top of page

How to Learn To Trade The Right Way With Alpesh Patel – 1

Alpesh Patel on Trading for Profit

Anyone Can Learn to Trade

My wife asked me, “Listen, it’s straightforward. If I can learn to trade with you teaching me, you can teach anyone, right?” I thought what a great way in which to write this article. I’m going to explain it in a way that I’m teaching my wife. She’s the one in my mind, and I’m teaching her.

You might have thought, well, why haven’t you taught her sooner? Well, I wanted her to be doing other things, like her day job, and that’s the whole point. Most of you have got day jobs, and you’ve got better things to do.

You’ve got kids to look after or grandkids to play with rather than spend all your time trading. So the ideal person in my mind, to teach to trade, is somebody who’s got lots of other better things to be doing.

They’re not going to be geeks like me. And if I can teach you or if you’re already trading, make you profitable, then that’s my job. Essentially, I’m going to talk about how we’re going to use technology and strategies to increase our trading profit.

Students at my Trading Talks at Bloomberg

This was taken from a photo long before there were Tiers at Bloomberg, where I used to present my show.

The key thing I want to tell you all is the person I’ve in my mind that I’m speaking to, as I said earlier on, is my wife. Why? She’s got a lot of better things to be doing and trading, but she wants to learn. Okay, so that’s it.

The other thing I want to make clear to everybody is we’re not; how do we become a millionaire by tomorrow morning, or how do we buy the Ferrari by the end of the week? If that’s what you’re looking for, then forget it.

This isn’t the article for you, okay? I’m talking about how we learn the skills to gradually get to the difference between rich and poor, usually for most people at £500 a month or $500 a month. Some of you are from different parts of the world, £500 or $500 a month.


Simplest-Guide-Ever-to-InvestingDownload

No Guarantees in the Market

Now, there are no guarantees in the market. You are not guaranteed an income from the market. If you think you’re going to get rich quickly and be guaranteed an income, forget it. What happens is some months you make more, and you save that for the month in which you earn less, so we’re going to iron that out.

Our ambitions are going to be very modest. Why? Because initial modest ambitions allow us to focus on the skills and not the money. If we focus on the skills and master those, then the money takes care of itself because it becomes a simple issue of just scaling up gradually and slowly.

When I first started out, I didn’t have loads of money, and I had no silver spoon in my mouth. I learned the skills so that I could go to friends and family and say, look, I’ve learned the skills, can you loan me some money? That’s how I built it up. That’s how most people are going to build it up.

The basic principle being if you can make 500, you can make 1000. If you make 1000, you can make 2000. And if you make two, you can make four. I don’t want you to focus on the money.

Don’t Focus on the Money but Skills

So already I’ve said things you don’t want to hear, which is don’t focus on the money, we’re going to focus on the skills, we’re going to start off with modest ambitions, and we’re not going to get rich quick.

I probably lost some of you already, which is good because I don’t want people who are here to gamble or people who are here to be irresponsible because you’re not going to make it that way. As a professional hedge fund manager, I’m telling you how I made it from being a private investor like you guys.

I was at university as a student and then built up the fund. I was good enough that the Financial Times found me, and they gave me a column to talk about my trades each week.

Bloomberg TV found me and said, “We want you on air and not just now and again, we want to give your own show,” and that helped raise the profile so I could set up the hedge fund.

I’m going to teach you the skills that I use and other hedge fund managers like me utilise. Because as private investors, there are a few things you don’t know. If you knew those, you’d be doing a hell of a lot better.

Can Trading Be Done Automatically

Can you Trade Automatically?

The other thing we’re going to answer is, can trading be done automatically? That’s the reason you’re here, and that’s why there are humans. If it could be done automatically, neither of us would need to be here. You might have heard of EAs and automated trading systems and robots and black boxes. Bullshit.

It can be done if you’ve got supercomputers and hedge funds worth billions who can put hundreds of millions of pounds into the software. Even mine can’t afford that. We can’t afford that. We can barely afford the overpaid staff that we’ve already got.

The point is, we’re going to use computing power but not automate it. We’re going to use it to automate about 90% of our activities. 90% will be automated, and the last 10% will be trade selection, which we’re going to do.

The trades I’m going to talk about, for instance, it’s like a classroom, and it’s like a one-to-one tutorial I’m giving you. Remember your old biology classes or cookery classes? These are the ones we’re going to focus on today.

There are Marks; there’s GBPNZD, EURUSD; we will look at Google, the NASDAQ, FTSE, Apple, Dow, Amazon, and Bitcoin. Those are the ones we’re going to experiment with, and I’m going to show you with those what trading involves.

All of this data is in real-time, and it’s free. Many brokers offer this kind of software, and my job is to give you free stuff. That’s what I used to do in my Financial Times column. I used to tell the traders who followed me, look, this is where you get the free tools from. I save you money a bit like that Money Saving Expert guy.

Trading helped me pay my own way to Oxford University

What I’m going to teach you is, well, I paid my way through university through training. My tutors will know this because I used to get little beeps now and again, telling them what to do in the middle of tutorials. I’m giving you experience and expertise from that, but not just mine.

Alpesh Patel became a barrister at 21

I loved this as a career. For some people, it is the best entrepreneurial venture they’ll ever do. That’s why I’m passionate about it, and that’s why I do these articles. That’s why I’ve written my 18 odd books.

You can probably see over my shoulder translated into five languages because I love this stuff. I don’t expect you to love it as much as I love it. I appreciate people like my wife. They don’t love trading; they just want it as a means to an end.