Tell us a little bit about yourself and or your trading experience

[nicolas]

Hello all, 31-yo guy from France. I used to work as a project engineer in the O&G and nuclear industries. Last year I felt it was time for me to try something new. I moved to Georgia (the country), and I first tried my hand at different online business ideas, then decided to focus on learning web development. I’m now starting to look at remote job offers and eager to start this new chapter of my professional life!

I was always good at saving money, from my first paycheck, but I had no clue how to invest it, and no one around me did either, so I started learning on my own about 3 years ago. I read a lot, got exposed to many ideas: value investing, technical analysis for swing trading, random walk and indexing, etc. I made my share of mistakes in the beginning, usually due to either fear or greed, but never too costly fortunately.

I’ve been a subscriber to TI since 2019, like others I discovered through Stock Gumshoe. Since, I’ve really increased my discipline and emotional control. I’m really happy that I have nice gains to show for it so far! I might start learning about options next year.

I’ve also been on a self-development to what I would now call spiritual journey for a few years. Things really clicked for me at the beginning of this year when someone recommended to me “The 4 Agreements.” I’ve also found TI’s reading list helpful, particularly Transurfing.

I remember thinking as a teenager something like “I am not religious, but I believe there are forms of energy that science cannot measure yet” and being more open to spirituality as a whole. Probably this side of me was suppressed by my technical education and the filter of rationality, but now it has found more freedom to express itself.

[SOL]

Welcome aboard, if you are in the country of Georgia, then there is some good wine there I think one of them is called Khvanchkara.

Moving to different locations helps broadens one perspective and makes one realise that if even if one is quite a big fish in that area, when they travel they find out that they are nothing but a big fish in a small pond, in other words, nothing but a toothless guppy

[stefk]

Welcome aboard, if you are in the country of Georgia, then there is some good wine there I think one of them is called Khvanchkara.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

It seems that Georgia is the cradle of viticulture, 8000 years ago.

[George1010]

Sol you once mentioned some locations that you could pick up great Russian/European delights online in the USA or some stores in NY. Could you provide some links to these places. I tried some Russian Salami it was fantastic

[SOL]

Well, when In New York there is a great supermarket called NETCOST that has a plethora of European foods like butter, cold cuts, etc that are superb. If you go to Brighton beach there are lot of Russian stores and pharmacies with lots of products that you won't find anywhere in the USA.

Online stores here are few

https://russianfoods.com/

https://www.russianfoodusa.com/

For Russian Mumijo and other interesting health products, you can try this place

https://www.russiantable.com/health

https://www.russiantable.com/health/sup ... rch=mumijo

https://www.russiantable.com/health/per ... earch=mumi

[nicolas]

Welcome aboard, if you are in the country of Georgia, then there is some good wine there I think one of them is called Khvanchkara.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

It seems that Georgia is the cradle of viticulture, 8000 years ago.

Yes, it is believed to be the world’s oldest winemaking region, and it still has today its own endemic varieties of grape, contrary to many other countries where vine were introduced from abroad. The process of using buried large amphoras called qvevri to age the wine is also unique.

Khvanchkara is a good dry red, like Saperavi. I think my preference changed from reds to dry whites, which are also plentiful! This country is truly blessed with amazing landscape, from arid desert to high mountains to subtropical jungle, and has such an excellent gastronomy.

[Tactical Apprentice]

Early 30s electrician turned estimator politely living in the 51st state (Canada). As a teenager I developed a large skepticism(fear) of the markets through my father losing large sums of money on penny stocks. Fast forward fifteen years to 2018 I was impressed with the TI reviews, not because of the positivity in the writing but the specificity of the review claims. After subscribing, learning and investing for a year under Sol's school of thought I began to understand why a man I considered (biased I know) to be incredibly intelligent could fail so miserably in the markets.

But even though TI's method and philosophy were consistently showing me things I would've considered magical a year earlier, my mind was not receptive to the 3rd and 4th level concepts. It's still tough for me to nail down why beyond the simple word 'programming'. Possibly because not only were my beliefs common but they were rewarded with token career progression, cozy salaries and pats on the head. This mental block definitely prevented me from jumping into TI with both feet for almost a year.

My programming began to glitch after the loss of my son. Everything became trivial and vain for a long time, but something else happened. For some reason I could recognize 'idea possession' in myself(mainly) and others. Then the 3rd and 4th level concepts began to click, I was able to jump into the newsletter with both feet just in time. My family's savings where preserved and grew in spite of the income instability we had this year thanks to Sol and TI.

[AstuteShift]

Sorry for your loss, I can’t imagine the pain you went through

Life indeed does throw insane curveballs but it’s how we get up and adapt is what matters

4th level is indeed hard to swallow but in a way it’s fitting, the amount of BS a regular person gets in his/her psyche is incredible and stripping that out can be a painful experience. However Rome was not built in a day and we should go slow and enjoy the process.

It took me about a year as well to get used to SOLs concepts, I was trading like a mad man, even though I was profitable it wasn’t enough and made the broker pretty rich.

Now I barely trade and enjoy my life more, thanks to SOL and his wonderful team. Guidance to Learning oneself and to remember oneself is perhaps the greatest gift one can give to another.

[Yodean]

Early 30s electrician turned estimator politely living in the 51st state (Canada).

My programming began to glitch after the loss of my son. Everything became trivial and vain for a long time, but something else happened.

Nice to see a fellow Canadian on this board, eh. I am based in Toronto.

Condolences about the loss of your son. Sounds like you came out of it the right way. Terrible, traumatic events in someone's life often also provide the opportunity to break through years of false programming, very quickly.

God bless.

[Tactical Apprentice]

Thank you.

Both of you and Sol have set a great tone in these forums. I expected the analysis and the economics but I did not expect the self-awareness and the internal corrections all three of you encourage.

[Triplethought]

Hello all, 31-yo guy from France. I used to work as a project engineer in the O&G and nuclear industries. Last year I felt it was time for me to try something new. I moved to Georgia (the country), and I first tried my hand at different online business ideas, then decided to focus on learning web development. I’m now starting to look at remote job offers and eager to start this new chapter of my professional life!

I was always good at saving money, from my first paycheck, but I had no clue how to invest it, and no one around me did either, so I started learning on my own about 3 years ago. I read a lot, got exposed to many ideas: value investing, technical analysis for swing trading, random walk and indexing, etc. I made my share of mistakes in the beginning, usually due to either fear or greed, but never too costly fortunately.

I’ve been a subscriber to TI since 2019, like others I discovered through Stock Gumshoe. Since, I’ve really increased my discipline and emotional control. I’m really happy that I have nice gains to show for it so far! I might start learning about options next year.

I’ve also been on a self-development to what I would now call spiritual journey for a few years. Things really clicked for me at the beginning of this year when someone recommended to me “The 4 Agreements.” I’ve also found TI’s reading list helpful, particularly Transurfing.

I remember thinking as a teenager something like “I am not religious, but I believe there are forms of energy that science cannot measure yet” and being more open to spirituality as a whole. Probably this side of me was suppressed by my technical education and the filter of rationality, but now it has found more freedom to express itself.

Nicolas. I'm curious whether a) as a french citizen can you become a citizen of Georgia? b) Do you feel safe with the current rule of law? c) is it a nice place to visit? d) do you plan to stay there? e) are there any jobs? f) what is the predominant language? (do you speak it?)

[nicolas]

Nicolas. I'm curious whether a) as a french citizen can you become a citizen of Georgia? b) Do you feel safe with the current rule of law? c) is it a nice place to visit? d) do you plan to stay there? e) are there any jobs? f) what is the predominant language? (do you speak it?)

a) Short answer: not really. I haven’t researched in details, there are certainly ways to acquire a Georgian passport, for example through marriage. In any case they don’t recognize dual-citizenship. If looking at it with the idea of building a passport portfolio, it’s not a good candidate.

b) Yes. Tbilisi is a very safe city. Anyone can walk alone at night in any part of the city, you may encounter a barking dog defending its territory, but you won’t get mugged. From what I understand police is generally helpful and since 2004 corruption is almost non-existent.

c) It is an amazing place to visit! Pre-covid, tourism was growing a lot year over year, mostly from neighboring countries. The culture, the gastronomy, and the variety of landscape make it an ideal destination for someone looking for something off the beaten path, keeping in mind that most touristic areas remain underdeveloped in terms of infrastructure, and it’s not that easy to get around without hiring a driver or participating in an organized tour.

d) For now yes, longer term, I don't think so. Not enough surf spots The latest developments also don’t make me very bullish that it will remain such an open, economically free, and bureaucracy-free country. We’ll see. Hard to make firm plans now anyway.

e) Not many. Situation improved a lot since 2004, however unemployment remains high and obviously covid restrictions don’t help. I know some expats who work for local companies (usually subsidiaries of international groups), and some teachers in international schools, but must work online.

f) Georgian. Unique language with no similarity to any other one, and with its own alphabet. Really interesting and also really hard language to learn! I know some common words and can very slowly decipher the alphabet. In younger generations, most learn English in school and are usually good at it. It’s quite easy to get by with English in the capital, outside it can be more difficult. Older generations speak Russian. I’m currently learning Russian, mostly because my girlfriend is Russian!

[semantic]

Greetings to all and happy new year. I just joined MU and AI Trader and wanted to intro myself.

I’m 53, located in the Washington DC area, and a novice trader using Schwab. Over the years I’ve relied on brokers/services to handle things for me but became disenchanted with the process some time ago. After that I let my traditional investments slide and focused on crypto which has worked out well. It’s time to get back in the game for 2021 and I’ve been searching for a group that is looking not only at the traditional KPIs but also the emotional aspect of the markets - I think I’ve finally found a home.

About work life, I’m an IT person and have been building software and infrastructure for my entire career. I started a software development consulting company in mid-90s with offices in RU and UA, and ran that until a few years ago after several crazy plus unfortunate events in my life changed that. I’ve worked with lots of different tools and technologies, almost exclusively open source, and a believer in Bitcoin which I’ll call a masterpiece sans the power consumption.

Lately I’m spending my time working with machine and deep learning (with some effort to combine that with blockchain). The bits on my workbench now are a stock price predictor using open source tech. The goal is to cobble together an ARIMA-like time series predictor combined with a CNN for sentiment all wrapped in Tensorflow (ARIMA = Autoregressive Moving Average, CNN = Convolutional Neural Network).

I do not have the chops or resources to outsmart the guys who are doing this for a living, this is mostly an exploratory endeavor for me. However it’s truly amazing that the technology is open source, free and reliable, and provides a fascinating lens to look at the markets. The future looks very interesting as these tools get into the hands of the smaller players and innovators, and while it still might not be a fair fight I think one might be able to do pretty well spending a fraction of what the big firms burn.

The rest of my story reads like most I’ve seen on these pages except I’m the parent of young triplets which were not in the in the game plan. I’ve been very lucky over the years to do what I love, but that’s all changing. I believe there is a sea change underway that has been expedited by COVID and is downright scary IMHO. On top of that AI (really machine/deep learning for the most part) will be one of the most disruptive tech trends we have ever seen. We are closing in on the Master Algorithm (re: Pedro Domingos’ book) and each year we chip away a bit more. The advent of GPT-3 is much bigger than most could ever imagine. The hits will just keep on coming.

Nonetheless there will be winners and losers, and it will take a shift in thinking to rack-up the Ws. I’m hoping this group is the start, let’s see how it goes!

[gnosis12]

Welcome aboard Semantic. I think you will find both these forums the AI trend forum and the MU forum to be very interesting. The AI forum is older and has some more advanced threads but both the forums are a breadth of fresh air and have helped me advance.

[semantic]

Thanks for the welcome gnosis12. I have a lot to learn and looking forward to interacting with the group.