How I Got Started Trading
Since the market is closed today, I thought I would take a step back and share a little more about how I got started in the world of investing. After all, even though I look like a teenager, I’ve been knee deep in the markets for over a decade.
I was one of those kids who was always interested in finance and business. I’ve definitely always had a bit of an entrepreneurial mindset — I remember even as a very young kid being at a restaurant or a store and thinking “If I owned this place, I’d do this or that to make it work better”.
I personally consider capitalism one of the great ideas in history and I loved not only reading and researching about businesses, but running our publishing business here too.
When I was a freshman in college my interest was much more entrepreneurial (i.e. starting and running businesses) than investing…
But I ended up meeting a guy through church who was trading the currency markets and ended up building quite a following online. And it just so happened he needed some help running this business that he had created entirely by accident.
He specifically needed some help managing the actual business side of things. After a summer internship and a tough conversation with my parents, I dropped out of college and went to work for him…
The way I figured it was that I could stay in school and rack up debt in the hopes I would land a good job… Or I could stop taking on debt and land a good job immediately. It was one of the best decisions I’ve made.
That initial role in a currency market-focused business really shaped my view because I was immediately thrown into an international market that most folks don’t have experience with.
Thankfully, the guy who started the business insisted I actually learn to trade and watch the markets instead of just running the operations. So I traded currencies quite actively during the first few years working with him and I mostly lost money (he actually gave me great advice and I mostly ignored it trying to hit home runs in my account).
Turns out being aggressive and stupid is not a great combination in the markets — who knew?
From around 2009 to 2015, I stayed very currency focused. Not to say that I wasn’t learning other markets, we just focused mostly on currency. Learning and losing was a great experience. It taught me a lot about how the markets really work, how to take losses and, frankly, how hard investing can be.
Around 2015, things really changed for me. I transitioned into more of the stock and options realm where I exist today and a whole new world opened up for me.
That’s when I started meeting a lot of the high-tier people that I have been fortunate enough to have access to, former hedge fund managers, world-renowned traders, and some people who are literally in the Market Wizards book.
And I got to see, experience, and get access to investors who developed some pretty amazing systems.
Frankly, it was crazy and I am not sure I even realized until recently how lucky I was. I had suddenly gotten a flood of unfair advantages by meeting all these millionaires and elite traders.
So, week over week, month over month I started to take that all in and started to dabble with trading in the stock and options world. I mean, it felt silly not to take advantage of the markets while I had access to all these brilliant people.
Now at this point, I wasn’t having much success yet. But over the years I was able to develop a couple of key principles that were huge for me and helped me to make a quantum leap.
And they’re not game-changing, mind-blowing principles or anything like that. It just helped to frame my perspective when it came to investing.
The momentum idea that I speak of from time to time was one: buy high and sell higher versus trying to buy low. That was huge for me to finally learn because it’s so uncomfortable to buy at an all-time high. Most people would say, it’s “overextended” or “it’s overbought”.
And I agree it is really awkward to buy stocks at an all-time high.
But in reality, buying stocks at all-time highs would set you up to do unbelievably well historically speaking.
So that was one of the biggest hurdles for me to get over. Just literally being comfortable doing it.
The other big breakthrough, for me, was really understanding options and figuring out how you can twist and turn them in a way that’s advantageous to you.
I realized the vast majority of people used options in a very surface level way, but there was so much more to them — and if I could be one of the people who understand them, I could then tweak them to work for me…
And, in my opinion, creating those “unfair” risk-to-reward scenarios and probabilities is the biggest opportunity in all of investing.
Frankly, that “opportunity” is what still has me hooked on the markets..
I mean, the reason I got started in the markets is because I saw people getting very wealthy from the stock market and I was like, “hmm, I should probably do that”.
So I just went on a journey of taking what I consider to be the best, most proven ideas from all of the resources I had access to. Because in my position over the last 10 years, not only have I gotten to talk to great traders who have great systems, but I’ve also actually gotten to see what they do — and look at their track record.
So it’s a lot different than just the idea of someone saying “I’m really good at trading and I have this cool system”. I mean, you could take their word for it, but I was able to actually see behind the scenes: how they were performing, their customers, all that kind of stuff.
So that was a huge, huge win for me. Then over the last couple of years, I developed my own trading and really honed in on my personal ideas, started building some scans, various tools, and my own version of ideas.
Ultimately, that led me to where I felt like I had “cracked the code” on a whole bunch of different ways to tap into the stock market as a retail trader. Ya know, I am not some Wall Street vet or classically trained investor. I am just a guy who has had access and proximity to great systems and ideas who fell in love with the markets and, I believe, figured some things out.
So last year, I decided to come out from behind the scenes and share some of those things and it’s been a ton of fun and really fulfilling to hear stories of success from people following me.
And I still have so many things that I haven’t even begun to share with people yet! Probably eight or nine different strategies I still want to get to, down the road!
And, yes, I believe in trading all of them… I am a huge believer in diversification of strategies not diversification of assets. Once you get to a point where you can really understand how the markets work, there are so many ways to take advantage of it and tap into some great opportunities.
I think the best opportunity in the world is to understand the stock market because there’s so much potential inside of it. And I am honored to have the chance to play a role in other people tapping into that potential.
— Nate Tucci
P.S. I share free trade ideas and insight every day in my Telegram. If you’re not in the channel, just tap here to join. It’s my way of connecting with you in a more actionable, real time way so I hope you take advantage (we just hit over 200% on a free Nvidia trade btw!)
