The 3 month demo trading trial - Journey to profitability

Also, I mentioned the negative in terms of risk, but a little bit of positive feedback on today's trading:

50% win percentage (20 trades total)
Average losing percentage was 9% (this is bad, but an improvement for me)
Average winning trade was 46%

This means I had an average 1:5 R:R - that's great!

On the negative and positive side:

This week, for this account, which was started 4 days ago, I allowed my losses to take my balance from $500 down to $15.

I wanted to give up on the account, and start over, but decided to see if I could rebuild it. So far, so good, back up to $200.

I think next week, I'll see if I can take this account back up to $500 and above. If I can have the percentage results that I had today, and lower my risk to 2% per trade, I'll be able to do 40% a day!

I know, sounds lofty. But if I can just do half as good, I'll be back to $500 by end of next week. We'll see...

Also, thanks for your input and reminders regarding money management.

Vielen Dank für Ihre Hilfe und Unterstützung!

I was also looking at pips gained/lossed, since I believe if proper money management and risk mitigation were followed, it tells a more accurate story...

I had 355 pips gained, and 270 lost, for a total gain of 85 pips gained.

Average losing trade - 27 pips
Average winning trade - 35 pips
This is an average 1 to 1.3 R:R.

So, without factoring in my increased leverage to recover losses, doesn't look as good, although it would be okay with a 50% win rate, and could have netted 6% on a $500 account, risking 2% per trade. Still not bad. 6% a day would be 30% a week. Still encouraging...

Edit: and not mention... If I only did 1/3 as well, gaining 10% a week, that would be awesome if it could be sustained. It would be about 12,000% gain per year!!

It seems like your are trying to make quick money by trading FOREX. This is not a get-a-rich-quick scheme, it is a MARATHON. Bulls make money, bears make money, PIGS get SLAUGHTERED. You want to avoid being a PIG.

I started with £500.00 on the 4th of February, 2 weeks later, I have grown my account £744.20. I aim to make 20% weekly and by the end of the month, I plan to bring my account to £900.00.

You are clearly not trading material right now, a lot of work needs to be done. I advise you to remain of demo until change your approach to trading and are making consistent profit for 3 months. You say you don't respect demo, that attitude needs to change because I believe is the cause of your failure. Trading demo must be taken very seriously, if you want to become a profitable trader like myself.

Maybe you have some input that is actually helpful? This post is useless. If you read everything I posted, you'd realize I am on demo until I can turn things around. Seems like you just showed up to brag about how profitable you are. Good for your ego. Good for nothing else. Bye bye

Edit: Plus being profitable for a few weeks is an accomplishment? Please. Give me a break. Come back after you are profitable for 6 months to a year. Then you can post stuff about profitability that actually has something to back it. Until then you are a pretender.

Mr. TimTheTrader, you are on my ignore list, because of your useless post here. You say you are profitable after only a few weeks? From Feb 4th? That is hilarious. That's not even 20 days of trading.

How can someone who's only just started live trading call themselves profitable? You really think 7 months of demo trading proves anything? lol

http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=524945

Anyone who starts a thread bragging about how they will turn a small amount of money into 1 million after trading demo for 7 months is not trading material imo.

I've traded live for over 2 years, full time. And someone who's traded live for less than 1 month is going to tell me what it takes to be a trader? Unbelievably naive.

Looking at my trade report for yesterday, I noted that I had 5 trades that I held for a few days, entered on the daily chart. I wanted to see how I did with only the intra-day trades executed on Friday, so I recalculated win/loss percentage and pips gained/lost with only the intra-day trades. Here's what I found:

Total trades:15
Trades won: 7
Trades lost:8
Win percentage: 47%
Pips gained: 82
Pips lost:62
Total pips gained/lost: 82-62=+20

So, even without my "over-leveraging", I would have come out ahead. I think 20 pips in 1 day is not bad. I also think I can/will improve on this, as I become more patient and disciplined.

This is encouraging to me, since it reinforces the concept of NOT over-leveraging. It is not necessary to increase risk, to come out ahead, and in fact most times, increasing risk just causes bigger losses. Just trade. Never risk too much. The edge will prevail. Hopefully, this will be something I can build on next week.

Also, average R:R was about a 1 to 1.3. I think I can improve this as well. We'll see...

You are welcome mate!

Well. I really need to get some things done this weekend that don't involve trading

But I've been thinking about this thread, and trading demo, verses live. I've reached some conclusions, some new, and some that are what I've concluded in the past...

First, one good thing that has been accomplished (besides some good input from Hickson and others), is that I have analyzed in great detail my trading activity, not just this week, but past results as well.

In looking at 3 different accounts, I had an average win rate of about 33%. This was over a period of several months, and about 2000 trades. What I take from this, is my win rate was not that bad, considering my extreme problem with lack of discipline and patience. If I can tighten things up, i.e. improve my patience and discipline, I also think I can improve this win rate.

Before I started this thread, I had no idea what my win rate was. So, that is one good result. I have a better understanding of my trading, which I hope will help me further improve. It should also help me to relax a little, knowing I have a good enough win rate to be successful.

And I will also continue to analyze my trading activity each day. This is so helpful, I feel like kicking myself for not doing it before...

The other thing I realized, that I have realized in the past. For me demo trading is a waste of time. Some may disagree with me. But I will tell you why I feel this way.

First, let me acknowledge, that demo trading is good, up to a point. But sooner or later, it looses any sort of benefit it may have had. For example, when I think about trading next week on demo, I have no negative emotion about it whatsoever. But if I think about going live, it's a different story. I have a little bit of nervousness. For this reason, I will be retiring this thread, and will go back to live trading. I will need to overcome these emotions to achieve success.

Plus, as has been pointed out by Hickson, my main problem (aside from lacking patience and discipline) is money management, risking too much on any one trade. Trying to work this out in demo trading, is like playing a golf video game, then expecting to play well on a live course. Won't happen.

However, I will be starting with a very small account, in order to work on the problems with my trading. I may start a new thread on this topic, just to keep me honest