I interviewed Shaun Overton in Episode 16 of The Trading Lifestyle Podcast and he gave us some great tips about how to create automated trading systems. Shaun also has a YouTube channel where he interviews different trading personalities.
The interviews that I like the most are the ones with people who aren't “big name” traders. People who are killing it in trading, but don't have a late night infomercial.
One interview that caught my eye was with Greg McLeod. He used to be a public school teacher in South Central Los Angeles, one of the roughest areas in Southern California. This fantastic interview goes through the story of how trading has affected his life and gives us a peek into how public school education can be made more relevant and interesting.
I found this interview particularly refreshing because Greg gives honest answers about what it means to be a professional trader and the process he went through to get where he is now.
In This Interview
- How a weather station became a covert trading room
- Why he decided that it is better to help people from outside the classroom
- How he teaches by example
- Why he is sending his kids to Chinese language lessons
- How he has turned some traders around in as little as 30 minutes
- Why you shouldn't trade on Mondays
- Courses he has bought
- And more!
To get more notes on this interview, they are provided after the video. This interview is almost an hour long, so I obviously didn't provide notes on the entire interview. But if you want to decide if you want to invest an hour into this video, the notes can help you make that decision.
How He Got Started In Trading
He was watching TV one night and saw a commercial for commodity trading. The brokers on the program were telling viewers how they could use leverage to purchase large quantities of things that we use everyday.
So he promptly opened an account and bought some November Soybean options and the worst possible thing happened to him. He ended up tripling his account.
This was a bad thing because he did not know anything about trading, but it made him feel invincible. He didn't even look at a chart when he placed the trade and trades still had to be done over the phone.
After some lessons from the school of hard knocks, he switched from options to Forex and figured out how to trade consistently. Shaun has personally seen him double accounts when they both worked at FXCM.
How He Taught South Central Los Angeles Kids Trading
Greg found that most of his students didn't want to learn the traditional subjects like history and math because they didn't see much practical use for it. But when he showed them what he was doing in trading and that they could make money without resorting to stealing or selling drugs, a lot of them got very interested.
So he made a deal with them. He would teach them to trade, if they agreed to pay attention in the traditional subjects.
What he discovered was that they were actually excited to learn things about history, math and economics when they could apply it to trading, an endeavor where they could see the direct correlation between knowledge and potential income. They traded paper accounts and his students bought stocks like Clorox. His students were engaged, where not ditching class and not calling him names.
As you might imagine, the school soon shut the program down because the bureaucracy kicked in and didn't see the value in teaching trading. That is when he decided that it was time to leave teaching.
Teaching His Own Kids To Trade
When Greg's kids were 6, he started teaching them about trading. In order to make it understandable to young children, he simply taught them about bulls and bears. Bulls push things up with their horns and bears pull things down with their claws. This is great advice for people who want to expose their kids to trading, but don't want to make it too technical.
In the interview, he tells a funny story about how his daughter helped him realize that he was on the wrong side of the trade. He switched his position and ended up making money.
Conclusion
So if you want to check out Shaun's other interviews, you can subscribe to his YouTube channel. I would recommend that you follow him because he has some very educational and fun interviews with people like Jim Rogers.
If you want to find out more about Greg, you can visit his website at Forex Pay Days. Yes, the logo is a little cheesy, but he has some great information on his blog. Here is a screenshot of some of the trades that he shows on his website. I haven't taken any of his training, but I look forward to finding out more about him and possibly getting him on the Podcast in the near future.
I hope you enjoyed this video interview and I will post more when I find them.
To see a case study of Greg's success, go here.
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