INTERVIEW
Direction, Discipline, Risk, And Leverage
Managing Money & Risk: Robert Deel
by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan
As the founder and Ceo of Tradingschool.com, Robert Deel, who is also a trading strategist, author, and widely recognized trading expert, has trained individuals and professional traders from around the world on the subjects of trading psychology, technical analysis, and tactical trading.One of Deel's training techniques involves his DDRL (direction, discipline, risk, and leverage) equation, which helps traders examine their personal trading abilities and methodologies. The equation pinpoints their individual problem areas in selection, timing, risk, or money management, and it can help them ascertain how much leverage they should use.
Deel, who practiced dentistry early in his professional life, is also a former portfolio manager who once managed millions and acted as the trading strategist and advisor for a firm in California. He appears regularly on television and radio, and is the author of Trading The Plan: Build Wealth, Manage Money, And Control Risk, as well as The Strategic Electronic Day Trader. What can he tell us about risk and money management? STOCKS& COMMODITIES Editor Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan called him on July 30, 2003, to find out.
How did you get started trading?
I was originally in dentistry, and back in the early 1980s I was looking for a career change. I had always been pretty good at investments in general, but they were typically longer-term, so it was just dumb luck that I made money, as far as I was concerned. I'm an avid scuba diver, and I took a scuba-diving trip to the Cayman Islands. There, I met a portfolio manager from the Bank of Switzerland. He basically said, "Come down to the bank and I'll show you some things." So I went, and he laid out all these stocks across this big table and -- I'll never forget this as long as I live -- he said, "We are buying America."
So that's where you got your start? When was that?
That was in late 1981 or 1982, and yes, that's when I got into the market. I decided it was interesting. It was something I could do from just about anywhere, it didn't have workers' compensation or high overhead to deal with, and it didn't have a lot of these other variables I had grown to dislike so much. So I studied, I got every license relevant, I took courses from the International Association of Financial Planners. Then I found out that none of that taught me how to trade.
What did teach you?
In the office I ended up working in, there were six guys who were basically ostracized because they were technicians: "Oh, those technicians." But they were the only people who were making money!
Oh, those money-making technicians.
I wanted to find out what they knew. They taught me, and then they introduced
me to a man who was absolutely a genius, not only in trading but electronically.
He was using multiple monitor technologies and things that we're using
now, but this was back in the days of DOS.
...Continued in the October 2003 issue of Technical Analysis of STOCKS & COMMODITIES
Excerpted from an article originally published in the October 2003 issue of Technical Analysis of STOCKS & COMMODITIES magazine. All rights reserved. © Copyright 2003, Technical Analysis, Inc.
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