Aren't there enough trading blogs?

Long have I had the urge to try myself up against the best - to eventually, with time, become one of them. It was the spring of 2008, and I had just started watching the Norwegian stock market. It was trading not so far from ATH, and after a pullback everyone was overly bullish. Having only one week's experience, I decided to jump in - with everything I had. I have always liked opportunities, so for me the bigger blue-chip companies were not interesting - they were done growing. What instead cought my eye was a small company called Questerre Energy Company - QEC. Of course, this was a trader's favourite - having over tripled in three months. When I bought it it was about 5% off the top, trading at about 20NOK, so the bottom was pretty far off. For me this was not something I worried about, the market could only trend higher. And the market "could only trend higher" for about a year. I had over that 10 month period lost over 40%, trying to buy the dips. I was trading quite often, and was doing OK - the market fell almost the double. QEC ended up at around 5NOK, and I was still buying. This worked well - I sold at 9,20 around June 2009, expecting a drop in the market - P3, so I could buy back cheaper later. This is when I discovered the economic situation of the world - after a year of crashes and heavy losses! Only NOW I turned bearish.

My bearishness was rewarded in the start of July, only to be irradicated by the end of July. This bearishness took form in different ETFs. For me I had long outgrown the Norwegian ETFs, where the liquidity was too low, and anyone with 100k $ was a market maker - making the retail trader easy bait for the banks. They would move, sometimes, detached from the market they were supposed to move according to! I found the American stock market much better in terms of technical analysis working, and ETFs actually being "predictable" - plus the leverage was better! I was severly hurt money-wise until in september when I started playing both sides of the market - trying to be a bear when needed, and bull when that was appropriate. Of course my main bias was still bearish, as the economy is crap, so would still get into bullish positions, only to take a small profit (2-3%) before selling, only to watch it rip 10-15% up. Those are the actions of a bleeding bear.

Over new year my approach changed. I started keeping better account of my trades, and for January and February I am for the moment up 20% on my account. If I would have ridden the profits on my good trades, I would be up well over 40. But it's all a learning process, and I intend to learn from and with the best.

The blogs I am reading give me an indication of what to look out for, but only give me input to my own analysis, which of course is the base of my trading. I am using Think-or-swim trading software and am reading different blogs - I started out reading xtrenders.com, but am now most often seen at EvilSpeculators or at the Trading to win blog.

Where am I now? Well, I try to trade for a living, along with doing my studies, medicine. My ultimate goal is to be financially free. But for the moment I mostly want to trade the best I can - cutting my losses quickly, and riding the momentum of profits as far as possible. By publishing my ideas I intend to remember what I did wrong, and what I did right. I am tired of learning from luck and forgetting the real lessons.