The first trader profile is in for the new year. Today we gain some insight from one of the great finance bloggers and traders. His blog archives date back to 2004 and presents topics in a well written and unique manner. Using Dane Carlsons blog valuation tool his blog alone is valued at $58,147.62 I would strongly encourage you to have a read of Ugly Chart. Anyway enough from me lets here from Mike himself.

What is your name?

Mike

How old are you?

31

Where do you live?

Philadelphia, PA

What is your educational background?

B.A. in Computer Science

How long have you been trading for?

About 6 years

Would you classify yourself as a fundamental or technical trader?

75% technical and 25% fundamental

Are the majority of your trades mechanical or discretionary?

The majority are discretionary. I think intuition is our only advantage over computers, which I believe will someday dominate trading and force unaided humans out of consistently profitable trading.

What is the one piece of advice you would give to someone starting out there trading career?

Be realistic and confident. You are competing against the best traders in the world and super-fast computers that can calculate billions of operations per second. It will be very difficult to be consistently profitable. You will need to be confident and realistic.

Do you believe great traders are Born with that ability? Or can it be taught?

I think to trade consistently profitable, you must constantly learn and adapt and contemplate yourself. So you must have the ability to constantly learn and adapt and contemplate yourself. I am optimistic that those abilities can be taught.

What was your most memorable losing trade?

I bought too many options of GOOG one day - on the day they were expiring - and then I drove to work and saw that I was down over $3000, so I sold them. It was depressing to lose so much money on the drive to work, and to trade so poorly - without managing my risk.

What is your most memorable winning trade?

I loaded up about 400% of my account into NTES in 2003 and then the internet went out at work. It was comical how poor the timing was - almost immediately after I made the trade, we had the worst internet outage in all the time I had been there. When I stepped outside and called my broker, I was up over $10,000. It was a great feeling.

What are your five all time favourite trading books?

You can see my favorite books on my website.

What do you see as your biggest challenge in the year ahead?

I am developing an ATS (automated trading system) and see making it consistently profitable as my biggest challenge for the next year.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

It is my hope that, through meditation and hard work, I can improve myself by becoming a more ethical person, by producing things of value, and collecting earned wealth.

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