Interview With Michael Hodges – 5 Years In The Making
ThatSucks.com (former BinaryOptionsThatSuck.com) celebrates 5 years in the making with 5 interviews you must read!
Q: So, you’ve been with us for almost 5 years now and you’ve been an important part of BOTS’ “rise to fame”. Tell us about your personal experience of being part of this project.
A: It was really a matter of divine serendipity. I was trying to get a career going as an online writer, I had already chosen financial as a focus because I had heard it was the best paying category on the internet and since it was already my hobby so why not, you know? Early in my hunt for work I stumbled upon ThatSucks.com (former BinaryOptionsThatSuck.com). I had heard about binary options before but really didn’t know much about them, I wanted to write about trading and the website wanted to pay me so it worked it out well. Over the years I have fallen in love with binary and learned a lot about trading. I can only hope that I have had half as much impact on the community as the community has had on me.
Q: You’ve been on the BOTS Forum since its very inception. Give us your opinion on its evolution.
A: The forum was just one of those natural evolutions of a website to me until we started building it. Just getting people to show up, much less post anything, was the first challenge and must say we’ve got quite a crew of traders using it now. I like the way it’s gone, we’ve slowly filtered out the bad or meaningless posts, categorized threads into a semblance of order and have built a pretty decent reference list for discussion rooms, user generated content and our articles. I’m impressed, Martin has done a good job leading us to the final project, which I don’t think we’ve even seen yet :-) .
Q: Being on the news team in the binary options business can be a tedious job, the news being dominated by scams, warnings and fraud. What keeps you going in this never ending battle, where every day a new warning is getting posted?
A: Honestly, it’s not as bad as all that. Sure, there are a lot of warnings and that is the bulk of the news but there is more to it than that. The industry is evolving and the regulators are shaping it. They know they can’t eradicate off-shore brokers operating in the nether world of the Internet but they do know they can embrace a regulated version that is safe and fun for the masses. The number one theme among all warnings is not that binary options trading is bad, it’s that unregulated brokers can’t operated without registering and everyone should watch out for scams. Binary options trading is totally cool in most places.
Q: How did you first come in contact with trading?
A: I first became interested in stock prices when a friend I worked with lost his ass on a stock called Redhat during the tech bubble. Later, October 5th 2005 to be exact, I went to a seminar on how to buy stocks for yourself and became enthralled. I knew what I wanted to do and from that point on the market and trading has dominated my life.
Q: Do you see any differences between the trading world/industry now as opposed to when you started trading?
A: Sure, but I think a lot of it is my own perspective. What I mean is, I’m not sure how much of the trading world has changed so much as how I see it has changed, know what I mean? In any event, the Internet has changed a lot, more markets are open with more traders from more places. And it has allowed binary options to flourish as well. What I see, and this is everywhere in every kind of assets, is the push to have people trade, no one ever talks about investing anymore and that I think is a big problem.
Q: Describe your trading style
A: That’s hard to say really. I use a mix of fundamental and technical to swing trade the major indices, commodities and forex pairs. I like the big swings, not just the little intraday moves, although I have been doing more and more shorter term intraday trading recently. All you day traders are wearing on me. One thing I’ve been having a lot of fun and success with is the NADEX short term 20 minute options.
Q: Do you believe that trading is a sure way to a steady income? Can someone live exclusively from trading?
A: Sure but I think you have to have a big account and be very active to do so. The best is to let trading enhance your life, take the need to have to work hard or a lot out of the equation. Build up a nice nest egg and then retire, and keep on trading.
Q: You obviously write for BOTS and trade. How do you split your time between these two activities? Tell us a bit about a regular working day in your life.
A: It’s pretty simple. I write and trade from the same desk, using the same TV and news feeds so when I see a signal I like, or an opportunity that can’t be missed I can take it. Sometimes I’ll take a little session to have a few trades but usually I’m doing longer term weekly trades so only trade once or twice a week.
Q: Why don’t you simply trade and forget about writing? I mean, why bother with writing if you are a trader?
A: That would be bad. My trading would suffer. Writing, learning, keeping up with the market is how I became successful. I will never give that up.
Q: I know this might sound like a job interview question, but I have to ask: where do you see BOTS in another 5 years from now?
A: That’s a big question. ThatSucks.com (former BinaryOptionsThatSuck.com) could easily become a top Internet site for trading. There is so much content, and we’re always working to improve it, I can’t help but wonder when we will start impacting sites like Investopedia. When it comes to Communitraders, oh man. That could easily become the nexus for all binary trading on the Internet. Traders come to talk, share and learn. Brokers interacting with traders, linking accounts to all types of brokers not just Stockpair, maybe letting traders sell signal subscriptions.
Q: And where do you see binary options in 5 years from now?
A: That’s hard to say. I want to say that it will still be around but there are so many scam brokers and the shady marketers just wont stop so I am a little concerned about the future. The good news is that there are good brokers, and regulation, and companies operating in good faith. Hopefully the bad apples wont spoil the barrel. Also, there will always be NADEX so if the European binary options market collapses those traders can always turn there.
More 5 Years in the Making Interviews: