It has been a long journey, and will continue to be so. I've learned much and yet have much to learn.
I started in Forex over 10 years ago now. Technically speaking anyway. A friend of mine got a call from an 'investment company' who introduced us to the concept of Forex trading and sold us the idea that we could get rich with it.
All we had to do was send them our money and within weeks we'd be rich. Well alarm bells rang for me so i did lots of due diligence and attempted to understand some of what these people were talking about.
It seemed they were genuine, at least in terms of the performance of the EURUSD at the time, and the trade they talked of seemed to my inexperienced eyes logical.
So my friend sent £6k over for these guys to turn in to £100k or whatever bullshit he'd been convinced was possible. I now see that this IS possible, but not in the way my friend was hoping.
After a week he was in SERIOUS profit and these guys asked for MORE money to give my friend an even bigger return.
My advice was to cash out what he'd made in profit and give them that, but somehow my sage advice wasn't as convincing as the bolshy Texan at the end of the phone line and another £3K went over.
I was having none of this. It screamed SCAM to me but the strategy of going long was seemingly sound (according to my noob research) and if it was with hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of other peoples money, then it seemed a very good idea.
So i decided i wanted a piece of this action. I called some friends and proposed we mimic the trade.
I was SO naive but we all chipped in a few hundred quid, i phoned IG Index in the UK and said (the broker must have pissed himself laughing at me after the call) "how do i go about setting up a long position on EURUSD?"
I had NO IDEA about SL/TG or any of that and the guy to his credit helped me set a realistic SL with the money we'd invested.
Sure enough, after about 1 month we'd realised a few hundred percent profit. The scammers were bang on with the analysis and must have CREAMED it in using other peoples cash.
We only made our profit as we basically took a coin flip and with no MM, no concept of RR and really no idea at all we made money. fluke. Sort of.
All my friends happy with me, all my friends in profit.
Except one, who lost £9k.
Now, i escaped that one. Dodged a bullet so to speak but it was only a few hundred quid and it didn't matter if we'd lost it.
So the birth of my interest in FX.
Fast forward some years and retail trading became more prevalent. We saw ads on the web saying "trading the Euro is easy" and suchlike.
Well you can imagine - red rag to a bull. Sucked me right in and i opened an account with a few hundred quid and charged right in.
The funny thing is, i sold EU at a SUPERB time. Pure fluke. If id kept that position open until after the initial Greece debacle, i'd have made a killing.
But i was too stupid. I was at the TRUE beginning of my journey. About to lose almost all my profit, then most of my initial investment and then stop altogether to try and understand what the fuck this stuff is all about.
As one of the many noobs on the EU thread i got hooked and slowly watched my (not small) profits dwindle. I laugh at how i was then. It was funny. No idea at all.
And then one day someone was going long where all the noobs were short. I asked this person why and they gave me the answer "PA is telling me".
The journey now had some direction. This kind person, who i will reference in the next post along with all the other thanks, pointed me in the direction of James16 thread.
From here the journey became much more comfortable. All money off the table, heavy study, pure demo and learning patience, bar formations etc. All the great stuff they teach.
I followed the plan and made the cut according to the 1st page criteria on Daily/Weekly TF. Dropping down to H4 screwed me so i carried on with daily for a while. Consistent profit, as so many find there, came to me. It was great. A revelation.
Then some life got in the way and another break ensued. But i left on a good note and with a small amount of my initial cash intact.
Things settled down for me and in Sept/Oct last year i came back to it. Hard. Spent hours and hours per day on charts and articles, taking J16 stuff further and learning more and more about the market and PA.
I came across some S/D traders which took me on another path, similar and complimentary to J16 and a new group of wonderful people with super skills have been as welcoming and helpful as at J16 and i continue to learn more and more from them, new branches of knowledge being shared to me along the way.
It's been a great journey so far, i've met some great people and the kindness shown to me has been quite touching really.
The people that give back to people like me, and tirelessly help others to understand what is an immensely complex and dangerous system, so that it can become quite simple and elegantly obvious are true heroes, and this thread is dedicated to all the people that have taken the time to help me on the road to become a real, profitable, trader. I am not there yet.
I still play demo but with that same small cash account too (growing back to where it was before). I'm still learning and until i can be 100% confident that the earlier side of me is gone, i will continue to do so.
I have nothing to prove to anyone but myself (and my family) so i dont always post live trades, or show which are real and which are demo, but i post enough around the place, many of which demonstrate to the those who've taught me, that sometimes i know my shit.
So the post directly after this will be to all those who've helped me on the way so i no longer need to keep thanking them elsewhere. they may not have directly helped me, but just posts, ideas, comments and charts are enough sometimes.
This is a business to me. Perhaps the rest of my life career, who knows. It's my dream to make at the very least a comfortable pension from it.
As such i'm treating it like a business and ONLY when i feel i have all the aspects i'm still shaky on and ONLY when i show myself i can do this properly, according to my requirements week in week out with BIG returns, will i invest what i consider to be a large amount of cash.
That point may be next month, or in 6 months, or 2 years. I'll never say.
So, enough waffle.... on to the thanks....
I started in Forex over 10 years ago now. Technically speaking anyway. A friend of mine got a call from an 'investment company' who introduced us to the concept of Forex trading and sold us the idea that we could get rich with it.
All we had to do was send them our money and within weeks we'd be rich. Well alarm bells rang for me so i did lots of due diligence and attempted to understand some of what these people were talking about.
It seemed they were genuine, at least in terms of the performance of the EURUSD at the time, and the trade they talked of seemed to my inexperienced eyes logical.
So my friend sent £6k over for these guys to turn in to £100k or whatever bullshit he'd been convinced was possible. I now see that this IS possible, but not in the way my friend was hoping.
After a week he was in SERIOUS profit and these guys asked for MORE money to give my friend an even bigger return.
My advice was to cash out what he'd made in profit and give them that, but somehow my sage advice wasn't as convincing as the bolshy Texan at the end of the phone line and another £3K went over.
I was having none of this. It screamed SCAM to me but the strategy of going long was seemingly sound (according to my noob research) and if it was with hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of other peoples money, then it seemed a very good idea.
So i decided i wanted a piece of this action. I called some friends and proposed we mimic the trade.
I was SO naive but we all chipped in a few hundred quid, i phoned IG Index in the UK and said (the broker must have pissed himself laughing at me after the call) "how do i go about setting up a long position on EURUSD?"
I had NO IDEA about SL/TG or any of that and the guy to his credit helped me set a realistic SL with the money we'd invested.
Sure enough, after about 1 month we'd realised a few hundred percent profit. The scammers were bang on with the analysis and must have CREAMED it in using other peoples cash.
We only made our profit as we basically took a coin flip and with no MM, no concept of RR and really no idea at all we made money. fluke. Sort of.
All my friends happy with me, all my friends in profit.
Except one, who lost £9k.
Now, i escaped that one. Dodged a bullet so to speak but it was only a few hundred quid and it didn't matter if we'd lost it.
So the birth of my interest in FX.
Fast forward some years and retail trading became more prevalent. We saw ads on the web saying "trading the Euro is easy" and suchlike.
Well you can imagine - red rag to a bull. Sucked me right in and i opened an account with a few hundred quid and charged right in.
The funny thing is, i sold EU at a SUPERB time. Pure fluke. If id kept that position open until after the initial Greece debacle, i'd have made a killing.
But i was too stupid. I was at the TRUE beginning of my journey. About to lose almost all my profit, then most of my initial investment and then stop altogether to try and understand what the fuck this stuff is all about.
As one of the many noobs on the EU thread i got hooked and slowly watched my (not small) profits dwindle. I laugh at how i was then. It was funny. No idea at all.
And then one day someone was going long where all the noobs were short. I asked this person why and they gave me the answer "PA is telling me".
The journey now had some direction. This kind person, who i will reference in the next post along with all the other thanks, pointed me in the direction of James16 thread.
From here the journey became much more comfortable. All money off the table, heavy study, pure demo and learning patience, bar formations etc. All the great stuff they teach.
I followed the plan and made the cut according to the 1st page criteria on Daily/Weekly TF. Dropping down to H4 screwed me so i carried on with daily for a while. Consistent profit, as so many find there, came to me. It was great. A revelation.
Then some life got in the way and another break ensued. But i left on a good note and with a small amount of my initial cash intact.
Things settled down for me and in Sept/Oct last year i came back to it. Hard. Spent hours and hours per day on charts and articles, taking J16 stuff further and learning more and more about the market and PA.
I came across some S/D traders which took me on another path, similar and complimentary to J16 and a new group of wonderful people with super skills have been as welcoming and helpful as at J16 and i continue to learn more and more from them, new branches of knowledge being shared to me along the way.
It's been a great journey so far, i've met some great people and the kindness shown to me has been quite touching really.
The people that give back to people like me, and tirelessly help others to understand what is an immensely complex and dangerous system, so that it can become quite simple and elegantly obvious are true heroes, and this thread is dedicated to all the people that have taken the time to help me on the road to become a real, profitable, trader. I am not there yet.
I still play demo but with that same small cash account too (growing back to where it was before). I'm still learning and until i can be 100% confident that the earlier side of me is gone, i will continue to do so.
I have nothing to prove to anyone but myself (and my family) so i dont always post live trades, or show which are real and which are demo, but i post enough around the place, many of which demonstrate to the those who've taught me, that sometimes i know my shit.
So the post directly after this will be to all those who've helped me on the way so i no longer need to keep thanking them elsewhere. they may not have directly helped me, but just posts, ideas, comments and charts are enough sometimes.
This is a business to me. Perhaps the rest of my life career, who knows. It's my dream to make at the very least a comfortable pension from it.
As such i'm treating it like a business and ONLY when i feel i have all the aspects i'm still shaky on and ONLY when i show myself i can do this properly, according to my requirements week in week out with BIG returns, will i invest what i consider to be a large amount of cash.
That point may be next month, or in 6 months, or 2 years. I'll never say.
So, enough waffle.... on to the thanks....
