I trade my own account for a living. Tell your story

I think this is the goal for many that come here regularly. How many of us have made it? How long did it take? What instruments did you start with? What where the obstacles to achieve success? Tell your own story in this thread. Let's make it inspiring!

I feel I'm getting somewhere, almost consistent on small account, but still hanging tough to my dayjob... I'll post HERE my freedom yell when the day comes!

1. I am a Sr Systems Engineer for a company which I can not disclose of here. I have been doing this for about 11 years and I love my job.

2. Trading for me is supplemental, it is not full time.

3. I trade swing trades (I take what the market produces and catch and ride the waves)

4. I trade price action.

5. Self tought trader.

6. Tried systems (I only really liked the cowabunga), but I wanted to come up with my own system. After trying indicators that only tell you what happened I decided to trade PA. My System is pure money management and proper leverage. I trade with naked charts, I see the market better. Momentum based trading. Some times I will throw a volume indicagtor on there that is only if I am looking at a huge trend change. I do follow COT (Commitment of Traders) sometimes only to get a sense and confirmation of true direction.

7. After blowing a few accounts I started trading the PA. I average between 30 to hundreds of pips (It all depends on the market). I even snagged over 1K of pips in one single currency at one time. What got to me to lose the money I made was greed and over leveraging after I started kicking ass. I quickly was humbled.

8. Opened a new account of $75 couple weeks ago, trading 2K lots is now approx $110. Once I get to $500 I will go to trading 3K lots. Till I hit $1K.

Patience is a virtue and I will be a successful trader and I am over my losing barrier and currently approaching my barrier in success.

I took my one and only trade today selling euraud at 1.26258 @ 2K lot site (.20 a pip). account up by $5 today so far I plan on waking up to about $20 in profit with this current trade. that is a 10% increase on my account tomorrow if successful. I have already set my stop to lock in 2 pips and let the trade run. I am risk free at this point. The market will either give me the bias or I will be stopped out and the joke is on my broker...

Yes I like to make my broker eat the spread. This is also part of my strategy

You guys are delusional, it´s impossible to generate a steady income out of FX without having a few hunderd K in your trading account.

I don't think having dreams and goals in life, being energized and focused makes you delusional. Sometimes you just have to reassess your expectations, adjust them and keep going.

I’m absolutely positive that nobody will turn millionaire with a $100 starting capital, but I do think that turning 1K to 10K in a year or two might be feasible with a good strategy and sound money management, simply trading part-time and keeping your dayjob. Then going from 10K to 50K in a couple years more sounds a reasonable goal to me, considering that I might even add capital along the way, when I start seeing consistency in my trading.

The average time for building an edge and gaining consistency is said to be around 5 years, so I wouldn’t expect to turn full-time “pro” before that, but this is also the time I can give myself to learn the craft and build an account (be it with my own money or the market’s money).

For me, the main point of micro-trading is to learn and acquire the mindset and the psychological skills that you will never grasp by demo trading forever.

There’s no way I will put my hard earned investment money in the market before I can see consistency in my results. I know I have to pay my tuition and blow a couple accounts before I understand the way things really work (I already done that!) so I'd better do it on micro-lots and keep saving for the real deal.

There's no magical way of achieving wealth so I don't expect successful full-time traders to come here and lay out an "how to ... in five steps" manual, but I do think it would be interesting to know that some of us have indeed managed to become professional "retail" traders after putting hard work, learning and perseverance on the line and built an edge that only now allows them to live the good life they dreamed of.

Let's keep it inspiring!

it depends where you live in this world.for some people 300 $ are enough to cover their monthly expenses. 600$ a month they are above average class .make 900$+ and you are filthy rich....

Mmmm, no, you're not filthy rich with 900 bucks a month, because luxury, technology, flash cars etc, cost an arm and a leg no matter where you are. Flat screen TV costs the same in 3rd world Africa and Currys. Believe me.

But you're right, many places you can live off $300 a month, and $600 makes you above local average.

I don't understand why so many people miss this when talking about trading for a living. Or how much one has to make trading to trade full time.

The true measure is what econmists would call "opportunity costs". Suppose we take a person, whom we'll call him John. John has a college degree in basket weaving. At this point in his life most of the job opportunities he has found have been in the customer service field. Typically, these phone jobs pay $11.00-$20.00 an hour.

15.50 is the midpoint so let's assume that is his current wage.

15.50 x 8 = 124.00
124 x 5 = 620. So $620 is his weekly pre tax wage.
620 x 2 = 1240 So John is bringing home $1240 pre tax every two weeks
1240 + 1240 = 2480 John's pre tax monthy wage.
2480 x 12 = 29,760 John's pre tax yearly wage...

Now $29,760 is not going to allow John to live in the lap of luxury by any means. But it is actually within the normal range. That's right kiddies. $30,000 a year is actually around the national average. I don't care what the music videos or MTV cribs make you think.

Personally, I would agree that it is a paultry sum. But let's get back to the real point: Opportunity cost.

If John's typcal yearly wage is $30,000 then trading for a living only makes sense if he can make at least $30,000. If John was only making $15,000 trading, then the opportunity cost of trading for a living would be $15,000.

Now let's look at Bob. Bob has a college degree and more. Bob has a masters in petroleum engineering. His yearly pre tax salary is 250,000. So any amount of money made trading that does not meet or exceed $250,000 would represent an opportunity cost.

So here's the rub. The lower your actual pre tax earning potiential would be in the traditional job market place, the less money you have to make trading to not have any opportunity costs. So the person that did not finish high school and can only expect to find jobs in the $15,000-$20,000 a year range. Does not need to make nearly as much as the Harvard MBA whose skills are valued at around $400,000 a year.

HiddenGap: Thank you for taking the time to share such an in-depth and very well thought-out point-of-view.

It seems to me that the more blatant question in people's mind when they are just starting out is probably "CAN IT BE DONE ?" (trade from the confort of your home/hotel suite or whatever... and not have to go back to your "regular" job). I know it was the question for me, and I sure had a hard time convincing myself that it was possible... my main issues were, for example, "can I trust the broker with my money?", "will I ever be able to withdraw those hundred thousands of cash profit from them?", "will the Internet still exist in the next 10 years as we know it?", "what if the Internet is shut down, how will I trade?", and many more from a long-term survival perspective, etc...

All thses are not obvious with so much disinformation on the Web... Even though I now understand that it's also part of the game... not for everyone I guess.

Nice work, but the conclusion actually remains the same. The greater a person's earning potiential via the "traditional job market", the more money that person has to make as a trader in terms of opportunity costs.

So the guy in the dead end job flipping burgers at Mickey D's making about $13,000 a year doesn't have to make a lot of money to not have any opportunity costs. On top of that, we would have to talk about Utility which might actually lower the amount needed. In other words, working from home in your pjs with no boss, might be "worth" a loss of $2,500 in actual money.........

So do you guys trade your own account for a living ?
I welcome all your excellent input, but if John and Bob's stories are theoretical academic-level scenarios they are outside the thread's scope in the sense that the idea is to share personal real life experience from a pratical point of view.

swingtraderf,

I created a thread showing how a person can start with only $300, and, in under 4 years (45 months to be exact), he/she can take that small amount of money to $1 million. All it takes is averaging 5 pips a day with a 5% risk per trade. However, the trading system you use to get those 5 pips a day is up to you. I am just showing you that it doesn't take a lot of money or a lot of pips to become financially secure with forex. Below is the link to that thread:

http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=368713

Look at the stock indexes and fund managers. Most of them generate between 6-17% return per year and that is called outperforming their benchmark. Taking a 1K account to a 10K account in a year is a 1000% return which is a large increase. The only way to achieve this is to gamble and that is the only way for one to get hold of a large account. I will laugh at anyone who says he is going to make a steady % increase for months on end. I will give the man who says he will bet his account all-in a few times to obtain a large account more props.

I understand your point but trading stocks and trading forex are two different things. Forex is highly leveraged and this is where the potential for growth resides.

I wouldn't make that kind of comparison. I'm positive that even with a 2% risk per trade this is achievable. I guess I'll let you know in a year or two.

One must rise above the average sometimes!

He's not. I have back tested a system on two pairs: eur/cad and aud/cad and both made wonderful transactions over the past years, generating over 90% profitable trades of total. I repeat, over 90%. I have some troubles with the computer wright now but I will continue the back tests on the rest of the pair.
You can check out the trades made by the strategy I was talking about on my trade explorer, on my profile: http://www.forexfactory.com/diavolul

Good luck!

I am sure there are many people who trade for living.

I am too, but never seem to have met one here at FF...

There are a lot on FF. They are usually quieter then the rest. When they do speak it is best to listen.

There should be some local meet-ups, then we'll see who is actually trading for a living.

However, there's a lot of scamming activities in this industry.. People pretends to be someone who know how to trade, full-time trading, gurus etc to rip off newbies...

I have learnt many things in my life, musical instruments, trades, other skills, now trading....

My rule before trading was realised in music that it takes around 2 years to learn a good skill, then after 5 years you can consider yourself mastering that as long as you really are dedicated by spending at least 1-2 hours per day, every day.

I have now been trading since mid 2007.

From 2009 I could feel my 2 year learning curve was asking shape. After that 2 year mark I felt "fluent" then virtually every week my skill level got honed and virtually made th previous week feel like I had just doubled my knowledge.

With a $50k account early this year I made 45% in 17 weeks. Without that money available for personal reasons I am making a $100 - $200 per day off a $1,000 account.

Currently, i would say some time in 2013 I plan to go full time, trade for a living but the only catch is I earn $150k in my day job so I have to work out wether being able to trade whilst retaining a full time is a more sustainable.