Advice for the Young and Ambitious Seeking Great Success

I reveal a secret I’ve kept for 20 years and a lesson learnt about winning big in life.

Photo by Samuel Ng on Unsplash

It’s been 20 years. I’ve never told anyone about it. No one else knew except for two friends — who were in on it.

The year was 2001.

Electronic trading for financial markets were in its early days, and retail investors were still transitioning from calling up their stock brokers to placing orders themselves on Internet platforms.

I was in my final year in university. There was a startup which wanted to create an electronic market for currency trading. A couple of industry veterans were behind the startup.

They decided to hold a trading competition among college students to promote their platform. The top prize was $5,000 — a very attractive amount for a student.

Three is better than one

Having wandered into the world of financial markets at an early age, I was already teaching technical analysis (aka charting) to my peers in the university investment club.

I decided to take part in the trading competition.

I also asked my roommate and his girlfriend to sign up so that I could trade all…