Why This Engineer Left His Career to Trade Futures: George’s Trading Journey with IDTA
Interview with IDTA Member George R
Ever wondered what it takes to go from corporate executive to consistently profitable day trader? In this interview, we sit down with George R—an engineer, former CIO, and long-time IDTA student—who shares his journey into futures trading, the lessons he’s learned over the past 11+ years, and how trading has transformed his life.
Highlights in this video:
- George’s background in engineering, and transition to trading
- His experience with shares & Forex (early wins, hard lessons)
- Why he chose Futures over more traditional markets
- Why George chose IDTA, and the power of a trading community
- George’s trading style & strategy
- The $20,000 trade taken… at a soccer game!
- The role of mindset in trading success
Transcript:
Dani: Hey, George, how are you going?
George: Good, and yourself?
Dani: Good. Thank you for joining me today for this chat. So I think we’ll just start with a brief introduction, who you are, where you’re from.
George: Okay, I guess my name is George Reel, for the people that don’t know me. I am an engineer by trade, I guess, and been, I guess, a prior CIO of a government agency at one stage. From that, I sort of, about 25 years ago, we started our own small business in the health industry and sort of been running that ever since in Sydney CBD. So yeah, that’s pretty much who I am.
I guess from a financial point of view or marketing and trading point of view, I guess I’ve been trading the market since I left uni. I had some good wins and bad wins and also did a little bit of forex trading before I came across to IDTA Futures Trading.
Dani: So what initially got you interested in futures having come from that background of shares and forex?
George: Well, I was doing well with shares over the recessions and invested a lot of money on the dips and getting almost like seven figures in one year, but I found that all my capital was being used and even though I was making money, I guess I didn’t have as much income as I wanted to. Like I was getting capital gains as well as obviously dividend payments and some decent amount of money coming through.
That’s what looking for a way to more, move with the market rather than being a long-term investor or trader stage so being able to trade in both directions was it, so I was pretty much trading only long um and doing well at it um but I thought hey There’s possibly a better way, a quicker way to make more money. So I decided to look at other income opportunities. And after doing a brief course on Forex and getting some sort of wins and losses, I came across the Futures Avenue where I saw that as a potential for a future source of income.
Dani: Awesome. So why IDTA then? Why did you choose us to do this?
George: Well, I was looking, like for me, I guess education is one of the most important things that I look at is how do I educate myself and try not to reduce any losses and any other pitfalls with the people that I think have gone past that event. So I always look for people who has obviously been teaching that style of teaching for maybe a decade or so. And then, yeah, that gives me opportunity now to get into it much quicker without making the same mistakes as I would have by doing it by myself.
Dani: So you started with us quite a while ago, right? And you’re still here all these years.
George: Yeah. It’s I think over a decade now, probably about 11 plus years. So yeah.
Dani: That’s just a lot of loyalty. There’s a lot, there’s not too many businesses that can say they’ve still got people from, you know, over a decade ago, still with them. And, know which it’s a huge community actually it’s a wonderful community and what do you have to say about that kind of aspect of it.
George: I just love, I guess the community like they’re an inspiration to be around um I think they’re uh they’ve got their own dreams and ways to achieve things and uh yeah just the education you get from them and you know, they develop their own way of doing things, which you might say, okay, I’m doing this my way, but is there a better way I can learn? And the community gives me that opportunity to look at those avenues and sort of say, okay, I’m getting these results. How can I improve those results? And generally there are quite a few smart people in the community that, you know, gives you future options to do things.
Dani: And in terms of your style of trading, I just love what you do. You’re all about working smarter, not harder. And you look for those trades where you can really maximize the profit as opposed to smaller trades. You’ve got quite an amazing risk to reward ratio. I’d love you to describe sort of your average trade and when you trade and how you trade it, if you don’t mind.
George: Okay, so I guess it’s developed over the years, but I was always looking at the longer term timeframes from 15 minutes to one hour to four hours. And I was always looking at these trades and I was getting some beautiful trades where they’re going for about four hours or longer, or sometimes for an hour. And I was wondering, how do I get onto those trades? So I almost decided to look at almost like the forest away from the trees and look at trying to get rid of all the noise and see what the market is telling me. Is there any resistance to support lines at a certain level that it might hit at the end of the day or start of the day? Is the market possibly going to go up or down during this day?
So it’s trying to get those levels correct. And then from there, yeah, looking at the bigger charts and 15 minutes, especially 15 minutes, gives you an opportunity to get into a trade. And typically, my trade might go anywhere from, say, 30 minutes up to about six to seven hours, for example. Wow. Do you ever hold overnight or are you all out before the close of the day? Now, I always close my trades before the new day.
Dani: So a true day trader then?
George: Yeah, well, that’s what Futures has given me the option to be able to do that. Unlike my other sort of trading shares where I might get more for swing trading, for example. More with the Futures, it’s a little bit more of taking the swings, but on the day charts.
Dani: Yeah. Do you mind sharing your biggest trade?
George: Maybe not my biggest, but how about my first?
Dani: All right, let’s go with your first.
George: Okay. All right, so about 10 years ago, I guess I started trading with IDTA. Did about seven months of SIM trading until I knew the strategies and got used to the software. Ended up getting some good results. So I decided to trade, and I think it was in January 2015, so about 10 years ago. As IDTA say, you can trade almost anywhere in the world. So I took that literally.
Dani: Where were you when you were trading this first trade?
George: I was probably with about 50,000 other people or more at a soccer game.
Dani: At a soccer game. I love that.
George: Yeah, it was Iran versus Iraq.
Dani: We also teach be in the zone when you trade, George.
George: Yeah, that’s fine. In between half time, there was plenty of time to trade.
Dani: Perfect time to trade. I love that. Anywhere, anytime. That’s it.
George: That’s it. So I took my first live trade for contracts with FDAX. That went for about 50 minutes by the time I closed the trade. Ended up being about 20,000 USD.
Dani: Oh, my goodness. What a great game.
George: Yeah, it’s like completely changed my way of thinking about trade. Put it that way.
Dani: That’s amazing. Well, you are one of our biggest traders in terms of consistency and profit, and you are so inspiring the community. What would you say to anyone that’s on the fence who would like to join IDTA?
George: I think IDTA, it’s not so much about trading sometimes as I see about, it’s more about self-development. I think trading is an 80% mindset game, a psychology game, maybe 10% to 20% rules-based. So if you want to find out more about yourself, what you’re good at and what you need to get better at, I think you need to take, you know, someone like IDTA and enrol and go through the course.
You’ll learn a lot more about yourself and you’ll, yeah, you’ll, what changes can make your life to benefit your life in the future. And that’s what I’ve done. And you’ve done it well.
Dani: Thank you so much for joining me today. And I wish you all the best, George. Thank you.
George: Thank you, Dani.