At 35, I was bouncing between jobs and felt I was going nowhere in life. I quit my day job as an IT specialist at Tata Consultancy Services, which had a beautiful office in Bengaluru. Why? Because I wanted to take a chance on myself and do my own thing. Bengaluru was the perfect place with the entrepreneurial spirit, but I wasn’t in the mood or the financial position to launch my own startup (even though that was always a dream of mine).
What gave me a stable leg up financially was trading. I had always been interested in the financial markets, but it was only after leaving my job that I decided to take the plunge and start this journey. By the time I started trading my first stocks – the great combo of tech and consumer product stocks – I had read lots of books on the topic, including Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas, Market Wizards by Jack Schwager, and Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets by John Murphy. As you can tell from my level of preparation, I was determined to approach trading with discipline and a clear strategy. I started with a few thousand rupees at first and stuck to tech stocks, only later venturing into forex and cryptocurrencies.
As my profits became more consistent, I was able to start investing in my other dreams as well. I saved up some money and now had more time to work on my own app. It was an idea that had been brewing in my mind for years, but I had never had the resources to pursue it. Now, with my newfound lifestyle, I could finally make it happen.
As I looked back on my journey, I realized that making a big change isn’t that scary. And who knows, maybe one day, I will be able to combine my love of trading and entrepreneurship to launch another tech startup.