Forex Trading is the best way to make money, but it is not an easy way, we need to take it a lot seriously, if we ever wanna become successful Trader.
It’s not hard. If you’re good at the FOREX, you’re good at it. It’s hard for other people to hit a ball with a bat. If you’re good at it, it’s not hard to hit the ball.
I read this all over, too. “Only pros can do this or that on rare occasions, under a blue moon on Monday.”
Bull****. I can do hundreds of trades in a row without losing a trade.
I don’t have one system. I don’t do one thing. I have done one system. I have done one thing. But if you’re good at the FOREX - like Lebron is good at Basketball - you keep learning and evolving. You change, you try, fail, you refine. If you do something long enough and critique YOUR OWN trades (not advice from others) you’ll perfect your technique.
Of course you can make 30% on your money a month. Don’t let people tell you what you can do. Prove what you can do. And if you can’t do it, stop. [B]And figure out why[/B].
The FOREX is about making profit. For most people it consists of making more profit than loss. Making more money than you lose. I loosely subscribe to that idea as the only reasoning for even logging in but that idea isn’t remotely good enough for me or anyone who is a perfectionist goal setter.
My goal is to never lose money. And so they way I trade is as a scalper leveraged high at the very exact right moment.
Your goal may be to make 60 percent successful trades and only have 40 lost that day.
Or maybe you quit the second you lose a trade.
Or maybe you quit as soon as you get a successful trade in.
It doesn’t matter. There is no right or wrong.
I’ve done and tried all those approaches. At the end of the day, I don’t want to lose a penny. THAT’S my goal. And that’s ok. Sometimes it’s better to lose a little than a lot. But I don’t want to lose ANY. So that’s my goal. DON’T LOSE ANY.
I’ve spent a modest amount of money reading books about being in the zone and how to trade a certain system or way. I’m not saying they don’t work for the people who wrote them. But I have to trade the way that excites me and works for me. And compared to how I’ve evolved my own system? I think the way everyone else trades is crazy.
And it should be that way for everyone. [B]We should look at everyone else and think what they do is crazy[/B]. Because FOREX trading is as personal as a fingerprint.
I do 50 trades a day and never lose one. Do people believe that? No, not really. It sounds insane. And yet it is easy for me because I trade this crazy way that seems instinctual and comfortable for me but looks dangerous from the outside. No one will tell you to trade like I do. And yet if I try to keep up with trends and predict what will happen next? I lose every cent I have. Sometimes I win so many in a row it stops updating them on the screen. Sometimes I take pictures on my phone of the max amount showing in a row that I’ve won on the screen so I can look at it later because even when I do it over and over day after day, even I think it can’t be possible to do so many right in a row. HOW can I do that? THE PROS CAN’T EVEN DO THAT.
Allegedly…but I know if I can? Others do it too. So… yeah, so can you.
There are no ‘pros’ who know better than you. [B]It’s your brain[/B]. And you have [B]eyeballs [/B]that can see. When you lose, analyze your loss dispassionately and find the flaw. Don’t be upset with yourself. Be a learner. Learners learn and they keep learning. They don’t give up or stop because they are teaching themselves what to do and what not to do. Don’t see the flaw someone told you is there. See the flaw YOU figured out. Don’t hear the criticisms you read in a book and don’t look at a trade and see what someone said would happen wrong or right - LOOK WITH YOUR OWN EYES. YOU WERE THERE. DON’T LIE TO YOURSELF. HOW CAN YOU MAKE IT BETTER NEXT TIME? BE HONEST. You are smart. You can figure it out.
And write it down.
And next time don’t do that.
The FOREX is not rocket science. It’s not splitting an atom. It’s a lot harder to land a plane in the Hudson river or do brain surgery.
And yet people want to tell you only ‘pros’ can make 30% on their money in a month?
That’s bull****.
They’ve found a system that works for them. That doesn’t make them a pro. It just makes them a BASIC pattern observer and that’s found a way to control themselves and to output certain actions in order to effect a 30% result.
Ask yourself if you think 30% a month is amazing. I don’t think it is.
So if I have a 100 dollar account in a month all I’ve made from it is 30 dollars in 20 days? and really I don’t even like trading on Sunday so it’s really 15 days?
I started a 100 dollar account for fun and in 4 days I had 147 dollars and change. And that was doing many trades probably over a hundred, and on a platform I hate. I hate that AVA platform. It’s painful and awkward to use for me. I had no fun.
So I made almost 50% a week on my money. But theoretically in 4 weeks it would be impossible or highly unlikely for me to have made 30 dollars? When in reality I made 50 bucks a week and ended the month at 300 dollars total?
Good thing I didn’t know only pros can do it.
Don’t limit yourself by whatever people tell you you can do. That limit is THEIRS. That’s THEIR limit. The limit THEY can do. Not your limit. And not what you can do.
Do what [B]you [/B]want to do.
If you stare at a screen long enough you will figure out the patterns there and correct your own flaws.
The FOREX is like a video game – there’s millions of ways to play it, and millions of ways to win it.
And if you like it enough and you have the personality that wants to suss-out how to understand every nuance of it - you will.
I did.
And I’ve only been doing it for four months. Imagine how much better I will be in a year - two - five years from now?
People say using demos isn’t real. It’s like when you play poker online without real money. And while it is true that people do act differently when the money on the line is actually their own - you SHOULD master your style and technique on a demo first. Forex trading is a lot of muscle memory really, even tho it’s a cerebral skill. You can try different approaches that way and continue to learn. I still trade on my demo accounts. Which keep getting bigger. You should absolutely be able to make money on a demo.
The most important thing is:-- if you aren’t making money, figure out why. That’s it. [B]Figure out why[/B]. And then figure out how to make money. That’s it. People want to complicated it and stress about it. But if you just lock yourself away with a demo and stare at it for hours a day - if you can do that. If you like that - there is literally not ONE WAY YOU CAN’T GET BETTER. You will get better by osmosis.
It’s just how much work do you want to invest. To me, there was no limit. The limit was when I understood and I was comfortable. That’s when I could scale back in intensity.
No matter how good you are, trading is always a rush. Because ANYTHING can happen. There is no sure thing.
So isolate yourself from advice and other people’s trading secrets. Forget everything the pros told you and use your own brain and figure out HOW to win. FIGURE IT OUT. And get in touch with your own trading style. It’s very zen. Anything worth mastering has that secret element. Trust yourself and critique your trades based on what you see before your eyes. If you like to leverage low over time. Do that. If you like to scalp like me at the highest leverage they can through at you for 3 seconds at just the right moment? do that. Pretend there are no books and no advice and no forums and there’s just YOU. If you HAD to figure out the forex and how to trade to make money to save the life of someone you loved, could you do it? Could you figure it out if you studied it enough? Are you smart enough to make it work for you?
Of course you are. And besides from all that the FOREX is the easiest thing in the world to make money on. You have two choices:-- UP OR DOWN.
It’s not complex. Pick a direction. You have a 50/50 shot.
It literally reminds of watching lemmings follow each other off a cliff. That’s all the forex is:-- lemmings walking off a cliff. One starts and everyone follows.
You can’t write someone else’s book and you can’t trade someone else’s style.
But you sure as hell can make 30%+ on your money every month.
If someone was ok with just making 30% on their money - which is better than almost any reliable investment out there - but still…if they are ok making just…
30%?
They really need to raise the bar on the definition of ‘pro’.
But even that said? IF they are happy? They are winning? They are fine.
But it’s not about THEM. It’s about YOU.
What are you happy with?
Their lowball 30% irritates me. It makes them happy. How does it make you feel?
It’s all about you.
Good posts…
One thing we must keep in mind is account size: so you make 30% in a month from an initial account size of $100, for example, and you achieved that by amazingly not blowing your account as you furiously scalp your way through each day, perhaps making fifty trades or so each day…
But 30% of $100 would be $30: what would that represent, compared to the hours that you spent hard at work, every day, in front of your screen? If you signed up to job like that, the union woul take your employer to court for treating you inhumanely, paying you less than the minimum wage…you would earn more per hour by stacking shelves in a supermarket.
So why do it? Compounding, I hear?
Well, realistically, which self-taught, home trader could sustain 30% profits every month? Find me a trader that can, and if you find one, you can bet that they are rarity.
This.excellent post illustrates my point to the letter:
Fundamental teaching from a profitable trader @ Forex Factory
I do not buy the ‘trading as a hobby’ philosophy…
If you spend money on buying a bicycle to get fit every day, you win on your investment: that is a good hobby.
If you went to museum exhibitions with friends and paid to enrich your cultural and social life, you would also win on your investment: another good hobby.
Sitting at home by yourself getting unfit in front of a computer for hours AND losing money for it? Would you ever choose this as a ‘hobby’?
No, of course not: all of us trade to gamble some money to make money out of it. The problem starts where it becomes an addiction, where we keep losing money but live on hope for a ‘big break’. It becomes like joining the thousands of untalented hopefuls queuing up at the X Factor auditions, hoping to become pop stars. We laugh at them when they sing out of tune in front of the judges and delude themselves that they have talent! Yet we should also laugh at ourselves, or at least be able to let go of the ‘trader delusion’ once we realise that losing time and money over this fantasy is not only pointless but also harmful.
well said mate, well said!
Well, I have to totally disagree and say this is [B]not [/B]well said at all!
Quite frankly, I think this tastes of pure cynicism born of your own (publicly-stated) falilings.
Are we (once again!) caught in this “made a million” or “lost it all” scanario of two extremes and nothing in the middle???
What is the difference between a hobby and a profession? Are you saying there is no room for something in the middle?
I am sure there are thousands of happy traders like me that do [I]not [/I]wish to trade full-time without some other form of income, but still devote a lot of time and commitment to it.
Naturally, the intention of the “hobby” is to achieve an overall profit from the activity. But that does not have to be a million or nothing. It is perfectly possible and entirely acceptable to trade with the intention of accumulating funds rather than making it also produce a monthly income to cover living expenses…and the amount of capital that one chooses to use for that purpose and the rate of return that that one is happy with is entirely a personal matter.
Just because one does not put all one’s life at risk through total reliance on trading income does not mean that one is automatically destined to failure and loss . in fact quite the contrary since one can pick and choose when to trade and when not.
Trading also incorporates a multitude of other interesting aspects apart from making money, although, of course, by definition, success with trading as a “hobby” is ultimately the profit - but its size (as they say) is not the prime issue! 
you are taking it too strictly Manxx. Take a look at trading. it in fact is either bust or burst. looking at it as a hobby is not usefull in 2 ways:
1st. sooner or later (especially in midlife crisis, from which im still far away) a person will reevaluate his life and achivements, at this point if you have the hobby of trading and are not a professional trader it is very likely that that person will see a hope in trading in achiving goals he/she did not achive yet. that will lead into pressure (preussing himself to achive quickly what he couldnt achive in 20-30 years) and will lead into fail and lost savings.
2nd. a hobby is something that is supposed to make fun. trading is no fun. there is no other job that is more boring (and im talking here only if you trade good, if you dont trade good then trading is “thrilling”). besides that, as PMH mentioned, it makes you fat lazy and converts you into a couche potatoe (only sitting in chair infront of computer in free time). making you fat and lazy.
if somebody wants ahobby i suggest a million other things besides trading.
it defacto is: bust or burst. you either make money with it or you dont. and we dont need to go into definition of making money. for someone 1000/month next to his/her usuall income is great money and i agree that this person making a 1000/month by not spending too much time sitting infront of computer is a successfull trader. noone said it must be a million.
the statement was only: trading is not a hobby.
…In fact I’m gonna give this one more whack with the hammer…:
So far recently I’ve had Turbo telling people like me and Lexys, who prefer daytrading to long term positioning, that we are just wasting our time and lives…and now you, PMH, are telling people like me (again), Eddieb and, I believe, Bobmaninc that we are doomed to disaster just because we trade part-time alongside another form of income (which Turbo does as well).
Call it a “hobby”, a “pastime”, an “interest”, or part-time employment, what difference does it make if it is working at a level one is satisfied with and you are happy with it?
here’s a BP quote:
[I]“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.”[/I]
[I]Colin Powell[/I]
I take your point of course, and I acknowledge that Turbo wouldn’t, and that you and I wouldn’t … but still, there are people who do, you know - and some of them very persistently, for years?
There are also people who study “lottery-winning systems” and spend a quarter or more of their weekly income on lottery tickets to test them out with a funded-account-equivalent. And I suspect there’s a similarity of motivation, there, for many people, too. And - digressing for a moment, since that’s my [I]forte[/I] :8: - I also suspect that the “lottery people”, for all that we might deride their aspiration, have arguably “got it right” in the sense that what they’re doing [B][U]is[/U][/B] probably their most realistic chance of ever winning a million (albeit randomly, of course, rather than as a result of their hobby activities), as well as being a hobby they enjoy?
Well that is a surprisingly subjective statement coming from you. The fact that you find it no fun is your own issue . simply don’t do it.
There are many people, like me, that relish it. live it, thrive on it. It offers me far more than an other hobby ever has. Even the issue of ill-health is totally misleading. You seem to have this conviction that we are all sitted 24 hrs a day goggling at a screen with the only observable movement being an occasional flick of a finger as we place a trade and a twitch in the eye as it inevitably goes wrong and an occasional growl if anyone else accidently comes near us - followed probably by an overnight attachment to a bottle to condole ourselves, if we have any money left for that…
For example, I do my PC work in the morning and/or afternoon, then I am free hte rest of the day to go walking in our neighbouring forests with its 3-30km trails, work out in a home gym, go to town, spend 2 -3 days at the summer cottage chopping firewood, boating, fishing and generally out in the fresh clean air (I also trade from there with mobile 4G),
I do not understand any justification for this blanket condemnation of “small-time” trading beyond a certain arrogance and a bitterness over a personal failure. Each case is personal to the person concerned. If you don’t like a certain way of trading then why criticise those that do…
[I]“A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” [/I]
[I]Bob Dylan[/I]
ok, why are you trying to bring people in to support your idea?
I am telling my viewpoints. i aswell said that 99% of daytraders go broke within 4 years. i didnt say 100%.
You have to differentiate between me telling things to you or Lexy and things im saying to POINT OUT to NEW PEOPLE that what they hear, in form of media and BabyPips posts, is actualy very unlikely and not easy to achive. If you achived it or not, was/is not my beer.#
why do you take my sentences personal?
the topic is “is trading a hobby or not”.
the point that PMH raised is not weither someone can trade next to another career, it was if trading is a hobby.
You must remember that over 1000 people read this forum daily. and if some people say their opinion onto something then it is normal that there might be counter opinions. and by trying to shut up the counter opinions it does not make someone opnion “right” or “correct”.
the point is that not only one opinion is right. and that there are several thousand people reading this opinion.
if you really feel like discussing wether trading is suitable as hobby or not, we can go on and have that discussion, but in my eyes, giving a different opinion to another opinion is part of any forum and enables the quiet readers to see diferent sides. you open up a new thread with the title “is trading suited as hobby or not? -please only opinions of experienced traders!” and we can have this discussion between people who are doing this since years.
yes trading is not my main income and i am very happy for that. I use trading to suplement my real life business. with what i do in trading every year i use as security for a loan to buy a new hotel every year. the simple reason for this is that my hotels are secure income which is build up that way that i dont actualy have to work more than 1 hour a day in average. in trading im working more than 1 hour a day and it is everything else than secure. i can have a good year and a bad year, i can aswell have 10 bad years and that is the main reason why I do not desire to live my life and make it dependant only from trading.
in fact do you know what most professional traders work for? they work for to be able to not have to work anymore. friends of mine from frankfurt (traders) ask me more often than i ask them for tips on indexes and stocks. they ask me “hey Tomy, where can i invest my money securely so i dont have to depend on trading in ten years anymore?” - “what kind of company can i open in which my time is not consumed to much?” - “where can i pour in money and see if it works before i stop trading and change into that company?”
why do you think institutional traders open brokerage companies, or start news blogs, or start selling methodes of trading to newbies? because they feel like working more? no- they want to do something else than trading aswell, something they can rely on in case their trading luck changes. and we al know it changes sooner or later. if you dont believe me, just come visit me in Frankfurt, i will walk you through the frankfurt stock exchange trading floor and you wil realize one thing. the average age there is 30. not 50. why? because people get burned out so fast in this job that after 35 everyone is only looking to find another career in whatever makes money and a life that is secure where you dont have to think if you are lucky next year trading or not.
We can all agree to disagree on something, Keith…respectfully of course
Ooh, well, if we’re introducing quotations from Nobel prizewinners into the thread, with some trepidation I offer the following …
[i]“Make mistakes, but learn from them.” [/I]
[I]Niels Bohr[/I]
and again, manxx, this is the last time i repeat it.
i was not targeting to attack you, thou i am very fascinated why you feel that you are beeing attacked so strongly. you dont need to use “reductio ad absurdum”-s in the form of:
to try to disprove a statement of “sitting on a chair makes you fat and unhealthy”.
why do you have such a strong reaction lately when someone has a different opinion than you?
…Keith, these opinions are not aimed at you personally
.you are far ahead of anyone like me or the hundreds of trader wannabes…so of course any ‘warning’ or ‘reality check’ type of message is not aimed at you…
But the fact that you choose to go walking in the fresh air instead of spending the day in front of the computer marks you out as an experienced trader: a newbie will want to put in hundreds of screen hours, but it could all be for nothing…at the point where a newbie has been putting in hundreds of hours of screen time and they are still not making a success of it (just being profitable - not necessarily making millions), then they will have to decide whether it is healthy or rational to continue. If you did a cost-benefit analysis of trading at that point, you could find that it would serve you very poorly as both a capital gain source and a hobby…
So that is my opinion…and you are not immune, Keith, from expressing your opinion based on your experiences, otherwise you and I would be the same person.
You are both pounding out blanket negatives against a whole class of traders just because they don’t happen to match your own ideals and methods - in fact I don’t there is [I]anyone [/I]here that meets up with Turbo’s criteria.
I much preferred the happy, positive, energetic, creative, entertaining, and informative PMH of Pre-Brexit to the negative, cynical and somewhat bitter sounding one we have recently.
If you dont believe trading works for you and now dont believe it can work for others - why bother coming here at all? If that is your attitude then just walk away and leave others to get on with - or do you feel you are on some kind of missionary work to save the näive from financial disaster? Same with Turbo, doesn’t trade forex, thinks everyone here is going to lose, doesn’t like the way we trade, in fact doesn’t seem to have a good word for anyone or anything - except apparently for you when you express an equally negative blanket opinion of everyone.
Get real, get a life and stop moaning…and for goodness sake get a more positive outlook on things!
lol ok, youre pathetic. you get questioned on your opinion once (once!) since noone ever questioned you on your opinion before and you go rage around telling people to leave this place?
whats wrong with you dude? you got some issues?
PMH is truthfull he says how his situation is and what he is up to.- and now you try to use his honesty against him in a debate/argument?
stop writing for today, give it a few hours of sleep and then tomorrow reread everything again and then answare.
i simply think Manxx is having a bad day and i really dont understand why he is so fed up to use attacks. il delte the rubbish. but if he thinks he is right about me not agreeing with anything people here are doing or saying then he might just check my history on “given likes” and “thanks for this post”.
only because i dont post on every post i like a reply which goes like “wohoo grseat post, heres a cookie you deserve it” does not mean i disagree or look down on methodes others are using.
Can we all just get along?