In the beginning

Hi, I'm DJ - a 30 year old male. Although I work in the City most weeks and walk past the Gherkin, Canary Wharf and other financial places - my day job has nothing to do with the financial markets - I work in IT.

Back in March I decided I needed to learn to play the stockmarket - for three reasons:

• With the Bank of England lowering base interest rates to a historical low - my savings were doing literally nothing. I usually could rely on a considerable amount in interest annually through interest... but I could see this income stream drying up.
• I was inspired by a BBC two TV program "Million Dollar Traders" - shown in January 2009 in the UK. 8 Ordinary people made a decent effort at becoming traders in this show. The link above is a blog about the show.
  
• I had the inclination that share prices were at an all time-low in March, and it was therefore time to buy.

So in early March, I started a trading account with http://www.iii.co.uk, with the aim being to become a master trader. I started with a massive 500 pound "starter" fund.

I brought some barclays shares - as I thought they were artifically low given the fact they seemed more stable than Lloyds, HBOS and the like. Despite rumours of government intervention I thought - "hang on these middle eastern guys brought loads of shares only months ago... I think they'd have done good due diligence".

This was the end of my first day trading.