Traders willing to share winning ways

Most of us can only dream of finding an income replacement that would allow us to give up the day job.

But 31-year-old Australian Travis McKenzie and his 30-year-old boss New Zealander Nick McDonald have made it a reality by learning how to trade in the financial markets on the internet and now they are teaching others.

McKenzie was in his fourth year of studying to be a lawyer when he decided he wanted to move into trading.

"I was in a news agency looking at a Forbes Rich List and realised there weren't any lawyers on it."

McKenzie said he realised most on the list were involved with property, business or the financial markets.

"The cost of getting into property or business was quite high so I decided to focus on the financial markets."

While holding down a day job as a lawyer McKenzie began to try out trading.

He lost a lot of money to begin with.

"I went through a five-year period where I lost money constantly."

McKenzie persevered and began searching out mentors to teach him about how to trade.

He met McDonald at a trading session in London and the pair became friends.

McKenzie then headed to Canada to pursue his love of snowboarding while McDonald set up Trade with Precision in 2007.

It wasn't until recently when both McDonald and McKenzie were back on this side of the world that they got together again.

McDonald is running the business from Auckland, while McKenzie works out of Perth. The company still has its offices and administration in London.

McKenzie says the reason he was keen to join his friend in teaching others to trade was because of the difficulties he had when starting out.

He read a lot but says: "It was like knowing all the ingredients that go into a chocolate cake but not having the recipe."

McKenzie says their training focuses on reading trend charts.

"You don't need to know what exchange rates are doing." He focuses on the technical side, having a strategy and a set of rules to follow.

By following these he says his calls are right about 70 per cent of the time.

Winning more than losing and taking small bets is the way to get ahead, he says, as well as practice.

He looks out for either a downwards or upwards trend and then follows it.

McKenzie says it will depend on the individual as to whether they can make money from it.

"Most people who do it don't want to make millions, just enough to make money on the side."

So far they have trained about 800 people in New Zealand but their main markets for training are the United States and Britain.

TRADING TIPS

* Have a strategy.
* Follow the market trend.
* Score the trades out of 10.
* Be patient - wait for all the right factors to be set up.
* Don't risk too much money at once.
* If the trends aren't there don't trade.