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This is a sponsored post by TradeStation, written by Travis McGhee.
Anyone who has served in the military knows what it means to prepare for a mission and implement a plan to achieve a desired objective. They also know that discipline is the key to accomplishing that mission.
In many ways, trading is the same. Those who can develop a solid plan and pursue that plan with discipline also have the ability to develop a successful investing strategy.
That may be why trading has become a growing part of U.S. military culture.
Increasingly, active military and veterans are showing strong interest in online trading. This was certainly true for me when I was first exposed to the power of online trading during the summer of 2001 on the USS Austin LPD4, docked in Norfolk, VA.
With a tremendous amount of downtime on my hands, I quickly found myself using it to explore the financial markets. Other guys on the ship had been trading the boom and bust of the dot.com bubble, so it was not hard to fall into the conversation in such tight quarters.
Today, with the Internet allowing 24/7 access to financial markets around the world – and on all kinds of devices – many active-duty military personnel are doing what I did. This trend only makes sense: their training and experience, especially with removing emotion from decision-making and reducing risk, equip them well to be traders. Two things that pose serious risk to investors are the same things that create risk on the battlefield: lack of discipline and the inability to control emotion.
At TradeStation, we have made it our mission to help active military and veterans access the financial markets with confidence, at as low a cost as possible.
Under our new TradeStation Salutes program, we are offering active-duty service members commission-free trading, free access to real-time market data and waiving all inactivity fees. For veterans, we are waiving inactivity fees and offering TradeStation’s lowest per-trade commission rate: $4.99 per trade, plus 30 cents per contract. In addition, we are providing them with a powerful educational program that is tailored to their background and experience. This program starts at the beginning, with financial and trading basics, and leads them step-by-step as far as they want to go.
TradeStation’s rules-based strategic approach dovetails perfectly with the lessons that are hammered home by our military. Traders who were trained in the military tend to use investing programs they have defined themselves – and they tend to succeed because they stick to those programs.
Members of the military are fast learners, and like anyone, need help transitioning to a post-military life of financial planning and investing. Unfortunately, it seems as if many investment firms assume those leaving the military don’t have the financial resources to trade, and as a result they are typically overlooked.
Our objective is to build a bridge between the trading and armed services communities. Financial security is important to everyone, and we want active military and veterans to have the knowledge and tools they need to achieve their financial goals.
Travis McGhee, Vice President of Business Development at TradeStation
