Hey there, best advice I can give is DON’T put a hard monetary amount that you want to reach. Its good to have goals but what I have found with trading is they tend to force you to over trade sometimes to reach them. And also the $$$ value is dependent on pips and leverage. I would determine a small pip goal to start… for each week and each month (if you are day trading) or a pip goal each day and each week (if you are scalping).
This is what helped me in the beginning because the pip count is going to directly reflect your performance. Your capital gains and your % gains are simply variables they are greatly dependent on your performance (of course) but also dependent on your leverage and position sizes and from a beginners stand point I don’t feel a true reflection on performance.
Also the money you lost forget about it. Please consider it a lesson learned and DO NOT go back into this as a result of trying to make that money back every trade is a new trade never dwell on or praise your previous trades but merely learn from them.
The first advice I’ll give you is, don’t rush it. We are all so eager to learn and make money quick, but giving yourself such time constraints when it comes to learning will only put you in an unecessary stressing and frustrating condition which is not healthy for your trading experience. Slow down, focus and assimilate the material you have decided to study. Start with the basics here on Babypips then proceed with arguments that you found to be the most interesting by buying books that gives you deeper and more detailed insight in the argouments you think work best for you be it harmonic trading, elliott wave or whatever trading style suits you well. My point is, learning takes time and you should give yourself the time you really need.
Second, even though trading live teaches you the true and hard psycological aspects of trading, I really suggest you trade on demo especially if you have just started your journey in the Forex world. I’m not saying that trading live is bad, but be prepared to lose the money invested the first times.
Third, instead of focusing on obtaing a hard number in gains per day, I would focus in obtaining what really matters in trading and that is consistency. There will be winning and losing days, but in the end what matters is that equity going up. it doesn’t matter how slow or fast as long as it consistently goes up. If you’re consistent your gains will grow exponentially over time if proper money management and risk ratio is employed.
I hope these advices gave you at least some direction to focus on and don’t be afraid of asking further questions here. We are all here to help each other. Happy trading :57:
I have just started and am still in kindergarten. Very easy to read and understand… I now understand I have to undertsand and master the basics first.
Not sure what capital I’d need. I have access to nearly £1000 a month spare money at the moment plus fairly substantial savings, although I am a relatively risk averse person. I wouldn’t want to risk it and would rather gain expertise and get a good percentage rate of return ( eg 130 % ) than simply chuck lots of money in to get the same return in money terms.
Good advice not to dwell on past losses… thanks.Quite difficult though.
I view the £300 as money well spent on teaching me some valuable lessons, although it is money I am down, not money lost.
My mind is telling me that 20 - 30 points is possible for a days trading and if in time I was £5 a point, I would make my goal.
Is that a good way of looking at things, ie Moderate performance, higher stakes.
[B]1. MONEY MANAGEMENT[/B]. IMHO is the most important aspect of trading. Have a plan, write it down!
Demo account are good to learn the platform that you will be using but they can not prepare you for the emotional voyage when you finally press the button on your first live trade.
Have a trading plan, this means keep a trading journal of all your trades (time, pair, SL, TP, reason for entry, pips won, pisp lost, etc), so you can analyze in the weekend and dont make the same mistakes over and over again. This is one of the KEY, trust me, if you dont keep a trading journal you will never be succesful.
Also learn about money management, which is one of the most importan aspects in trading.
And dont forget that it takes time to become a profitable trader, it took me 3 years to make it. You will have to read a lot and practice a lot, and eventually you will come up wot your own strategy, So dont rush things and dont take unnecesary risks.
Im newish to trading aswell but what has helped emensly is to take screenshots of the different timeframes before you take the trade and reasons why then a screen shot after so you can look back and analyze your trading!
I was to say it first and will not be the last to say it about money management. The reason it is so important is that you can stay in the game for a very LONG time if you have a MM plan. I should have said that earlier. Basically money management allows you to keep trading even if you lose say, 40 trades in a row. What it does is set your sights on something that you can realistically do.
Sure, you can plop 5k in with a broker at 50:1 lev. Look at a chart and say… hmm, I think it might go down in the next 30 minutes. Sooooooo… I think ill drop 3 mini lots on it for a bit… till i think its done. 3 bucks a pip there if your talking eurusd. You might get it right OR you might get it wrong. However, if you get it wrong and it tanks against you for say 50 pips before you cut your losses with no stops or limits… 50 x 3 bucks… you just tanked your account 150 bucks… 1 trade
Lets not forget the self destructive trader that likes to make 5 -10 trades a day… and he does that on all of them.
hehe, you know what is really cool about this website. You can hear your old questions being answered and then you old answers that you got… now being repeated.
I get that to now. Could you imagine trying to trade forex now a days with no knowledge of it without a website like this?
I am a newbie myself. I to am trying to make since out of this Forex market. I am currently learning in this pip school. But in all reality it seems to me that unless you have rather good amounts of cash at your disposal opening an account in Forex to trade might not be a good idea. I mean most of us can’t afford to lose money. And if Forex is that risky it is no wonder that most new traders get out or lose most or all of there account money. Is there anyone in this forum who has actually started with a minimal cash account and made it big or at least a decent profit. I see and hear about all this money to made by the market gurus and those seasoned veterans selling courses and videos and I know where there making money, and it isn’t Forex; But is there actually anyone making money in this market or anyone who is where the newbie is now and who has made some money in Forex?
Sorry, I am a little late to this thread, and agree with most of what has been posted thusfar, but I think you said early on that you have $1000 pcm available to trade with, and want to target $100 a day? That would be a return of 10% a day in your first month! Assuming that you keep your risk at the same level, compounding would very quickly mean that you really don’t need to add any further funds to your initial $1000 and you will be very comfortable very quickly.
However… I think that it is completely unrealistic to set out as a new trader to target $100 a day off a $1000 account, and I think that the $5 a pip you mentioned is far too much, too, sorry. I think that trading that way you will lose more than the $300.
Anyway, I am rambling a little and am overlapping with what others have said, but I would just like to reinforce the point that a specific monetary goal is not the soundest way to set out. When I started, I simply initially targeted consistency. Even losing money initially, if I felt that I had learned something important and would not make that specific mistake again, then I was happy enough. I then hit breakeven, then targeted a % return (5% pcm initially), always risking the same per trade (1%). Then I targeted 10%. So I am afraid that I just think that your target is overly-ambitious for your proposed account size, and your risk per trade is likely to leave you with a large drawdown. Nothing is certain, maybe you can pull it off - but if $100 a day were likely on a $1000 account, particularly early on in a trading career, then there would be a lot of very, very wealthy people on here. Do the maths on where 10% a [I]month [/I]can take you - if you can genuinely invest $1000 a month in your trading account, then doing that for a year while hitting 10% a month will see you very wealthy indeed while never having to invest in your account after that initial year.
I totally agree with Simon. As a newbie your target is overly ambitious, and you need to carefully calculate what your money management plan will be failure tondonso will easily result in a dredded Margin call.
