Making the next step ..

Hello folks .. I just can’t find a suitable forum to post this, so I decided to post it here since this is my first post.

I've been trading for 1 year now with Oanda. I just trade small, I started my account with $500 at Oanda. I don’t like virtual account. It didn’t give me the real feeling of trading. So I've been testing and testing on a live account. Thanks to Oanda, I can risk small amount per trade.

Along the way, I manage to fine-tune my strategy. I trade on GBP/USD only and I only take 100 pips a month. No more, no less. 100 pips are enough for me. And since April 2006, im consistently manage to get 100 pips monthly. Most of the time in the first 2 week of the month. If I tend to be greedy more than 100 pips, I will lose that month.

Now, I'm in a dilemma. April next year I will start paying my house mortgage. And looking at my day job current income and increment next year, is either I wont be able to serve my loan or me and my family wont have anything to eat each month.

I'm thinking to take a small loan to fund my trading account. If I do this, I will have enough money to top up my day job income, serve both loans, have a roof and food for my family. And I can also slowly built up my trading capital.

I'm just putting this on the table. I'm feeling a bit depress and I need to let it out a bit. I've been thinking about this a lot. Any advice will come in handy.

Another thing is that concern me is about Oanda itself. I'm thinking to split my capital to 2 brokers. I just worried; one day Oanda will go out of business I will lose all my money. Can anyone suggest a broker that have similarities like Oanda ?
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Trading w/ the added pressure of 'having to make money' only adds to your worries. You have already self-limited yourself to 100 PIPS, already are worried about your broker going under. How many more items do u need to worry about?
I think its a bad idea for u at this stage of your trading carreer.
Have you explored all other options to get the diff in money to pay the mortgage. Partime job or maybe whole diff better paying job, etc. Good Luck to you.

A couple of questions to consider...

If you are already feeling this much pressure with your current bills, how will adding one more bill (the loan payment) affect you?
Do you have the discipline to stick to your trading plan, even if the first couple of weeks cause you to lose money?
Will you be able to utilize the proper amount of money management in your trades, and not try to hit a home run because the mortgage is due next week and you still haven't met your 100 pip goal?
How big of a loan are you looking at and what happens to your financial situation if you lose your entire investment account?
Will you be able to psychologically handle the drawdowns and money losses on a larger account than the $500 one you have tested with?

I would not encourage or discourage you from this because it seems that you have found and tested a strategy that has shown consistency. If you can actually keep this consistency, and not deviate from your trade plan, then I would consider it. But I don't think many of the successful traders here (and I am definitely not counting myself in that group) would encourage someone to open an account with the objective of immediately supporting themselves from the procedes.

Just my 2 cents. Best of luck to you whatever your decision.

I think you have received some good replies to your issues that you face.

First of all I think that you have done well in your first year of trading if you are consistently taking 100 pips out of the market each month - that is a very good start to your trading career.

However external pressures on the shoulders of a trader have a habit of turning winning traders into losing traders very quickly.

On the other question regarding using 2 brokers - well I think this is the least of your worries at this stage of the game.

Monaco