GUEST COMMENT: Why I am built to be a trader

I've written on here before, but as a reminder, I am the guy who asked the CEO to help me move out of the middle office. That was six months' ago. I'm still in the middle office, but I am determined to get out. I know that trading is my vocation.

I entered the City at a bad time. The week my career began, Lehman went down and Merrill was falling apart. At any other time, I'm convinced that I would have gone into trading. At that time, there just weren't the jobs.

My instinct is a trader's instinct. For example, when the war in Afghanistan started, I remember thinking that it could go on longer than anticipated and the debt accrued would be bad news for the dollar.

I've been trading on my account for sometime. Having blown up several fantasy accounts over the previous year, I got into my stride by October 2008, and went short gbp/usd and short jpy/usd, and closed them out in late Feb 2009 (difficult to believe I know).

I've had several lucky calls. For example, I risked 10k going long GBP/USD on the day of the May 2009 interest rate release. I felt sure the dollar was going to weaken, despite our head of FX research saying he was looking for the dollar to strengthen based on various correlations, and despite our FX flow traders being bullish on the dollar according to what there "flows" were telling them. Three weeks later it hit 1.60, and a couple weeks after that, it hit 1.67.

I've also made more than a week's wages at a time through successful gold trades - this was despite being called into inopportune meetings at work when three weeks' profits were on the line! I'm convinced I've got what it takes. Why won't someone give me a break???!