Investing: From Trading 5$ In Broker’s Free Funds Toward Investing a Few Thousand Dollars Of Own Money.

My investing adventure began in early 2006 when I was talking to a good friend and looking for new opportunities to make additional money.

We had jobs, but being both in our early twenties, money was never enough.

Therefore, we looked into ways to increase our cash using the latest tool available—the Holy Grail—the Internet.

At the time, the Internet barely appeared in Romania—few people understood its full potential.

There were few Internet cafes, and a few scattered people used the Internet at home and their office jobs.

Using the Internet via dial-up was painful from both waiting and cost perspectives.

At least a good chunk of youngsters used it for chatting, around 60%. The rest enjoyed it for network PC games, and a smaller proportion used it for talking on chats like mIRC.

mIRC is a chat platform created in 1995 and is still active today.

It requires payment after 30 days, but accessing it exposes you to malware and virus attacks because some of its users are from all sorts of third-world countries where the Internet has low bandwidth consumption.

These countries include Chat, Niger, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Haiti, Nicaragua, Honduras, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Yemen and Syria and other remote places.

My friend usually assumed more risks in trades. But after a significant loss, he stopped trading.

He has been under the illusion that constant risk-taking was the normality, but it was pure gambling.

He hoped to hit it big by taking massive risk, but this wasn’t working for him. We were rookies and didn’t know what to do with all that leverage.

The effects of this uncontrollable risk appetite showed soon after: sleepless nights, being late, and making errors at work and other. But I have never heard of him after this episode.

By contrast, I looked at the market very differently. Although I had some risk appetite, I knew I needed to improve the odds.

The market was somewhat inefficient, but I couldn’t point out what dysfunction was back then.

Despite this, I continued the process of trial and error and my journey.

Investing has continued despite multiple setbacks.

For years, I was fascinated by people in black suits as I watched them on TV rush to their jobs on Wall Street. When I grew up, I considered pursuing such a career.

I wanted to attend an economics school, but my father wanted me to attend a more technical university. He studied technical graduate school and wanted me the same, but I declined.

I only had my dream in the crosshair of my mind: I would pursue it no matter how much time, dedication, and effort it would take.

So, I began to read belletristic, technical, management, marketing, and inspirational books—it didn’t matter.

I often read books in my spare time at the mobile repair shop at work. I also occasionally ran back home just a block away to see what the Forex market was doing, especially during the interest rate decision announcements.

My boss was raging at that time. But I was interested more in Forex markets, which looked more appealing than selling mobile phones.

Also, I developed a Martingale strategy using high leverage. I cahed in a few salaries equivalent in profit, and now I could afford the long-awaited trip to the Black Sea.

Martingale is a strategy mainly used to develop betting strategies. It theorizes that someone can double the money after each loss in a sequence of losses. Although it is used in trading, it is unsuitable for low-risk traders and investors.

A form of Martingale strategy is also used in the dollar cost averaging mechanism in investing. But still, it doesn’t guarantee that one will regain all previous losses and cash in a profit.

However, the profits started diminishing, and I realized the indicators’ intrinsic limitations. All those colored indicators were as useless as the Chinese fortune cookie slips were.

Price was driving indicators, not otherwise, at least in the average broker platform of retail small traders. Large institutional brokers measure the so-called order book depth.

Unlike the ordinary Meta Trader platform’s indicators like MACD (acronym for Moving Average Crossover Divergence), this indicator is higher-class.

I had to develop a more sustainable long-term approach.

I needed a mathematical method to track investor behavior by analyzing extended sequences of chart patterns. At the time, this was both a bold and challenging concept!

Of course, there was Steve Nisson, with their method of analyzing candlesticks, but his theories were useless to me.

Steve Nisson proposed that small sequences of candlestick patterns could forecast asset behavior. This might have been helpful for short-term traders (scalpers), but it was useless to me.

I needed a more robust system.

Thus, Elliott’s Waves Theory is the ultimate tool and strategy for investing.

I met a few guys on the Black Sea trip who got stuck while trading using this theory.

Even so, I wasn’t discouraged and started studying Mastering Elliott Wave by Glenn Neely, but I got stuck, too.

So, I knew that the patterns needed to work on every market, no matter what, which wasn’t the case at that time for the foreign currency market (Forex).

Elliott Wave theory implies that all market participants influence the market in ways that create mathematically quantifiable repetitive patterns.

But because there is a constant wave of theorists worldwide, if you see guys constantly changing their predictions on assets using it, you should only observe them from safe distance.

They might be unfolding scams.

They could be scams if they make their predictions on the lower time frame (below the daily time frames).

Predictions made under this timeframe are subject to change. Misinterpreting could happen unintentionally too for two main reasons:

• the need to integrate a smaller wave structure in a big wave (daily, weekly) and the pressure of time could play a role, and/or

• the price can make spikes on some brokers and others not and could be incorporated in the prediction.

So, in general, it is better to analyze a higher time frame chart.

Also, it’s crucial to be skeptical when receiving financial recommendations. It is not recommended that financial advice is randomly received on the Internet.

If you do, you must ensure you’re not led by potentially misleading advice.

Always ask yourself, what is the ultimate purpose of that?

Dealing with people in investing can be problematic, too.

Money can corrupt people’s minds and draw people towards money like sharks sensing blood in the water. It’s like the famous myth of Midas. Midas’ curse is that everything he touches turns to gold – imagine that! But money somehow can be Midas many times.

When some businesses appear too good to be true, it’s essential to be vigilant and watch for signs of risks. If something feels weird and you can’t explain to yourself what it is, stay away from that business or person!

Also, not all good-looking people who invest are well-intended or even genuine investors. Some have not invested even a cent in investments but present themselves as experts.

It is essential having a wearing code, but if the “possessor” shows ostentatious luxury to you, a presumably nobody, watch out! After all, sometimes the devil wears Prada, too.

The democratization of investments, which has continued for 34 years, has allowed the infiltration of charlatans and illegal schemes. Before, if you didn’t have a lot of money, you didn’t even have access to brokerage services, so you couldn’t buy shares.

Now, you can purchase fractional shares; that is, you can buy shares without necessarily owning a whole number of those shares.

If you post images of trades online, they will sometimes attract, apparently, for no reason, people with seemingly your best interest at heart.

Not all the people you are in contact with can be dubious, but posting results can spark jealousy. But, again, not every image can be actual and accurate.

Famous are the examples of people who post ongoing transactions, which, as is known, are associated with scams.

People can be vindictive if you seem to do better than them and cause you problems.

Remember that market investment is among the top fields. Despite their ease of access, they are proportionately more difficult.

The stock market is so unpredictable that surprise even the best people who graduated in finance from prestigious universities.

Not only do these contribute to their failure, but there are also other factors, such as emotional factors, especially when more risk is involved (leverage).

And like in a corporation medium, markets are full of psychopaths, too. They will envy you, discourage you, fool you, and so on.

Reframing Elliott Wave strategy.

I’ve spent countless hours researching a method and found this Youtuber that reframed the old Elliott Wave structure. Even though his way of looking at motive waves is revolutionary, I can’t put his name here and cannot vouch for him 100%.

So, I learned how to recognize the waves even if I was not in his inner circle of paid members. If you constantly better yourself, your observation skills will probably develop and push you in your investment journey, too, like I did.

But the important thing is that now I can pinpoint more precisely how the market will behave. I still make errors, but they are way less frequent than before.

Creating My Own YouTube channel: Morraevo

I created a YouTube channel after participating in a free financial seminar.

The speaker spoke a bunch of jibberish; he said: “If you invested then, then you would have achieved X profit,” and create a noticeable “fear of missing out” sentiment (FOMO).

This meeting was unbearable to the point that when it discussed other businesses, like growing nut trees, I went insane.

But somehow, I managed to stay there even though the women who had to speak were missing.

After this, I took the initiative to start my own YouTube channel. I began creating video chart analyses on currency pairs (Forex), commodities, funds, and crypto.

So, suddenly, I could offer tangible things to people new to investing instead of just selling ideas.

Many books, like The Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, already sell illusions. Don’t get me wrong, but despite the benefit of reading itself, you might not learn anything. Nowadays, almost anyone with some writing skills can publish for the public via Internet tools.

After learning and deepening my knowledge base, I’ve begun incorporating more fundamental aspects the companies evaluation process.

Their complete integration is part of the plan for next year!

So, dear gurus, why would you make YouTube financial videos if you cannot serve as a personal example and motivate others?

Many YouTube creators talking about investment have not invested a cent ever.

This behavior is highly irresponsible.

Most financial YouTubers copy ideas from other viral videos. They recommend stocks like Tesla, Palantir, and others labeled meme stocks.

Meme stocks refer to some popular stocks on social media sites like Reddit that have captured media attention among mostly small investors.

Some significant funds focus on such stocks, but the ARK Innovation ETF (run by ARK Invest) is the most well-known.

Even though ARK Invest is a fund managed by Cathie Wood, a cornerstone for many retail investors and highly promoted on YouTube, you still need to wonder if it is worth investing in the stocks this fund invests in.

An investment fund can be so huge in terms of liquidities that it can rebalance and protect its losses in ways you cannot do as an individual.

Access to information can also be an issue because half the world is in a different time zone than the USA and other markets.

So, we can easily miss important news, and when we wake up, we can already be late to make timely financial decisions.

Also, a fund that invests in futuristic domains can take many years without making a profit and then making an astounding 150%, as the fund did in 2020.

Even though was the best-performing ETF, people acted like “Don’t go to the praised tree with a sack.” investing all-in the technology sector and forgetting simple rules like diversifying.

Most didn’t diversify and expected the same results from 2020 onward, which didn’t happen.

Like life in general, investing requires adaptation to perform better over time. I had to incorporate more fundamentals into my technical analysis approach to analyzing stocks, hoping to beat the market.

It is not enough to invest just by following the fundamentals; you must develop some predictive tool attached to it to achieve astounding profits.

Even an outstanding company can underperform, even if analysts expect to do a specific result, and projecting the price can help you better see where you can add, let’s say, to a loose position (averaging down, for example).

My current investment portfolio.

I invest in Romanian markets but am preparing to pivot to worldwide markets to gain exposure to more liquid markets due to some heavy losses, mainly in two stocks (Teraplast and iHunt Technology).

I’ve invested about 8800 USD (approximately 41,000 RON), now the portfolio is 21% lower.

Below are a few investing articles, sorted from the latest to the oldest. Between them are articles in which I explain the thesis behind the particular closing transaction.

These resources cover various topics, from basic investment strategies to advanced technical analysis techniques.

Investing articles

Disclaimer:

The links from this article do not constitute a recommendation or endorsement of investing services; they are just proof to add natural context to the story.

This disclaimer is a reminder that investing involves risks and making informed decisions is essential.

While investing can be rewarding, it is not without its risks. It’s important to understand these risks and to seek professional advice when needed.