student needs answers to some questions

Hi, folks my name is Jerry. I am a student. My English composition class requires that I do a paper on a question that is of practical value to me. The question that I am doing my paper on is: Could I earn my living by trading currency? This question has probably been asked many times already on this forum, and I apologize if you are tired of answering it, but by asking the questions myself, I can classify your answers as an interview, which will make my professor happy.

So here are my questions to you folks.


Do any of you earn your living by trading currency?

If you do, what do you think would be required for someone else to do that?
Here I'm asking for personality qualities, education, capital, etc.




Please be clear about whether you personally earn your living by trading currency.
Remember, what you say here might go in my paper so don't post if you don't like that. And don't worry, I will give credit to my sources.
If I would get more and better answers by posting in a different forum, please tell me.
And finally,
Thank you very much for reading all this and thank you for your answers.
-Jerry

So does no one live on their forex earnings? Or does no one want to say so on this thread?

It might be an idea to set up an online questionnaire with multiple-choice questions/answers and a space for additional comments, people like questionnaires!

You could then produce the results in a clear and easy to understand format with statistics and graphs, much more professional!

Here's a free one but there are hundreds of them out there: http://www.freeonlinesurveys.com/

I think you need to be a little more specific- maybe ask if you could make a living by trading currency independently starting with $x? Obviously if you get a job at a hedge fund you could make a very nice living trading currency but I don't think that's what you're asking. And even then, it is a difficult question to answer because it would depend on how much money you have to start with and how smart you are, which we obviously can't answer. The answer to your question is probably sure, but it will be harder than you think. You will need to work for a while to save up enough money, you'll have to do a lot of intense research, and you'll have to take some huge risks.

I do presently earn about half of my living expenses through forex trading. It used to be the whole of it in 2006-2008 (I didn't trade in 2007), but cost of life in my country increased threefold while base capital remained the same because of the continuous withdrawals.

Thus, my actual goal is to increase capitalization and I have chosen to let the account grow until a certain point, as I am using since the beginning of the year a much less risky but also quite low return strategy (around 10-15% monthly).

In my opinion, the most important asset a trader should invest in, is Education, not only the studying and reading part, getting at least a basic knowledge of most of the technical as well as fundamental matters, but especially "screen time", either by directly trade on a demo account, or a small live account and accumulate at least those 10000 hours of watching charts, price action, and being able to identify and understand what could be really happening in the markets, and correlate with fundamentals for a possible why. Also, I think it is good to specialize oneself in a single currency pair, until we spot its usual behaviour, and then take another one, learn about it and be able to see what are the differences, etc.

Although some specific personality traits are required (patience, persistence, discipline, organization, management), they will unfold little by little during the practice (especially when trading a real account) and you will discover a lot of details about yourself you wouldn't have imagined was there
Ability to withstand losses and keep on track is paramount.
In the "real world" we tend to equiparate a loss to a failure, but here in Forex losing is only an element of the whole picture, and as such has to be taken.

Thanks to the diverse timeframes available, there is room for every kind of trader, from the fast and furious scalper in less than one minute charts, to the uttermost patient position trader who operates off weekly or even monthly charts. And of course the in-between daytrader or swing trader.

Finally, and though this point can be achieved throughout the initial training period by growing the account little by little, a trader who expects to live off his/her profession should be properly capitalized in order to eliminate the stress that having to make "XXX" per month brings on. It can be very frustrating and above all, very risky because it could lead to break the rules of our system or money management.

This in a nutshell is what I think.

Well, my paper is done and handed in. Thank you everyone who commented. I appreciated what you said. and please don't hesitate to give your take on my questions. My paper might be done, but I'm still interested in what folks have to say about this.