Trading 8 years on...

Hey guys,

This is one of my first posts I've been a member since 2011 been trading since 2010. Some may say it is a long time, others may say it is nothing.

In the coming days I'll post about my trading journey from the very start to now, show you my live accounts & just explain a few things, if anyone is interested.

Thanks

J

Hi j12,

Looking forward to your detailed explanations about trading.


Regards

Thank you I will post my next reply very shortly

J

Hi j12

big thank in advance for yr sharing.

I am interested in listening.

All the best to u.

Cheers,

Sorry if I bore anyone before I start but this is just my journey. I'm not advising anyone on how to trade or on any systems or anything like that at all.

So late in 2010 my brother in law rang me on a Saturday afternoon, asking me to come along with him to a forex trading seminar. At this time I hadn't a clue about forex trading. I thought why the hell not,nothing else to do, so I tagged along.

We arrived at the Hilton Hotel in Manchester. A conference room full of many people, all ready with note pads to make notes. Then up came the speaker. First slide from what I recall was a beach with a fancy car parked up. I was thinking in my head ffs not one of these pyramid scams. I fast started losing interest. He kept going on about how his company has a trading floor in the city full of professional traders...

Then came the sales pitch, I believe it was something like £7k for a weeks trading with an additional week on the trade floor. From this £7k he would teach you how to trade, give you all the skills required blah blah blah...the rooms arrupted in a big round of applause. In my head I was thinking for god sakes I've just wanted a whole Saturday afternoon on this rubbish...

I couldn't believe people where actually signing up to this training course & really excited.

On the plus I got a free coffee

More to follow....

I left this seminar, conference or whatever you want to call it thinking what fools wasting all that money in this rubbish. Didn't think anything more off it, or anything more about Forex trading.

Few weeks passed, I spoke to my brother in law, he mentioned it again that he was thinking about the course. I was thinking in my head what the heck is this guy on lol. Why is he so interested in this. So that evening I started to actually Google Forex to see what it was about.

I'm about 26 at the time with nothing else to do, working as a data analyst, no commitments living with my parents.

It became rather interesting, I have always had a general interest economics & politics. I started to learn about Forex trading. I found Forex Factory and spent hours up on end on the forums. I recall people pointing me to numerous websites where I could learn about it from the basics up...

So it started & I got the bug...

Thank you farang007

So I went on to learn the basics, which was a bit overwhelming to be frank, however I put some serious hours in. I then came back here to Forex Factory & started to read about the trading systems. I thought wow if I can master & learn one of these I can make some serious money. It was rather exciting at the time to think I could become a trader & earn some money out of this.

I just used the filter to see which system had the most replies to a thread had, I presumed this would be the most successful system. I tried it for a while, again put some serious hours in reading the thread from the very start.

Obviously with a day job it was much harder to trade. I was trying all these systems on a demo account. I then made a few friends on here, that at the time had much more knowledge then me. Really nice people, we formed skype groups, shared drives and all input into the work of a particular system.

I found a few gurus who everyone used to refer to, and I was no different. In my head I thought these guys must be making some serious money. People advised me demo trading compared to a real account is totally different. I opened a live account with about £1000. They were correct. With the emotions involved with real hard-earned money is a different ball game.

£1000 may not sound like a lot of money, however at the time for me it was a decent amount of money. I carried on doing small trades daily, looking for the pips. As time went on I kept on learning, new indicators, new systems etc I tried so many. I spent a long time on them. A colleague of mine at work then also became interested in trading. We spent many hours talking to each other. He too opened a live account & started trading.

I didn’t really have much luck at all. Even though I didn’t lose or blow my account I still didn’t really make anything. Then a friend of mine started looking at EAs. The little robots that place the trades for you on MT4. I had read about these EAs and how they were no good. My friend had talked about a great robot called Kangroo. It was the holy grail, not lost in a year or so, trading a AUD pair. I was so excited. Went on to the website to buy it, only to find out they had stopped issuing the licence now. Rather upsetting, however I managed to get a trade copier from a friend i.e his trades would copy onto my account. At this point I had a VPN in New Yok which I was paying monthly for, so I can execute trades better etc..

I was very happy, over the moon, I thought finally I have something. I put in a further £9000 into my account to top it up. I did a few trades, then out of the blue the EA lost a trade. Damm the forum was on fire, it went a pip or 2 within the stop then turned. Not all users got stopped out, some did some didn’t. I was mad, mad with myself more then anything tbh. I didn’t lose the account or anything, but must have lost about £1000 on this trade.

That was the end of that. I am about 4 years into this by now, then we tried something else. News Trading, this was when we trade a report. So for example on NFP you would do the trade within seconds to try to make money on this. I was working full time so my friend was doing the trades for me. We won some we lost some. This then fizzled out. Tried a few more systems, nothing really worked.
At this point now I had decided in my personal life that I needed to make a change to better myself, otherwise I would not progress in life. So I decided to hand my notice in & move to London. I took the money out of my trading account leaving about £138 or something like this in the account. In London I didn’t have much of a plan what I would do, I started of doing some graphic design work. At this point with the big change I didn’t really give much thought at all to trading. I set up an online business selling on different channels such as eBay Amazon etc the business started doing well. It grew & grew much faster than I expected. I started to travel the world looking for new items, developing items, making my own brands. Importing containers in, it is fun & I really enjoy it. The business now is my day to day job, turning over 6 digit numbers.

Part was through this about year 6, I was looking at my trading account & the small amount sat in there. I thought shall I withdraw this or shall I just have a play around and put some trades on? I decided what the hell let’s have a play around on this. I didn’t own a windows laptop anymore, so for me I didn’t have the option to use mt4, I only had a mac. My only real opportunity to look at charts was on my android phone using the mt4 app.

I had no indicators to install, just my eyes & candle charts. This was maybe a blessing in disguise for me. It took me back to the very basics of trading. 2 years on from this now to the current day the account has grown 276.04% this takes into consideration of compounding etc. On average over the 2 years or so in which I trade this way it has brought in 4.88%. This year however it is closer to 8% per month. So far this year I have 1635+ pips.

Regardless to these numbers from my perspective is that only after such a long time I have a small understanding how the market works, after tying so many different things, so many hours, so many gurus, being a sheep. Will what I do work for the next 10 years? Only the next 10 years will tell me that. Will I make a lot of money? Not unless I invest a few grand and continue to win trades. Will I be able to supplement my income? It’s a possibility. I really believe trading has stages for a person.

Sorry for any grammar mistakes that I have made in this post, I have not read it over, once I have more time I will edit it

This is a screenshot to MyFxbook the site that does my number crunching, half of these numbers I don't even know what they mean for example z-score, I will just google them like anyone else would lol

And another just showing month on month for this year

You've tried different models of getting interest, just like most beginners. In my opinion, trading is a game of probability. Only by creating your own trading system can you see your own compound interest. A percentage of earnings at a certain time that cannot be used to calculate the ability of getting interest.

Interesting thoughts. Trading is very much probability,, a pair will either go up or go down on a daily basis.

I find the more time i spend looking at charts, looking at systems, looking at indicators the more I leave myself open to lose

All indicators are a reflection of what's happened in the past, you're making a decision on what has happened in the past to predict the future. Or as one might say put the odds in your favor.

I just read another thread on here, quoted below, it's so very true what the gentleman says below. I know people get the bug, then leave after a while. It's a mad world ...

"If you have broke even by the anniversary of your first year, consider yourself a "successful trader".

That may sound humorous, but it's far from funny. If you happen to make it in the top 5% of the traders that get THAT far, then you probably have overcome most of your hurdles and consider yourself consistent.

How do you know you've finally made it? If you are consistently profitable for a minimum of six months, with a steady, rising equity curve, then congratulations, you've made it."

For me more then anything consistency is the key, you might have 1 good month or two. But doing it month in month out is the battle.

[quote = j12; 11031053]对于我来说，任何一致性都是关键，你可能会有一两个好的月份。但是每个月都要这样做。[/ quote]
You are right! Some months are not suitable for investing is also part of the deal.

That's correct, however I don't enter many trades at all, maybe 1 or 2 a month if that.

I used to always feel I needed to be entering trades on a daily basis, it just didn't work for me

Patience is really very important. Now I'm trying to reduce the number of transactions . It is painful to watch the market without placing orders.

Yes it can be, but this really does no longer bother me, I am 90% of the time in a trade, however the trade could have been opened 2 months ago...

So the month of May is coming to an end I'm 8.82%+ & 295pips+ this month. So I am happy, this month I've also topped my account up slightly, not by much.

So far this leaves the year at 47.01%+ 1635pips+ my target is between 3-4%+ a month...