A Trader's Journey: Steven DUX

Benzinga's "A Trader's Journey" features a trade who shares their life experiences and how it molded their career. This show airs weekly on Sundays at 11 a.m. ET on the Benzinga YouTube page.

Steven started trading when he was 19 years old. At first, he wasn’t sure how much money he would need nor did he know what kind of time commitment it would take to learn the ropes.

He started with $500 and used that for the first two months. He was studying for 10 hours a day and was still practicing engineering during this time. This extreme workload ended up leading to a stomach ulcer.

He was able to take lessons from his engineering background and apply them to his study habits. For example, he was able to focus on the parts of the lesson or educational material that were concentrated content. He learned early on to block out what he didn't need, so he could use his time in the most effective way possible. He applied this same method to his trading education. He partnered this with lessons he learned from video gaming, of all places. His affinity for strategy games correctly taught him that there is no foolproof, or 100% sure way to win.

“Someone will always try to counter you so you have to adapt to what [the opponent] is doing,” he recalls. This lesson led to the realization that there is no perfect edge in the market.

The top two things that separate Dux from other traders are 1) Memory charting patterns and 2) Advanced statistics and analytics. He would go so far as to print out charts that had patterns or lessons he could learn and tape these to his walls. He would also dig very deep in statistics. For example, instead of just knowing or sorting stocks by market cap, he would track how stocks with certain market caps traded, and tailored his trades to accommodate that.

Finding your winning edge helps you stick to your plan and remain consistent, Dux says. Tracking the frequency of your edge helps determine how much you should be trading, and stops you from over-trading. Eliminating your emotions stops you from revenge trading, or trying to make your losses back by taking more risks. This leads to reduced mistakes

You can find Steven on Twitter @Steven1_994. Steven also runs his own chat room and blog.