Dear Trader,

In 2007, after having sold my company – a specialized online job board – I paid my taxes (43% Danish tax!) and as the inflation was higher than interest rates, I decided to invest a large part of the post-tax proceeds from the sale so I wouldn’t loose money by having money.

Back then I didn’t know much about the financial markets. So I chose to invest in a mutual fund that had done very well during the latest market downturn from 2000 to 2003 and even had 20 years of great returns before that.

The funds’ strategy was to invest 1/3 in stocks and 2/3 in bonds using an asset allocation model developed by a Nobel Prize winner. They had a risk goal of losing a maximum of 15% in any 3 years and their shares traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange. I felt comfortable with my investment.

One year later, during the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, I was enjoying a 3-month trip with my family in New Zealand and had decided not to bring my laptop and not to look at my investments while away to enjoy the trip fully.

Unfortunately, this is when the fund managers began doing everything wrong and they ended up losing 80% (!) by the time we got home from New Zealand. I immediately sold my shares in the fund and decided it was time to learn how to trade and win back what was lost myself.

As most other traders will recognize, becoming profitable in trading required much more time than I expected. The journey often starts by reading dozens of books and newsletters and trying different strategies. As time passes, most people either quit as unprofitable (or broke!) or begin developing their own methods and strategies in addition to cutting down on external influence.

I began doing the latter and became a full-time trader. I learned that risk and money management as well as planning, documenting, and learning from my trades was essential for my continuous learning and thereby increased profitability.

I went looking for an online tool that could accommodate all my requirements but found none. Once again, as when I started the company that I sold, I had a need that current products in the market could not fulfill. So, in 2011, I decided to build TradeBench. We’ve been online since and to this day we are constantly improving it for our users.

I sincerely hope that you will enjoy using the online trading journal and trade planning tools of TradeBench and I am confident that you will become more profitable if you do so. Feel free to sign up here. It’s cost free.

Best wishes,

Founder & CEO, TradeBench