's worth it to not have a boss!
I had a brush with the Fastlane 10 yrs ago. I got interested in financial trading, specifically futures/commodities. I attacked it with my nerd skills, writing programs to analyze the market and find winning strategies. After a year or two of poking at it and losing money because I wasn't smart enough to follow my own systems, I finally got serious about it in 1999. From 9/99 through 3/00 I took a $27k account to $188k. That was fun!! After the dotcom bubble popped it slowed down, but my system continued making money.
For a while in late 2000 a partner and I traded $10MM for a bank. Then the bank closed all its discretionary trading, and we opened up a commodity fund. (Like a mutual fund but trading futures.) Based on my personal track record, we were able to raise another $10MM in about 9 months. Trading conservatively, we returned over 30% for our investors that year. Unfortunately we were small, and had to cut a lot of deals, and had a lot of startup expenses, so we didn't actually make any income for ourselves that year.
By late 2001 we had reached the "launch" point. "Next month" my partner and I each expected to clear about $20k apiece, and it would go to the moon from there as our fund continued to grow. If I had done in 2002 what I'd done for the 3 previous years, I would have made at least $500k, and who knows what 2003 would have looked like.
Unfortunately "next month" was 9/11. My system wasn't as robust as I thought. The seismic market upheavals and deep psychological changes that followed the 9/11 attack blew a hole in my strategy. We went into a drawdown in 2002 and closed the fund later that year.
Due to extreme domestic stress -- my wife despised my trading, considering it little more than a gambling addiction, and never admitted that I actually made good money during my trading career -- I gave up on trading and went back to the consulting gig. Which was OK money but definitely not what I loved.
Fast-forward 9 years or so and I decided to get back into trading. I miss it and I really think I can make it work, though I'm not sure if I'll go the client-money route this time. Unfortunately that was sort of the last straw for my wife -- who unbeknownst to me had been unhappy in our marriage for years -- so now I'm in the process of a divorce. Guess I won't have anyone complaining about my trading but me.
I *LOVED* MJ's book. Wish I had some of those insights years ago. I'm trying to figure out how I could interest my two teenagers in reading it -- maybe give them some incentive to do something besides play video games.
And I'm thinking about other Fastlane pursuits I could work besides the trading. Between working full-time and doing trading research, not to mention being a dad (though that will go to half-time very soon
), my time is limited. But I have a few ideas cooking that might work as part-time cash-generators to reduce the amount of time I have to spend whoring myself to a company.Now I just have to be careful I don't get addicted to this place and spend all my time here!!
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