On a Quest for Market Mastery - One Trader's Story

Everyone has a story, this is mine.

Hello, my name is Frank Soler, a professional trader, and the owner of Soler Investments.

Going WAY back, a Passion for Trading Develops Early

For one reason or another, as a kid, I started picking stock symbols from the "Money" section of the USA Today newspaper. I would write down a few symbols, track their prices, and drop those that weren't going up as much.

I did this for a few years, and noticed that I was making A LOT of money (actually just paper trading them, but still it felt good). This inspired me to figure out why some stocks went up and why others didn't.

At age 16, I was three years into my "trading career" and had begun my quest.

The First Trade

I clearly remember my first real trade. It was a penny stock I bought for around $0.80 per share. It shot up quickly and I was up 50% in a matter of weeks!

"This stuff is easy" I thought. Then, all of a sudden, it started going down. "Hey, I'll just buy more for less" and doubled-down around $0.50/share.

Then, it kept going down, and down, and... you get the picture. But, the lessons learned were invaluable:

1. This WASN'T easy.
2. You don't make any money if you don't sell.
3. ALWAYS have a plan in place if you're wrong.

A first trade loss and I was hooked!

School, Work, and Trading

In high school, I started making real trades with a very small account. Some won, some lost, but I gained a lot of experience.

During college, I worked at a hardware store. They gave us free company stock and offered more at a discount. It kept going up and up, and then got bought out by a large chain at a nice premium.

I started off buying and selling these shares. It's price traded in a predictable range for a long time, so it was pretty easy to grow my account.

Later, the more I learned, the more I traded, and my account size continued to grow. Looking back, I now know there was a lot of luck involved.

Regardless, I now had trading capital!

Finding My Edge

As I continued reading everything I could about trading, I noticed a trend. Everyone was saying essentially the same thing.

That was when a very important thought occurred to me. If everyone was saying and doing the same thing, but greater than 90% percent of traders were losing money, these "things" couldn't be right.

With this idea in mind and after numerous live trades, I realized that successful trading can be broken down into just a few distinct pieces.

1. The laws of Supply and Demand govern all free markets.
2. Emotions and Psychology drive Supply and Demand.
3. You can trade based solely off this info.

This all came together into a detailed trading plan that is still the basis for what I use today.

I had my "trading edge". Once you have that, it all boils down to watching/waiting for the right set-ups, placing your orders, and letting the laws of probabilities take over.

The Internet Age

I was trading full-time and doing very well. Since I worked for myself and my trading only took up a few hours everyday, I had some free time on my hands.

Although the Internet stock bubble had burst, I realized that the Internet was still going to be the medium of the future.

So, in January of 2003, I launched this website and its stock trading service.

From Stocks to Forex and Beyond

Things were going smoothly, then one day I got a call from a large Forex brokerage. They was trying to convince me to become an Introducing Broker for them.

The broker also told me how he used to trade stocks, but found the currency markets to be so much better. He opened a demo account for me and asked me to give it a try.

He was right! No company risk, no sector risk, more predictable trends. Slowly, but surely, my trading gravitated away from stocks and into Forex.

From there, it was a natural progression into Futures and Options, although the Forex markets had become and still are my one of my main focuses (these days, nearly 90% of my trades are in Futures and Forex).

But, what do you do when you run a successful online stock trading service, but no longer focus on stocks?

A New Service is Born

I had to make a decision. Either continue offering a stock trading service, just trade for myself, or create a new service that offers the trades of what I actually trade (Forex, Futures, Stocks, and Options, in that order).

It was an easy decision.

I got the best of both worlds. I got to teach others how to trade, which I thoroughly enjoy, while trading with others (individual trading can be very lonely).

A Dream Achieved Thru Trading

While I no longer offer any trading advisory services, trading is still my passion.

Running a trading advisory for nearly 15 years had so many good moments and I'm so thankful that I was able to help so many.

However, trading and running an advisory website started to take up too much of my time. It was a hard decision to end the trading advisory, but a great one.

Nowadays, I'm able to live and work from anywhere in the world (as long as there's Internet) and am concentrating on doing my small part to help others while enjoying the fruits of my labor.

The plan is to maintain this website as a source of real trading/investing knowledge and education. Mostly as a public service, because the lack of TRUTHFUL trading info out there is perhaps even less than it was 10 years ago.

If you're reading this, KNOW that you can achieve financial independence thru trading/investing IF you're willing to take the time to learn how.

Here's to hoping I will inspire many!