So Who’s Charlie Wetherall?

As you might have guessed, I’ve been a writer all my life. No, not because I serve up particularly slick prose (sometimes I’ve got all I can do to cobble a few intelligent paragraphs together), but because I can go on and on and on about the most trivial of subjects. And what, dare I ask, could be more trivial than talking about oneself?

My writing career began as a small-town radio news director in Glasgow, Mont., (KLTZ, a 250-watter that unabashedly proclaimed itself as “The Voice Of Northeastern Montana." For the uninitiated reader, broadcasting with 250 watts is only slightly more powerful than shouting into tin cans linked by a string.

After a series of similar radio jobs in increasingly larger markets, I managed to talk my way back to my hometown, Minneapolis, where I worked for a slew of (well, at least six that I can remember)  radio, television and newspaper reporting jobs. As you can see, peripatetic was my middle name; job-hopping practically a specialty.  

Then I moved on to public relations work, then to book and magazine publishing. I’ve written more than 25 non-fiction books and they’ve sold a few million copies (he said modestly) in the U.S., Europe and other countries. I won’t bore you with the titles. If you’re that interested just Google my name (better use Charles F. Wetherall if you want any serious results). Yahoo and the other search engines will deliver more of the same shameless hype.

Along the way, I did some of the major talk shows like authors do (Oprah’s people called me one day as a last minute fill-in, then mysteriously, never called back), and earned some ink in the major newspapers and magazines that must have has been stuck with a slow news day. You know, like the New York Times, U.S. News & World Reporter, Good Housekeeping, Psychology Today, etc.

Also sandwiched in there someplace is a journalism degree from the University of Minnesota and some film school study at the USC School of Cinema-Television. 

But, that’s all behind me now. I write the occasional book. But travel and trading are my main squeeze. And much as I like Edina (that’s a suburb of Minneapolis that’s so sleepy the local chamber of commerce features a picture of a water tower on its home page) I love adventure traveling. And frankly, Minnesota is a lousy place to live in winter, unless you're a polar bear. And the sweetest way to pay for my travels is to trade online as I flit from place to place.

Fortunately, I started online stock trading (call it day trading or swing trading---anything but “investing”)---in the late 1990s, back in the days when you could take a flier on virtually any Internet stock and either lose your life’s savings in one reckless afternoon or buy yourself a second-hand Bentley, if you played it smart. Well, I could never afford the Bentley but through years of heedless speculation in the market, I know enough to make money, stay out of Bleak House and keep from going off the deep end like Mark Barton (the Atlanta day trader who assassinated his brokers following a particularly difficult trading day).

That doesn’t mean that my Runaway Trader blog will be chockablock with day trading tips and similar cyber fantasies. Sure, you’ll learn a bit about how I trade and you may even want to try some of my techniques yourself (at your own risk, I might add).

But make no mistake, I’m not gathering data to write another book such as, “How to Day Trade Your Way Around the World or Get Rich Right at Home.” That’s work. And I don’t want to work anymore.

I want to play. To have fun. To travel. To see the world. And to share my adventure travel, my escapism, if you will.  But anybody can raid their savings account and pop for a one- or two-week sojourn. The trick is to enjoy the lifestyles of the rich and famous (if that’s what I get) and pay for your travel on the go with stock trades online---from somewhere, anywhere in the world. Come join me and, if you like, add your own voice to the chorus of Runaway Traders.