My name is Rowan. I’m currently living in my hometown Sydney, Australia, although I spent most of my adult life living, studying and working in various places around the world including France, French Polynesia, the US, Costa Rica, New Caledonia and Japan.
Since 2001 I have been working in IT and my field of specialisation is financial markets technology - over the last ten years or so I have worked in major investment banks, smaller financial institutions and for the leading provider of market data, so I have spent a lot of time on trade floors and working with institutional traders, and after being forced to take a break from full time work due to illness I decided to try my hand at trading currencies.
Although I have administered trading systems and been around traders for years, I have mainly been on the technology side, so I’m keen to acquire as much practical knowledge and experience as possible in the hope that at some point in the future I might be able to bid farewell to the rat race and to corporate wage slavery for ever.
In my professional life I have worked with many successful traders - in Fixed Income, Equities, FX, Commodities and Futures - and (no offence) some of the most successful were not terribly intelligent, which gives me hope that if they can make a success of this kind of thing, there’s gotta be hope for me.
Anyhow, it’s now week four and I’m still taking baby steps, currently trying to learn as much as I can, apply that knowledge and develop an effective trading strategy.
and I am very glad to have found this forum.
Hi and welcome, be patient and wonders will happen.
[QUOTE=“arigoldman;727375”]Hi and welcome, be patient and wonders will happen.[/QUOTE]
Thank you for your kind words.
I can see how critical patience is in this kind of market.
Having been around investment bank trading floors for a while, and seen astronomical amounts of money made and lost by institutions, I am trying to be realistic with what I can achieve and thus far I’ve managed my expectations pretty well: I started with US$3,000 and the first couple of weeks until the US non-farm payroll came out I managed to have a reasonable running profit - but honestly wasn’t expecting - or prepared for - the crazy volatility that erupted within minutes of the NFP results and that wiped out some positions that - in hindsight - I now realise I should’ve closed.
Anyhow, I never allow myself to risk more than 5% of the Principal on any one trade and try to hedge as best I can - but it’s early days yet and I’m now focussing on cutting my losses when any trades go south, setting realistic Stop-losses and Take-profits, and exploring various technicals and trade signals.
I guess one of the biggest problems I’m currently facing is trying to determine the best time to enter and exit a position, but I suppose that is a universal challenge that we all face and another reason I’m trying to formulate a coherent strategy.
Many years ago I used a market simulator when I was playing with Equities, and was fairly successful, but this time round I went straight to a live account, risking my own savings …
In retrospect however I wish I had gone with the option of a demo account for at least a month before trading with real money, just to become familiar with the market and platform and that would be my advice to others.