If Lewis Hamilton Were a Trader...

Comparing the skills of Lewis Hamilton with those of successful traders.

Lewis Hamilton is now the youngest ever Formula 1 World Champion, and to prepare for his triumph in Brazil, Hamilton spent time last week lapping the Interlagos circuit in a racing simulator 6,000 miles away in Woking. His McLaren team have invested over GBP60million into the software, using technology pioneered by the military, giving him the equivalent of years of Formula 1 experience in just a few weeks. In the similar high-adrenaline high-performance world of financial trading, successful traders are copying this secret weapon using simulator software from Tradernomics, a UK-based trader education company.

McLaren test driver Pedro de la Rosa said, "In Lewis' case the simulator doesn't take away from his remarkable talent but it means he is far better prepared and there are far fewer surprises when he gets on the track." Tradernomics chairman Stephan Bisse, a former Goldman Sachs Executive Director and the founder of a successful trading systems development company with US$300m under management, says that the parallels can clearly be drawn with trading. "Whether you are on the track or the trading floor, the key to success is to be prepared. A simulator can give you the experience you need so that you are not facing totally new situations in the heat of battle. There really is no substitute for experience."

Bisse, a 20-year veteran of the financial markets, says that anyone can learn how to trade, if they are willing to master the underlying concepts and apply them with discipline. "When I lectured on Hedge Funds at the University of Oxford, part of the course involved teaching students how to trade. Most of my students became profitable by learning the rules of trading and applying them in all possible market scenarios on a simulator, giving them the confidence to do the same in the real world.

"At Tradernomics, we believe that real trading is about mastering the concepts of risk management, position sizing and trade timing to the point where the whole process is second nature." These are precisely the results the first users of the Tradernomics trading simulator have reported.

The new range of Tradernomics self-study courses include CFDs, Foreign Exchange (forex), Stocks and Futures. Courses are available now, from http://www.tradernomics.com.

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