This is my journal for me to be able to out down my thoughts on starting out as a new trader. Before I post some actual charts and discuss them I suppose I should say a little about myself.
I am 29, married with 2 young sons and 2 older step daughters, 1 of which has moved out. I work full time and live in the UK. I was drawn to trading, like most people, because of the potential to make lots of money, however, since I have started reading more and more I have seen that trading is hard work but with effort and patience it can become a lot of fun and could make a difference to my life. I also see many similarities with online poker, which I played for a long time earning extra money until such time as it was taking up too much time and was effecting my family life so I had to stop.
The major similarity I see is that whenever I used to say to someone “I play poker” I would get the same response that warned me off and said I could lose a lot of money and its pure gambling. This was all from people who had no idea that by working hard and studying the game of poker you could create a huge edge over all the fish that play. People still do not understand that poker is a skill game for the 5% of people that actually make consistent money from playing. For me this is exactly the same as trading as people automatically think its gambling because thats all they know, they are ignorant to the fact that with a lot of hard work studying the markets, an edge can be created and consistent profits can be made.
At this point I'd like to point out that I am new to this but I am fully aware that I am not going to turn £500 into £50,000 in the next 3 months and maybe not in the next 3 years or 30 years. I realise that with a lot of hard work I may be able to make consistent profits and that is what I am aiming for. One thing that poker has taught me is to not focus on the amount of money you make but whether your decisions were correct and whether you played the hand right, regardless of the outcome. This is my approach towards trading. I am not going to set myself financial targets, the only target I have is to follow my trading plan and to continue to read and learn.
I have created a trading plan which I will not be publishing on the forum as I think each traders plan is personal to them. There will no doubt be snippets of the plan as I discuss my trades and decision making but I will say that my plan covers my risk management, entries and exits but it is a work in progress and is being updated the more I learn.
Anyway this has got long and so I will post below with the figures I have on my account and thoughts on todays trades.
I am 29, married with 2 young sons and 2 older step daughters, 1 of which has moved out. I work full time and live in the UK. I was drawn to trading, like most people, because of the potential to make lots of money, however, since I have started reading more and more I have seen that trading is hard work but with effort and patience it can become a lot of fun and could make a difference to my life. I also see many similarities with online poker, which I played for a long time earning extra money until such time as it was taking up too much time and was effecting my family life so I had to stop.
The major similarity I see is that whenever I used to say to someone “I play poker” I would get the same response that warned me off and said I could lose a lot of money and its pure gambling. This was all from people who had no idea that by working hard and studying the game of poker you could create a huge edge over all the fish that play. People still do not understand that poker is a skill game for the 5% of people that actually make consistent money from playing. For me this is exactly the same as trading as people automatically think its gambling because thats all they know, they are ignorant to the fact that with a lot of hard work studying the markets, an edge can be created and consistent profits can be made.
At this point I'd like to point out that I am new to this but I am fully aware that I am not going to turn £500 into £50,000 in the next 3 months and maybe not in the next 3 years or 30 years. I realise that with a lot of hard work I may be able to make consistent profits and that is what I am aiming for. One thing that poker has taught me is to not focus on the amount of money you make but whether your decisions were correct and whether you played the hand right, regardless of the outcome. This is my approach towards trading. I am not going to set myself financial targets, the only target I have is to follow my trading plan and to continue to read and learn.
I have created a trading plan which I will not be publishing on the forum as I think each traders plan is personal to them. There will no doubt be snippets of the plan as I discuss my trades and decision making but I will say that my plan covers my risk management, entries and exits but it is a work in progress and is being updated the more I learn.
Anyway this has got long and so I will post below with the figures I have on my account and thoughts on todays trades.