Nenad and Chris Share their Internal Motivations for Trading and Teaching

Dear traders,

after analysing the financial markets for more than a decade, some traders wonder whether Nenad and myself (Chris) still actually enjoy trading. For us, the answer is a clear yes.

Charting, technical analysis (TA), and trading is not only our business, it’s a hobby and passion as well and we love it. We enjoy the “work” itself and are happy with the freedom it offers to us.

Does trading need to be a passion for everyone? No, although it does help if you like trading for the sake of trading and not just only for the money. Your skills tend to improve much quicker if there is (partly) an internal goal (like self development, freedom) rather than just an external goal (like profits).

Trading is Excitement

Nenad and I (Chris) hope that you not only learn a viable, consistent, and long-term way to trade via our website www.EliteCurrenSea.com but that you carry the same enthusiasm as we do for trading, analysis and charting. Nothing beats the excitement of opening up the charts in the morning and drawing trend lines, waves, Fibonacci levels followed by an analysis of moving averages, key levels, chart patterns, and Fractals. Once you finish this article about trading, we believe that you will see trading in the same positive light as we do. (When we speak about trading, we actually refer to all the various bits and pieces that belong to it, like analysing, entering, managing setups, exiting, evaluations, learning from feedback, back testing, forward testing, paper trading and testing, strategy creation)

Trading offers a long list of benefits, motivations and goals. It offers us and other traders freedom away from a boring job, mindless company, stupid boss, and fake office environment. It also allows us to live in the place of our choice, have the freedom to travel, and the ability to connect to like minded people. As you can see, trading offers freedom and that’s why our motto reflects this core value:

Freedom Through Trading.

By teaching other traders about the art and science behind analysing and trading the Forex and financial markets, we help empower people to setup a path to (more) financial freedom. Our vision is that people should have a larger stake (influence) in their own life path, development, and goals. Too often, people seem to fail in shaping their destiny.

Trading offers a path for self fulfillment, inner peace, more financial means, more financial freedom, and freedom in general. We want to help traders with their journey, just as our mentors helped guide us when we started trading.

A few people look down at our careers, because they dislike the financial markets or think of them as evil. Some people might not think that negatively but do believe that trading lacks the quality of “building” or creating something of value. The first argument is not true. The second is a fair criticism but most modern day jobs seem to lack that quality too.

Is Trading a Bad Activity?

Let’s review the first one about the “evil” markets. The markets are not bad because they in fact allow people to trade, which in turn creates wealth and improves living standards. Without markets, world wide wealth would plummet and so would many other social-economic factors. Of course, markets depend on supply and demand so if there is a future world where humans can create abundant supply, then the function of the markets might eventually change or seize to exist in the future. For the time-being, however, they serve an useful purpose.

Secondly, let’s address the criticism of creating value. It’s a fair point and trading by itself does not create value. Our response is two-fold.

First, this is one of the main reasons why we do focus on coaching as well, because we are creating better traders. We are building a website where traders can obtain analysis, information, tools for free and paid, which is creating value for the trading community. Critics might respond by indicating that the society itself does benefit. This leads us to our second point.

Second, we need to keep in mind that most humans do not occupy jobs where lots of value is created. For instance, accountants are known for their creativity but most of it is value on paper. People working at a big cooperation might seem like they contribute to creating a product but they are just doing one small thing of a super large process. Are they really creating anything?

Plus, there there many potential problems that arise with working for big companies. For instance, is this really a product that society needs or is it just a marketing hype? For instance, in California a juice mixer (Juicero) built a redundant product, because iIt turned out that the juice package was easier to squeeze by hand then by the machine. The machine was meaningless and had no real function. The next problem is that many companies have a questionable track record. Does the company live up to social, ecological, environmental, safety, the rule of law, economic standards that provide value to all stakeholders, which include employees, suppliers, consumers, neighbors, the society, trading partners, animals and nature – not only share and stock holders? In fact, some large multinational companies use their position of power and wealth to bribe and influence politics and politicians. Company management is forced to maximize dividend returns rather than develop a fair and balanced set of policies in relationship to all stakeholders including employees, the community, animals, nature, environment, plants, atmosphere etc. Some of the corporations are known for their destruction of people’s livelihoods, environment and the earth’s climate, for their promotion of worse wage inequality, for their infringement on our privacy, for misusing our data, and for their support of promote policies that work against an overwhelming majority (such as keeping money in politics and tackling corruption). Of course, not all companies are to blame, not all do equal damage, and some companies have a worse record in some areas and better in other areas.

It is a mixed bag but this does beg the question, is it really better to work for a for-profit company when compared to trading? In our view, no.

Of course, there are many people working for non-profit organisations and governmental agencies and bodies and they deserve credit for that. But on the other hand, they get a stable and long-term commitment in return for their work (in the end it helps them too). Plus nonprofits and governments are not always necessarily the most efficient in how they spend community and charity money. A few people do admirable work for admirable goals and they deserve credit for that. But for 99% of the jobs, there are some buts and ifs. It’s difficult to find an occupation or job which has a perfect scorecard and shows no weaknesses at all.

Trading independently and helping other traders succeed in trading is in our view a good or at least neutral thing, not a bad thing. That said, this statement does depend on what instrument a trader decides to trade. Trading the Forex market is a good or neutral market in our eyes because the 100 EUR sold and the 100 USD bought will not impact the market. Even 100,000 EUR or a million is a drop in the ocean. The Forex market is huge. That said, trading certain commodities might be harmful if it increases volatility and price movements, which in turn could hurt consumers and producers. Trading currencies and cryptocurrencies are generally speaking neutral financial instruments. Trading commodities like food and some other types too, could have a less desirable ethical angle to it (as explained above). The same holds true for trading or holding shares of companies that have a bad reputation with regard to the treatment of stakeholders that are not shareholders.

Learn How Trading Offers Freedom

We discussed the negative side about trading, but there are there are also strong benefits of trading. The main advantages are connected to the personal happiness of the individual and the family of the individual, which also indirectly add up to the happiness of an entire country. It offers a path for people to control their own life and aim for or improve their financial freedom. This in turn allows people to feel fulfilled and live happy lives because ultimately we want to feel safe, secure, in control, and enjoy inner development without infringing on other people’s desires. Traders are not building a better society like some non-profit employees do, but they are working on a better future for themselves. And your own personal happiness is important too (if it’s legal and does not infringe on the freedom of others). Plus, if you reach financial abundance, you can always work on building and helping a better society with the surplus profits earned via trading.

The fact is that the world offers too little challenging jobs and occupations. Many of the jobs are repetitive and provide little stimulation. Personally I (Chris) almost died of boredom when I was working in the office for a big multinational cooperation. Trading was a welcome relief and gave me hope that I could escape. Of course in all honesty I was still better off than most of the world, as I had access to safe drinking water, health care, food, shelter, heating, and many other basic and luxury items. That said, a boring job can be a tremendous weight on one’s shoulders and have a very negative impact on the psychology and mood. Ultimately we believe that many people have the desire to do something engaging, fulfilling, worthwhile, inspiring, creative, valuable, fun, and challenging (at the right pace).

We think that one day in the future, technology could free humans from routine and boring occupations and allow them to do more liberating and inspiring things. Not everyone has to be a painter or writer. Some might choose a path of professional gamer (it already exists today) or feel to desire to dance all day. Would this lead us to chaos? Often throughout history there was unjustified fear that too much free time for the masses would not end up well. Long working hours were supposedly needed to keep the working class under control. The 20th and 21st centuries prove this theory as invalid.

In fact, it’s the opposite. First of all, with more free time on our hand, people will be able to do activities they enjoy. Secondly, more people (not all but more) will be able to engage in a range of important topics in society, health care, local politics, national politics, accountability of leaders, climate, environment, etc. Some critics might counter argue that the free time will only be spent on video games, but we believe that there are enough bright people that will seek intellectual challenges in a wide range of areas from politics to culture, from economics to management even if this occupation is not connected to their survival and their ability to cover basic costs connected to food, shelter, safety and care. Obviously it will take decades, if not more, before people will have more freedom in their occupational choice. At this moment, it is a luxury that not many enjoy but Nenad and are one of those that do. We want to help others achieve the same.

Discussing Our Goals (for Nenad and Chris)

Do keep in mind that Nenad and I worked hard to build, harness and improve our trading skills. A key factor is that your will to succeed must be strong and persistent, especially if you want to make a living from your hobby or reach any other long-term life goal. The will power needed to keep holding on to a “normal job” is much lower.

Nenad and I also decided that we didn’t want to work for big banks or big hedge funds which trade with millions or billions of trading capital and where bonuses can go through the roof. We earn much less due to that, but we prefer to trade with our own money and opt to live a life of freedom and independence. We are not responsible to investors, shareholders, bosses, or hedge fund managers, only to ourselves, our community, our followers and fellow traders. We pursue goals that benefit all of us, and not only a handful of hedge fund owners or investors. We have the freedom to work from home, to travel, to take a break, to trade from the work, to work from the terrace. We are our own boss. This is our most valuable goal.

This is why when you visit our website www.EliteCurrenSea.com you will see two serious and fun guys doing their best to show their best analysis. No fancy cars, no luxurious accessories or helicopter rides. Simply professional, first class analysis done by independent, freedom loving professionnels.

Don’t believe our word for it, feel free to check the feedback on Forex Peace Army about Nenad, Chris and Elite CurrenSea (ECS). There you can see that we have a 5.0 star rating (out of 5 / 5 being the best) after 30 reviews (as of August 2018). You can also check the feedback on our Twitter pages (Nenad, Chris, ECS).

Sometimes traders ask us why do we teach trading if we can trade with and for millions? The answer is simple.

First of all, we want everyone to succeed in their goals and want everyone to enjoy more freedom. It also allows us to create value that goes beyond Nenad or myself. We already mentioned both points a few times in the opening piece. But we also enjoy working with other traders in specific and the trading community in general. It helps become better traders too. You can try it yourself. Try to help someone out who has less experience than you. You will see that it provides rewarding experience.

Second of all, we want to work in an environment of independence together with other like minded individuals, not for big banks and hedge funds. We prefer independence over large sums of capital. That said, the future will only tell how long we will continue with teaching. Maybe one day, some day, we will decide to stop and partly retire. Enjoying the good life with some wine and sun. But for the next years in any case, we are here to stay.

Although for some of you this might sound liberating and/or inspiring in some ways, unfortunately analysing and trading is not that simple. Why?

Firstly, our performance is measured on a daily basis so there is constant pressure to perform. Secondly, the feedback from the market can be tough when things go rough… Be ready to lose money because losses are unavoidable. Thirdly, succeeding in any business requires mental discipline. Trading is no different in this regard.

The best advice we can give you is not to get discouraged and to be prepared for multiple ups and downs. Keep in mind that patience and persistence are vital characteristics of every successful person, including traders.

We hope that you become the trader of your dreams. Our main wish is that you can use the material from our website to benefit both your own trading and life goals.

FTT – Freedom Through Trading.
Nenad and Chris