A MESSAGE FROM MARQUEZ

My Favourite Quotes:

My full name is Marquez Comelab. I am a private forex trader and I currently live in Melbourne, Australia. I started trading when I was twenty-two years old, when I was still earning my Bachelor’s degree in Commerce which focused on accounting, banking and finance. It is important for me to let you know that you do not need a degree in Commerce to trade the financial markets. Successful traders have come from all fields of study and levels of experience.

MY FIRST EXPERIENCES OF TRADING

I began trading the share market before the tech stock market collapse. Unlike the many people who lost vast amounts of money in this event, I was fortunate. I learnt enough about trading and the use of technical analysis to close all my trades two working days before the panic selling began.

The ‘tech crash’ was a harrowing event for the thousands of people around the world who invested in the stock market. Being out of the market, I was able to stay emotionally detached from what was happening. I was in a frame of mind calm enough to observe and learn from what was happening. I remember telling myself that my mission was to learn as much as I could and come out of the experience as a wiser man. I was sitting in the front seat, witnessing a historical event when the market struck fear into the hearts and minds of people who had come with the ambition to make money.

FROM SHARES TO CURRENCIES (FOREX)

After the ‘carnage’ – as some journalists put it – there were not many trading opportunities in the stock market for me. I was learning a lot from books about trading methods and psychology. I wanted to apply what I learnt and I got frustrated with the lack of upside trends in the stock market. I was warned earlier on in my trading career that as a beginner, I was better off trading shares before moving on to trading other markets. I followed this sensible advice, but I came to a point where my progress was being impeded by the lack of tradeable movement in the stock market, especially the stocks I wanted to get into. I also resented the fact that my small account was being eaten away by the transaction costs imposed by data providers, brokers and the like. I suppose some might say you shouldn’t be playing with the stock market with a small account anyway. But I wanted to learn how to trade regardless of the size of my account. Self-improvement is not only for the rich!

I began to look for other markets and other assets to trade: where one can profit from a rising or a falling market. I looked at futures and options, but they were not for me at the time. I then came across a seminar organised by a forex broker, based in Perth, educating people about the foreign exchange market: a market where people trade currencies. From that day onwards, I switched from trading shares to trading currencies. I have not looked back since.

ABOUT THE BOOK: THE PART-TIME CURRENCY TRADER

Over the last few years, I met several people who wanted to know more about forex. I referred them to some books and websites about forex and trading in general. All of them came back to me and said they had trouble understanding most of what was being discussed. They said they were able to understand the subject matter easier when I talked to them. They suggested that I write a book to introduce them to forex and to provide them with an approach to trading.

I did not take action on the suggestion immediately. It took me a couple of years because I wanted to focus on my trading. I waited until I had a method that promised me an acceptable return and, more importantly, a system that I could follow without question. After overcoming the emotional aspects of trading and arriving at a trading system and a position-sizing strategy that I could follow with full confidence and discipline, there is nothing left for me to do but allow my method to filter the market, while I continue to develop, improve and adapt it to ever-changing market conditions.

Arriving in this position brought me great relief. There were times when I thought that maybe trading was not for me but finally, there is light at the end of the tunnel. It is only a matter of time before I achieve a personal milestone I have set for myself. It takes time for a system to grow money. Even the best fund managers like Ed Seykota averages 'only' 60% a year. (Source: http://www.turtletrader.com/trader-seykota.html, 30 April 2006.) This may surprise many novice traders who come to the market expecting to make a million in a few months. Waiting for money to grow is frustrating but I am not going to borrow money from banks, friends or relatives to trade because this makes me more emotional when I trade. My consolation is that even though I still work part-time for a living, my trading can now take care of itself. I find myself being able to relax a little more and I have more time to challenge myself with other endeavours.

I never expected to author a book. However, in every project I have undertaken – be it writing songs, recording music, starting businesses and trading – I gained the initial knowledge I needed from books. Every book I read gave me something to think about: something that guided me where to go. I realised that if it wasn’t for other traders sharing their wisdom, writing about their experiences and their methods, I would have found it a lot harder to progress. I am grateful to those people. They have made me recognize the value of passing on knowledge and experience for others to follow.

I wrote the book: The Part-Time Currency Trader, for anybody wanting to trade the forex market. There are stages to mastering trading. In each stage there are important lessons to be learnt. I have not learnt all of them yet but in my journey as a trader, I have made mistakes and I have bumped into pivotal lessons that have changed my thinking. A novice trader should learn these as soon as possible to save them the emotional and financial pain associated to learning from brute trial-and-error approach. It is these lessons that I try to impart in this book.

Trading is hard. To most who have attempted it, it is probably the hardest and most difficult endeavour one can decide to undertake. The challenge is internal: the struggle is mental and emotional. It is no wonder that most traders fail dismally. However, let that not discourage you because in the real world, there are no magic tricks to become an instant success. It is the same with trading. But despite this, you may still decide to trade, because it is still one of the few endeavours on earth that can give you the means to be free to live the life you want.

I could have written about a trading system that produced an annual average of X% return over the past X years, but I know that even if I show you numbers, the market is always changing. What works now is not guaranteed to work next month or next year. Furthermore, a system that works for me may not work for you because you have a unique pyschological profile. Your tolerance for risk and your desire for profits are different to mine.

What I offer you instead is a trading methodology: an entire approach that took me years to learn and discover through the arduous process of trial-and-error. By giving you this, I give you the foundation to create your own trading strategies that will fit any market conditions now and in the future.

If you find one truth, one statement or logic – somewhere in these 241 pages or so – that would save you from losing thousands of your hard-earned money, then you will have recouped the time and financial investment you have spent for this book. I hope to help make your journey faster, shorter and less painful than what it can be. And if life was a climb, then I hope we will see each other at the top.

Best regards,

Marquez Comelab

(April 2006. Melbourne.)

"We are what we think. All that we are, arises from our thoughts. And with our thoughts, we make our world."

- The Buddha.

"Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for."

— Socrates, Greek Philosopher of Athens

"To be truly ignorant, be content with your own knowledge."

— Chuang Tzu, circa 300 BC

"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."

— Derek Bok

"It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up."

— Vince Lombardi

"The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will."

— Vince Lombardi

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."

— Mark Twain

"In today's economy there are no experts, no 'best and brighest' with all the answers. It's up to each one of us. The only way to screw up is to not try anything."

— Tom Peters

"The main reason people struggle financially is because they have spent years in school but learnt nothing about money. The result is that people learn to work for money...but never learn to have money work for them."

— Robert Kiyosaki, author of 'Rich Dad Poor Dad'.

"If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them."

— Bruce Lee

"It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped."

— Anthony Robbins, author of 'Awakening The Giant Within'

"We will either find a way or make one."

— Hannibal

"Things do not change; we change."

— Henry David Thoreu

"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it...."

— Goethe

"Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him."

— Aldous Huxley

"I am not in this world to live up to your expectations and you're not in this world to live up to mine."

— Bruce Lee

"Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think."

— Ayn Rand

"Every man is an impossibility until he is born."

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of the day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows. "

— Michael Landon

"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born...After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with colour, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again... Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it?"

— Richard Dawkins, Unweaving The Rainbow.

"Every man dies but not every man truly lives."

— Mel Gibson as William Wallace in the film: Braveheart

"It's better to have tried and failed, than not to have tried at all."

— My father, Braulio Comelab, may have been quoting Edgar Guest, however, I learnt this lesson from him.

It's Better to Have Tried

'Tis better to have tried in vain,
Sincerely striving for a goal,
Than to have lived upon the plain
An idle and a timid soul.

'Tis better to have fought and spent
Your courage missing all applause,
Than to have lived in smug content
And never ventured for a cause.

For he who tries and fails may be
The founder of a better day;
Though never his the victory,
From him shall others learn the way.

— Edgar A. Guest, Source Unknown

"Your time is precious. Do not waste it."

— My high school math teacher.

“We should not seek immortality in reproduction... If you contribute to the world's culture, if you have a good idea, compose a tune, invent a sparking plug, write a poem, it may live on, intact, long after your genes have dissolved in the common pool.”

— Prof. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

“The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.”

— Bruce Lee


Keywords: forex trading system, trading signal, trading strategy, fx, foreign exchange, profits, money.
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