Are you sure you started to earn consistently or you just had some lucky trades?
Are you trading fundies or tech.?
Thank you for your opinions.
I am still not convinced that there are guys who can make consistently 100%+ per year every year.
I think fijitrader said that 90% of people trading forex lose money over a long time and 90% of remaining 10% doesnt earn enough to make for a living. So only 1% make it big.
I wonder if they (this 1% traders) really exist.
So I would like to know, who can earn 100%+ profit per year every year or at least 40%+ profit per year every year?
If you can do it, I would like to know if you are trading fundamentals or technicals or both?
No offence intended.
FOREX and trading in general should be treated and perceived just like any other business.
I know a few traders who make a really good living out of it. Why shouldn't it be possible?
You asked whether there are some traders who can consistently make 40%+ per year. In my opinion a trader who follows FOREX all day long should be making at least 50% per year every year. Anything less than that wouldn't be worth the risk, sacrifice and time.
Now, what does it take to achieve a constant 50% return year in year out?
If you have a $100,000 account and risk 1.5% per trade with a 40 pip max stop loss, you can afford to open roughly 37 contracts per trade.
Let's say you adjust the # of contracts per trade whenever your capital grows by 20%.
In our case, when your capital reaches $120,000 you adjust # of contracts from 37 to 45.
With this simple money management scheme it would take you roughly 1,200 pips to achieve your 50% goal.
Thats roughly 100 pips per month, which is roughly 25 pips per week.
Do you still think it's impossible to make some decent money in this business?
A good trader should make at least 100 pips per month on average. Of course, there might be months when he breaks even and other months where he makes 300 pips.
If you can't make at least 1,000 pips per year you better look for other businesses or get a job because trading isnt for you.
Now, let's all keep in mind that the 50% mentioned in the above example was obtained by using leverage, specifically a 1 to 3.7 leverage. Hence, a 50% return obtained trading FOREX using a 3.7 leverage would correspond to a mere 13.51% return if you were trading stocks without using margin.
Now answer this question: do you think that if you were a full time stock trader you could achieve a consistent 15%+ return year in year out?
If your answer is yes, then you should be able to do much better in FOREX thanks to leverage.
In my opinion what it really takes to be a full time successful trader is:
1) Right psychological attitude
2) Stable system that generates consistent results.
As you can see, if your objective is to make at least 50% a year, you dont need a system that makes you 1,000 pips per month. All you need is something stable enough to avoid big drawdowns and good enough to generate 100 pips per month.
If you have a $100,000 account and risk 1.5% per trade with a 40 pip max stop loss, you can afford to open roughly 37 contracts per trade.
