2 Years as a FullTime Trader today (despite my painful userID)

Dear Forex Factory,

Apologise if my English is a little rusty but has been long time since I don´t live and work in a English-spoken Country. Hope you are all well.
I met FF in 2009 and still use it for the calendar, I thought I ought a thank you note.

As of today, 2 Years as a Full Time Trader.. although still not where I would like to be in my dreams.
I though I would drop few points if anyone would need any support, encouragement.

Few points that might be useful, then feel free to ask me anything.

- I am 40, I started at 38 when I had money to survive at least one year (I didn´t use that money for trading!)
- I have been a chart-nerd for about 10 years
- I still haven´t find the holy grail.. I have some preferred areas where I am looking to buy / sell but forget about the 100% working strategy.
- Charts give you 30% of the picture. You still need some OrderFlow tools in my opinion. i.e. Futures data if you are trading FX to see where are big hands buying/selling, how is the market reacting, what is actually happening.
- Money management is the key to survive. Before winning a trade you have to be 100% sure that tomorrow you will be able to trade. I personally trade a number of lots that changes depends how far away is my stop loss. The closer, the higher. So that I always risk the same % of money.
- I don´t use hard stop loss. I close the position manually when it breaks some conditions so you are not wiped out. yes, risky. yes, you need discipline. Do I still fuck up sometimes? yes absolutely.

Have a good day!
David

how much money you ve been making during those two years if you dont mind ? and are you trading martingale ? Thanks.

Around 5% a month. Enough to make ends meet. I found some new investors and will take 20% of their gain. The plan is to increase liquidity (number of investors) and maintain a 5% monthly.

I don't use Martingale despite my userId what I do is to scatter the entry in 3-4 pieces and similarly the exit. Hence entering with 1/4 then another 1/4 and so on.

Agree USA futures, dax, gold, copper, iron, oil, bonds. Can help you sorta get an idea where the money is flowing. For example you see commodity are rocketing from a huge base.. Going higher each day... You may think twice about that Aud short or Cad l short... As AUD economy is heavy on iron ore exports.. and Canada does has a lot of oil.. But no correlation is ever 100% or Holy grail... Just a hint to put the odds in your favor.