Get to know your fellow traders: Kel Butcher speaks with mechanical trader John Tassopoulos.

John Tassopoulos trades Australian shares from his home in the Inner West of Sydney. John has been using a mechanical trading approach for more than 11 years. Despite the time constraints imposed by having a young family (John and his wife Kathy have three young boys), a mechanical trading approach provides John with the efficiency and direction to navigate his way through all the ‘investment noise’. This enables John to control their superannuation through the family self managed super fund and, at the same time, to continue to work in a full-time capacity as an IT professional.

How and when did you first become interested in the markets?
At university – I was a young guy, fresh out of high school and open to all sorts of moneymaking ventures. For some reason, I was attracted to trading the markets. In 1988 (I think it was), I thought I would ‘dabble’ in the share market. I opened an account with a broker. I performed a heap of research. Then I finally built up the courage to purchase my first share. It was quite exciting. As it turned out, that first trade was a winning trade. If I remember correctly, I made well over 100 per cent. This gave me the courage to place one more trade. Guess what? It was another profit trade. As you can imagine, for a young guy, I considered this to be ‘easy money’. “Trading is for me,” I thought. Of course, following those first two trades, things were not always smooth. There were lots of ups and downs...

Excerpted from an article originally published in the Sep/Oct 2010 issue of YourTradingEdge magazine. All rights reserved. © Copyright 2010, Your Media Edge Pty Ltd.
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