Yet another newbie here

Hello world!

Me:

I’m new to fx trading but IMHO very committed*. My background and situation is that I’m a programmer that was intent on setting up a business with a friend but our views diverged too much so despite lots of preparative work, stopping on the verge of launching seemed like the best solution.

After a few weeks of wondering what to do I - pretty much by coincidence - ended up deciding to try fx trading. This is not the first time I’ve thought of becoming a day trader instead of having a normal job because many years ago I took part in a trading competition but with limited time and no capital to try it for real, I didn’t try very hard and - unsurprisingly - didn’t do well either.

Now I have less to lose career-wise (it hasn’t been good) than at the time of the contest but more to lose in terms of money. Maybe nevertheless enough to get started because I had set aside money for the business and was ready to live with extreme uncertainty and minimal expenses and also losing what I had allocated for the venture. And from a very practical POV an advantage I have is that I due to my past work already have a reliable work station setup with two laptops and several monitors.

My intended approach to trading:

I know that trading psychology is extremely important and I have undertaken two “mental preparations” already. Please, tell me what you think of them!

  • I Intend to approach trading like a computer game. I have enjoyed RTS games tremendously and when I have tried trading with demo accounts, I have noticed that I get some of the same feelings and consider that a very good thing. Making moves in order to win and not letting emotions get in the way. And also accepting losses - winning in RTS games, at least, has usually not been about winning a battle but knowing how to recover from a lost one.

  • Because I was too blasé when practicing with monopoly money, I tried practicing with a small amount of real money. Sort of how some people say that even when playing poker with friends just for fun, it’s more enjoyable, if you have a tiny amount of money at stake it because it makes you focus. I figured that trying out trading with real money will be more useful than spending it on fx textbooks. However, it might have backfired since I had to realize the hard way that I need to learn a lot more but now practicing with monopoly money makes it even harder for me to answer yes when I ask myself if I would enter a particular trade if the money was real?

This was a long first post to introduce myself. I’m happy to be here and get to know you guys.

*) I’m so committed that I even manage to motivate myself to exercise more because I know that being physically fit improves one’s ability to think.

Hey there, welcome to our forex community! Interesting background and mindset you’ve got. I have a trader buddy who’s also a gamer and I gotta say, he’s able to think real quick on his feet and is pretty good with strategy. Hope it works out for you as well!