Can you honestly earn a good living or even get rich through forex?

Is it possible to beat a Grandmaster playing chess on-line?

Of course it's possible. :nerd:

But would you risk $10000 on the outcome?

If you are still asking the question, no... also you might need to work on your psychology...

If you are a newbie...what should your pip target for a week be?

Of course forex is a cash cow. But that depends on your ability to trade with consistent profitability. Well IMO forex is not for everyone.

I agree. Traders are a different bunch of people, earning money in a strange way. Trading gives a strange way to punish and reward traders. Successful principles in other businesses cannot entirely be replicate-able in trading. Definitely not for the majority of people in the world.

anything with a + in front of it.

Agreed, would definitely vote for this, as the punchline. Anything with a + in front of it is welcome!

It depends on what type trader you are.

I guess the problems for you are

 

1. how much you are looking to make.
2. how good the system you have.

do you know?

As a newbie, you need to do the demo and develop a strategy before you can hope to cull a few pips. And start small, that's what everyone did..

forex and other leveraged trading actually can accelerate your return compared with traditional investment such as bank deposit, gold, property, stocks, etc. However it has a greater risks compared with other instruments.

To be a successful trader, you only have to have a great control with your psychologies and reliable systems when to enter/exit the market. Is that simple? yupe, but it is difficult to do and it is expensive to achieve.

Well, pretty true, however, understanding the market and price action takes a lot of time. If You do not have a good mentor who will direct You in the proper direction, You might never, ever come to realize it for Yourself, or it will take You up to 8 years of practise.

I am 53 y.o. and became interested in FX in 2011, about June. Ever since then I spend every single day, 10-14 hours, trading demos, real, and working on my own strategy. Studying weekends. I have practically been through every single indicator theory and have been experimenting with my own EA's.

For 8 months now, I have been actively working with another trader, day for day, by Skype, exchanging ideas and brainstorming. Since then, I have realized a lot of things about how FX works and about PA. Nobody will tell you this, maybe they do not know, or just they know the only way is for You to realize this for Yourself. Others can be showing it to You, but if You can not see it for Yourself, You will never really succeed.

One of the major problems is that You never know which are the right things to study, and people have different views about what is right and what is not right. The internet contains tons of different information, tutorials, mostly free. Who will tell You, what is right? Even if someone is truely showing a strategy that works for that person, and giving it to You for free, it does not mean, that You will be successful with this same strategy.

The Clue to success in FX is You and only You.
You are The Holy Grail.

There is a lot of psychology involved, too.
Some people, a few only, simply have what it takes by birth.
Others must either work to acheive those psychological features, or must realize that they are simply not fit for the job. Nobody has to be a Forex Trader. Forex is not suitable for everyone, just like not everyone will be a Pop Star, Celebrity, or such.

My personal realization about Forex is that Forex is all about Price Consolidation.
In other words:
If You want to Buy at price X, there must be someone who wants to Sell at price X.
If You want to Sell at price Y, there must be someone who wants to Buy at price Y.

The Balance is always 0.

If You are working with a DD account, You are Buying from Your Broker, or Selling to him.
Thus, Your Broker must be able to Sell to You at Your price, so he must Buy from the Bank at that price or lower. It is just as simple, as that. If he can not do that, You will get a Requote.

Trend is the movement of the price from Consolidation to Consolidation.
At different Timeframes, of course. And the same rule applies. The price is moving Up, because there are Buyers, and there are Pending Sell Orders somewhere Up there to Balance the Demand. This is often done delibriously, by big funds, banks or other biggies, their Algorythmic Traders push the price Up, small traders follow, but Up there, the same biggie has a Pending Sell Order waiting. Everything is Balanced from the beginning. We, the smallies, can not influence this, only take advantage, or be swollowed by the Shark.

Building Your Own Strategy is the Clue.

You can build a strategy based on Weekly Trading or Monthly Trading, this will give You more Freedom than Day Trading. In any case, the basic thing is the realization how the market moves and how the price moves. This will help You to understand the charts, to learn to read and see what is going on.

Only when You have this realization and clear vision of the chart, then You can build a successful strategy.

I know people who Day Trade with SL 10 Pips and less. With the correct RR and MM they succeed. Others do not. What others have written before is true. If You can not open trades precisely enough, you must set Your SL wider, 20, 30 Pips. However, the clue is still seeing and knowing what is going on. How much You can risk, how much You are ready to risk in the worst scenario. There is no noise on the charts, there is only more precise and less precise information. Noise is what we can not understand, when we understand, noise becomes valuable information. This 'noise' is what allows some traders the open trades with 10 Pips SL and less.

And about freedom, someone once said: 'Find a job You love, and You will never work another day!'
If You hate Forex, hate studying charts, price action, fundamental and technical analisys, You will never be free doing Forex. It will only be a hated grudge, nothing else.

In order to truely succeed in any proffession, You must first love it, devote Yourself to it, and do whatever it takes to master it. Otherwise, forget it and find something that makes You happy. Believe me, if You are happy with what You are doing, it will make You Rich.

'Find a job You love, and You will never work another day!'

Thus, the answer to Your question:
Can you honestly earn a good living or even get rich through forex?
is not wheather anyone can do this, but wheather You specifically can do this?

Yes, but only if I could afford it and was at least 80% certain that I could win.

That's effectively risking 25% of the account per trade, using a 10 pip SL.

Agreed, there's no definitive answer when it comes to PA, every mentor would have his or her own take. But usually, after months of hard work, you should be able to work out the basics of PA, develop your own strategy etc. The point being, when it comes to trading, you must be 100% committed to it - no half measures.

That's true for any trade, proffession, art, for every path of life.
Only those who commit, devote themselves are the truely successful ones!

As far as PA and months of hard work - true as well.
The point is how much time has been wasted before one understands or realizes that
indicators are really good for nothing until You know how to read Price Action directly from the chart,
and until You actually can see it on the chart.

Then comes the even harder task to psychologically
begin to believe, that it works, that Yes - Open Now! Yes - Close Now!

This takes still some time until You get the practical reassurance of what
You have theoretically discovered and what is clear looking backwards in history.

Yes - months or rather thousands of hours of hard work!

No shortcuts!

x 2!

Fx Dada i think you have said it all any other thing added is repetition ; however, i will like to add that you have to master the act ie, develop the skill in your own way after you have understudied your mentor. secondly, lean to control your emotion. it is very important. thirdly, have good fund and good money management, then you have become a prof and you can make as much money as you want but remember it is not a day job! Rome was not built in a day but one can actually make a living through FX trading.

@Ishtana,

Make 20 Pips a day, but make it regularly, +20 Pips a day and always maintain 2% risk ratio.
You will be able to make a living and get rich, too.
Yes, you must build up your investment capital, thus you can not give up your daily income source.

When you have reached, say, $100 000 life will be much nicer, even at 2-5 Lots.
Not to mention 10 Lots.

Not sure wheather You are getting the risk ratio right.
Assuming 100:1 leverage, which seems reasonable.
If you are playing 1 Lot it means 1 Pip is worth $10, right?
So, let's say your SL is 10 Pips = $100, right?
$100 is 1% of $10 000 - thus, this is 1% risk.

At $5000 1% = $50, thus playing 0.1 Lot your SL comes to be 50 Pips.

Now comes the RR, say 1:3 for a good one.
If SL = 50 Pips, your target is 150 Pips TP.

If you want to risk 2% at $5000 Balance, it is $100.
You can either play 1 Lot at SL 10 Pips = -$100, TP 30 Pips = +$300,
or 0.1 Lot at SL 100 Pips = -$100, TP 300 Pips = +$300,
or 0.01 Lot at SL 1000 Pips = -$100, TP 3000 Pips = +$300.

If you are able to make $300 the first day, Balance = $5300.
The next day you can either risk more Pips, or stick to 2% and risk $106 = 1.06 Lots.

So, the following day you make +30 Pips = $318, Balance = $5618.

And so on.

If you can not invest at SL = 10 Pips, well, you have got to maintain your RR at 1:3 at least,
so at, say SL = 20 Pips, TP = 60, so you need an instrument, which can yeild these Pips in a
reasonable period of time. Pretty difficult for DT, but not impossible.

All of it is at 2% risk.

Go higher, say 5%, and you can speed up the process, but you can lose quickly, as well.
Higher in the sense of Lots, not SL Pips.

Any way you look at it, it is either very agressive play, moderate or conservative.
The choice is up to You. Then it is just the matter of time.

Obviously, all above provided that You know, what You are doing.

And that is what it takes - doing, not deliberating wheather it is possible or not.

About stats, someone told me once, that it is wiser to look at what is going on in Your life,
instead of looking at stats. Who, and how can estimate how many traders are successful and
how many not? Maybe 5% of trade volume at a given time is Profiting and the 95% is Losing
at that given time? How does that matter to You?

Statistically we have 3 legs, one testis or one ovaris (maybe one of each?), and if there are 7
people in Your family, statistically 1 is Chinese.
Now, if You are Chinese, that becomes a problem, you do not fit into any statistics!

Oh, and another thing, after some more reading on this thread:
Approach - Your approach to Forex - probably the most important factor.

What do you want to do in Forex? Gamble at high stakes?
This makes Forex no different than poker, rullette or other hazardous games.
This approach wil make you lose, no doubt.
I have met one of these people in Forex.
I am reading another one in this thread, exactly the same background, poker, casino, etc.
Exactly the same approach to Forex.

We are not Warren Buffet, we are not Soros or any other of those Giants.
We do not intend to approach Forex in this way.
We aim to get a piece of the large cake, that is all.
Having realized the above, we do not intend to battle, fight or conquer the market!
A gambler always plays against some opponent, either another person, or system - game.
If we try that, even with a 100K account, we will be slain by the market.

Having realized that, we can only win a piece of the cake, if we surrender
and instead of fighting, give in and go along.
If we do realize what the Giants are doing with those 400 Pip candles,
we only must take care and secure our trade against such actions.
Normally, they do not come out of the blue, there is some fundamental reason.
If we are not going to follow the news, we will lose, we are doomed.
We can always choose not to trade at such times of essential news.
Unless we are driven by compulsion, which makes us an addict - we are doomed.

Psychology is the only and the ultimate factor.
Free your mind of greed.
Free your mind of compulsion.
Free your mind of speculation.
Free your mind of judgement.
Free your mind of contradiction.
Free your mind of context - develop the ability to see both contexts at the same time.

The guy who invented the Candlestick chart did not do it without reason.
Understand why he did this, understand what the Candlestick is all about.
Then, you will start reading the chart, then you will start understanding,
you will start seeing the correct signals and the beginings of the trend.
The next step, you will learn to trust what you see and go along, not against, go along.

Free your mind of greed.
Free your mind of compulsion.
Free your mind of speculation.
Free your mind of judgement.
Free your mind of contradiction.
Free your mind of context - develop the ability to see both contexts at the same time.

Following RR and MM, you will afford to lose when the market goes completely berserk!

The Path to failure: Consistently realize SL. Consistently stick to your rules.

The Path to success: Consistently realize Profit. Consistently stick to your rules.

@dadas

I seriously do mean no disrespect here, and I really do mean that! But every word you have written clearly reads as a copy and paste from an eBook. I don't know if you are so happy to have read one, or are looking to sell one.

My point is that everyone has read this stuff. The same old rote learned nonsense.

I routinely begin my trading week at 250 lots with $100,000. One or two times per week I hit my chosen limit of 500 lots trading capacity ($200,000) and so I withdraw from my account whatever funds of profit I need to take me back to trade again from 250 lots.

My $100,000-$200,000 aggregate trading accounts total began with $200 for each of the 5 accounts I trade live with.

Not ONE single word you have quoted from eBooks has been even remotely useful for me trading the way I do. I most certainly have gotten rich with Forex.

Your ebook quotes of 2% account risk is a joke - no one can get rich with such nonsense. Have the balls to be sure of your entries, or don't enter! No one ever got rich poking such a small stick at opportunity.

I never use stop losses - such concepts do not "manage money"; they crystallize losses, leaving you with an ever diminishing smaller pot from which to leverage success. So it is not a money management system, it is a LOSS management system, and is fatalistic drivel quite frankly.

As a BASIC routine, I make sure my entries are as tight as I can get them. On the rarest of times that I am mistaken about my entry, my account will be down 25% and hedged at 100%. That is nothing more than an annoying "Ho Hum" moment. I know I will close that hedge at a profit fully EXPECTING PA to move back in my favor either to close out the original trade at worst at BE + change, and often in significant profit.

At the risk of sounding I like I am calling you out as an Internet Marketing eBook reader/seller (because right now I am a little bit short of saying exactly that), what you have said is such rehashed proven to NOT work rhetoric found to be so tiring and boring by the masses in the masses of rehashed crap out their called wisdom.

Forgive the harshness of my words; but I am saying you have quoted plain old rubbish not helpful to anyone.

Do not think about how many pips you can earn, you should decide before how much each pip costs. When scalping highly leveraged 5 pips a day is not bad at all.