Harley Heavens is the Community Manager at The Duomo Initiative. He began as a member of the Duomo Method course, where he established himself as an integral part of the community. This eventually led to him joining the Duomo Team in his current role. In this series of blog posts, Harley will speak about his own experiences in trading and give some insights into life at The Duomo Initiative.

Hey everyone, my name is Harley, and last weekend I was in London with the team, discussing and planning the future of The Duomo Initiative (there is plenty to look forward to!). We decided it would be a good idea for me to start documenting my journey from working in construction, to entering the world of finance. I will be covering my personal development as well as what goes on behind the scenes at The Duomo Initiative.

I am going to start by sharing a bit about my background and what I did before I started trading; everything that led me to where I am today.

My Background

I left school in 2008 and went to college to study Electrotechnical Technology for 3 years. I then went on to work in the construction industry, however due to limited work, I moved into electrical wholesale. I undertook a few roles during that time, such as: van driver, warehouse assistant and sales assistant. It was during my time here that I discovered the financial markets and all the magical things I believed they could do for me!

In early 2016, I left electrical wholesale to continue pursuing my career in construction. By this time, I had been trading in the markets for around 3 months and discovered that I didn’t really know what I was doing, or how to approach my trading. All I knew was that I needed a strategy and a plan! So, I did what most people do in this situation and naively searched through the online forums attempting to discover the holy grail. Hint: It does not exist!

Finding The Duomo Initiative

In June 2016, I discovered The Duomo Initiative and joined the full course a few months later. Once I had finished the course I jumped straight into trading and the inevitable happened… I lost a lot of trades!

I hadn’t given the time to really learn the method and gain the experience needed to understand the context, structure and psychology behind trading.

We all kid ourselves into thinking we understand these things early on in our trading career, but the truth is we actually need to experience them to truly understand what we are looking at. As well as that, learning to control our emotions obviously takes time and practice.

The Turning Point

In my first 6 months I didn’t really give any proper structure to my learning, I was just primarily drawing levels on the charts and receiving feedback on how well I drew them. However, in March 2017, I was invited to the Duomo live event in London, which was a great learning experience as I was able to cover several topics that I did not fully understand before.

From that point onwards, I built a learning plan and stopped trading for the most part. I spent months just practising individual tools and concepts, trying to understand why I would pick certain levels over others and watching how the market interacted with them, then learning how they fit into the method.

From there I spent time reconstructing my approach using the method and I eventually transitioned back to trading. Things brings me to where I am today — still learning to a certain extent, and still practising.

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