{"id":15127,"date":"2011-10-21T13:12:54","date_gmt":"2011-10-21T17:12:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/?p=15127"},"modified":"2011-10-21T21:40:51","modified_gmt":"2011-10-22T01:40:51","slug":"are-you-a-virtual-trader-in-isolation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/are-you-a-virtual-trader-in-isolation","title":{"rendered":"Are you a virtual trader in isolation?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Below is an email I received from a Romanian intraday trader involuntarily in isolation.<br \/>\n1) Great anecdote about a foreign trader finding their path.  Enjoy the story.<br \/>\n2) Any ideas to help this trader escape isolation?<br \/>\n3) Any Romanian traders (or other virtual traders) wish to start a virtual trading group?  Leave a comment below.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Dear Mr. Bellafiore,<\/p>\n<p>I thank you for answering me back. I am really sorry to hear that you do not know of any romanian trader who followed SMB programs. I&#8217;ll try and explain what I am trying to accomplish by starting a trading group with romanian traders that trade US stocks ( for a living), then you decide if it suits SMB blog or not.<\/p>\n<p>You have to understand first that I am a romanian trading for a living from Romania. I am a man in his 30 who did quit his high profile day job because he wanted more from his life (not necessarily money). By doing that I pushed away a career I started when I was 14 and went to a military high-school. Nearly twenty years later, after climbing all the way up I looked back and decided that my professional life was not at all how I wanted it to be, for many reasons&#8230; After a difficult inner struggle I decided I should make a drastic change and start something else even if that ment to reinvent myself. And this is exactly what I did &#8230; or at least I am trying to.<\/p>\n<p>In 2007 I started trading, went through all the well known approaches (fundamental, technical) ,  through all the well known instruments (stocks, futures, options) , switched the time frames &#8230; until I settled for daytrading stocks &#8220;InPlay&#8221;. I have a slightly different technique that the one SMB teaches but in the end it is very similar. I even learned a programming language and built my own InPlay sniffer algo. Why I ended up here &#8230; because it suited my personality, my expectations, my personal qualities and flaws alike. This journey took me almost 4 years &#8230; And when I was sure I found what I wanted as a new professional endeavor I did quit my day job.<\/p>\n<p>I did everything by myself through the internet &#8230; never went through formal trading education &#8230; (besides SMB Foundation). I followed the blogs of the people I found to speak less and tell a lot. I first followed Brian Shannon, then Bret Steenbarger, the you and Steve Spencer and discarded all the rest. I am a self learning guy and I do that well mainly because I am very picky with my learning sources in order to avoid information overload and loosing precious time. As a side fact I must confess I follow SMB blog regularly for a few years but I don&#8217;t read anything else but what you, Steve and maybe Gman write.<\/p>\n<p>Now &#8230; back to my request. Here, in Romania, you do not find professional traders at every corner like in New York, or people discussing on their way home in the subway about their trades. Here, for the average person, trading equals &#8220;gambling&#8221; or pure &#8220;speculation&#8221; with a slight immoral flavor. People raise their eyebrows when I tell them what I do. When my former colleagues found out why I was quitting my job thought I was crazy. Even my family had &#8230; and still has difficulties understanding this is a job like any other (well not literally speaking &#8230; because it&#8217; more of a life style). And this lead to a problem &#8230; I am lonely and I feel lonely. Of course there is the internet &#8230; the blogs.. etc. but nothing compares to talking face to face to a like-minded friend about your\/his trades and thoughts. And this is not a question about increasing profitability but about increasing the sense of being. Feeling lonely discourages me even if I got here while nobody trusted I could.<br \/>\nToday, after almost five years I started trading, I do not worry about profitability, even if it&#8217;s not stellar &#8230; because I an certain that I can improve my trading skills through the same hard work that got me here. What I worry about is loneliness &#8230; the kind that makes me wonder how could I sustain my effort year after year after year only glued to the screen &#8230; because there is nobody I can talk, face to face, about trading &#8230; and about life as a trader. This is the main reason I reached you with this request about putting me in touch with any romanian daytraders you may know of.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Bella<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/One-Good-Trade-Competitive-Proprietary\/dp\/0470529407\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1319137034&amp;sr=8-1\">One Good Trade<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/smbcapital\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/twitter-badges.s3.amazonaws.com\/follow_me-c.png\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Below is an email I received from a Romanian intraday trader involuntarily in isolation. 1) Great anecdote about a foreign trader finding their path. Enjoy the story. 2) Any ideas to help this trader escape isolation? 3) Any Romanian traders (or other virtual traders) wish to start a virtual trading group? Leave a comment below. Dear Mr. Bellafiore, I thank &#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/are-you-a-virtual-trader-in-isolation\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[30,1828,1193,653,1354,1349],"class_list":["post-15127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mike-bellafiore-bellas-blogs","tag-prop-trading","tag-smbu","tag-trader-education","tag-trader-training","tag-trading-coach","tag-trading-mentor","no-post-thumbnail"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Are you a virtual trader in isolation?  | SMB Training<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/are-you-a-virtual-trader-in-isolation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Are you a virtual trader in isolation?  | SMB Training\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Below is an email I received from a Romanian intraday trader involuntarily in isolation. 1) Great anecdote about a foreign trader finding their path. 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