Being Told I Can’t Be a Trader
The summer of 2015 was an amazing time, the summer after you turn 18 is a lot of fun. My A-Levels had come and gone, my results were in and I was on way my to the University of Warwick in October! I had an opportunity to sit down with a former trader who was helping students with their CVs as part of a workshop, courtesy of SEO London. This is a story about that day... (I want to keep the trader’s identity anonymous so let’s just call him M. It’s also a few years since this day so I will do my best to reflect on what happened)
We sat down in an office in Holborn and he was looking at my CV while I gave him a bit of background about myself. The conversation had an odd start. M saw I was going to Warwick but asked what university I really wanted to go to... I applied to Cambridge, my dream university but I got rejected, not just once, but twice (pooling is funny like that). The reminder stung but I was curious how he even figured that out. Then he looked at me and asked me what eye condition I had. One sec, what? I didn’t mention anything about my eyesight, how did he know? Was M clairvoyant?
Nystagmus
So what’s up with my eyesight? I have a condition called Nystagmus. This means that somewhere between my eyes and my brain there is a fault along the path. Therefore, my brain can’t control my eye movements so they constantly move back and forth and my brain doesn’t do a good job of interpreting the information my eyes take in, so I have pretty bad eyesight. If you want to know more check out the RNIB.
“Because of my eyesight I couldn’t become a trader”
Okay, back to the story. At this point, I think M is extraordinary. He’s connecting the dots, reading me like a book and clearly a smart guy. I knew this already but now I was hanging on his every word. Then he dropped the bombshell... He told me that because of my eyesight I couldn’t become a trader and that I should look at other career paths. Hearing that crushed me and what did I do… I balled my eyes out. Yep, I was an 18-year-old man crying… not because I suffered a deep loss or even because I had a teenage heartbreak but because I got told I couldn’t do a job three years from now -what’s the big deal? It may be odd but simply put I wanted something, I thought I was good enough to attain it yet here was an obstacle I couldn’t control that was in my way. Sure, my eyesight had been an issue in the past but I just found a way to get around it but this time it looked like that wasn’t possible.
This wasn’t the first time someone had told me that I can’t do something. When I was seven years old I vividly remember a doctor told me I won’t be able to drive, ride a bike or even become a surgeon. You need balance, good reaction times and good eyesight and I had none of that. But given a couple of years and a lot of help I did eventually learn how to ride a bike. I’m not doing laps around the Velodrome but hey I can ride a bike without falling off, I think that’s a win. Driving I knew was more difficult so that was off the table early on. But since I was a child I remember saying to anyone who asked me about driving that I’ll get a chauffeur or a self-driving car (come on Tesla!) when I grow up. It sounds arrogant to say something like when you’re young but I knew what I wanted and was focused on finding a way to get it.
“If they can find a way to make it happen then why can’t I?”
Trading requires similar attributes, you have a lot of information coming at you and need to react quickly and accurately so clearly that was going to be a challenge for me. After I met with M I felt pretty low and thought my career ambitions were dead in the water. When I arrived back home I took to Google and eventually I went down one rabbit hole to discover Ashish Goyal and Vishal Agarwal - both of whom were blind traders and by all accounts were crushing it. So here I had two examples of individuals who’s eyesight was significantly worse than my own and they both were successful traders. If they can find a way to make it happen then why can’t I? After reading about them, I was done feeling sorry for myself, yes the odds aren’t in my favour but if I really wanted to pursue a career in trading then I should back myself to compete with the best and find a way to make it work.
If you read my previous post, you know I did just that. When I found out I received the job offer during my internship, I told the MD who hired me about my eyesight because I didn’t know how things would work in practice. His reaction was brilliant - he wasn’t fazed by it whatsoever. He said as long as I was good enough to be here he’ll do whatever it takes to make things work. That gave me a lot of confidence. Today, I have a manager who will go to war for me to make sure I get everything I need to succeed and has my back. It may mean I have an odd desk setup with half a dozen monitors drilled into my desk that are insanely close to my face, with everything magnified but I don’t care -It means I get to trade and I love every bit of it.
I have no resentment to M, he just told me what he thought - there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you are set on doing something that goes against conventional wisdom and you want it that badly, you just have to go for it - because if someone says you can’t do something, you just have to accept the challenge.