A Sincere Thank You To the DTA family

Time flies doesn’t it?

Looking back at another year I couldn’t help but think about all of the people that allowed us to get here.

The entire DTA family; from our Master Traders, to our new traders, and everyone in between.

We run things a little bit differently than most companies and that is part of the reason why we have had so much success.

We rely on each other, we look to each other for help, there is no success without each other.  This is very different than most of the trading companies out there that have one “trading guru” come up with all the ideas and supposedly “stay profitable”.

I happen to be the face of DTA but I have to give everyone credit behind the scenes.  Everyone who helps with strategy development, training, and even the new traders themselves.

Many times I get the question “Why do you train people how to trade if you can make so much money trading?”

This is a four part answer.  I don’t want everyone to think that this is a non profit organization which has the sole purpose “doing the right thing” to teach people how to trade.  We do this partly for selfish reasons.  Training others actually makes us better traders. Many may not realize but when a person is capable of teaching someone else how to do something (like trading) they actually get better at that skill.

That is first and foremost the reason why we are doing this. To get better.

Nikolai sharing his insights at the annual pro trader’s seminar

Reason Number 2: Adaptation and Consistency

New traders come in and bring a fresh outlook on what the market is doing. It would be arrogant to say that we don’t learn from new traders.  All we need is one single perspective, a very small idea, to completely change the way we look at the market. Since the market is always changing we need to make sure we adapt and that’s precisely what these new traders allow us to do.

The market is completely different than when I started 14 years ago.

For all the new traders out there that are currently in the training program, THANK YOU.  You really have no idea how much you help us to get better.

Nikolai and Marcello at the annual pro traders seminar in Tampa, Fl

Reason number 3: We fund the traders in our training program and also have managed accounts.

With our new managed accounts team we are going to have a slew of traders be certified CTA’s (Commodity Trading Advisers). This means that we will be the only company in the industry that is actually certified to manage other people’s funds. Let’s talk about transparency.   As we continue to grow we are going to need more traders to fund in order to continue making consistent returns in the market.

Reason number four is very personal.

I wouldn’t say that I have had an extremely hard life but my family and I did move from a third world country to the United States to live the American dream. I didn’t suffer growing up but I did have to fight tooth and nail for everything that I needed, not just what I wanted.

In this dire economy there are only a few ways to have job security and make sure that no matter what happens, we can continue to have a high quality of life.

To us that is day trading.

There is no way to describe the feeling when someone emails me and says Marcello I just quite my job and now am a full time trader. I can work whenever I want and can make my hours.  For someone who came to have his financial freedom from the circumstances of chaos in a third world country those words are extremely endearing. The key here is to understand that the economy is going to get worse not better. The economy has never fully recovered from the Great Recession even though the media wants to convince us that it has.

We can own our business; sell cars, real estate, or toilet paper, whatever it is you sell, and still have our pennies pinched during any kind of economic crisis.

Whether that be an economic recession, depression, or crisis.

The coming crisis has the potential to be as bad or worse as the Great Depression and all of our traders are salivating at the chance to be able to trade during that time.  You see, traders make more money when things are bad than when things are going well.

If there was ever a chance to learn how to trade now would be a good time.

In closing, I want to thank everyone again who has made DTA what it is and what it will become. I may have missed some names in the video below but everyone who has helped, whether it has been just a week or for a year, thank you very much.  The future is very bright for all of us and I’m glad to be able to share it with you.

Having trouble? Click here to see the video on YouTube