Who am I?

I am pretty much an average guy, with maybe a little more on my plate than most guys my age. I am thirty-something, and a full time husband and father. And... a full time employee, part time engineering consultant, and full time student (I am currently finishing up my PhD in engineering - ABD as of 12/14/2009!!!). I manage to find some time between the cracks for short term stock market trading.

I work hard and want to work less. When it comes to trading, I have made quite a few blunders, and expect to make quite a few more. I seem to learn trading lessons best the difficult way - it provides a sense of 'lesson ownership'; consider this blog a good faith effort to lend some of this sense of ownership to others - if you want to try and learn from my mistakes, keep reading!

My overall goal is to determine whether or not profitable short term stock market trading is a myth. And whether or not short term trading offers everything that I keep telling myself it does: plenty of money, and the freedom to work less, independent of geographical location (think Costa Rica!!). I expect that finding this out is going to be expensive and a lot of work.

I officially started this adventure in Spring of 2009. I started blogging about it on December 31, 2009.

What I am not:

I am not a writer.
I am not a financial consultant.
I do not have unlimited financial resources.
I am not particularly clever, or brilliant.
I am not (very) afraid of sounding goofy.