Transition into live trading?

Hello People,

I have been going through the school of pipsiology as well as forums. I am also trading on this specific demo account for a few days now. I still have to learn the exit (one of the most important thing) and refine my money management. But, I believe that the money management heavily depends on my win-rate. I have been learning and trying things simultaneously, out of 80 placed trades I have 73% win-rate. Although i am not sure how to count my win-rate since I was waiting for one losing trade to flip in my direction but then i lost hope and closed it. That was a big loss.

So here is my plan, from tomorrow my target is to pull out 10 pips profit out of the market each day with 1 pip per trade. And so that should determine my win-rate properly.

My question is, when do you guys think that I should start trading with the real money?

Hi there… I am not one to give advice as I have lost money on trading time and time again… But if I could say anything to you it would be: do not.rush into.live trading until

a) you have made money consistently overall for at least a few months (some people say weeks, some say months,.the point being that you need to prove that you can be profitable under different market conditions);

b) you have enough capital to make it work for you.

Point b) is where.most of us retail traders fail, because the tendency seems.to be to try pushing a very small account to grow fast by taking too many risks and eventually blowing it up.

More and more I start looking at this as a business, so I have gone back to.demo trading and will.not.trade.live.until the day when I have enough capital, by which I mean between 5000 and 10000 (Pounds).

What do you think about that?

Oh boy! i wrote a huge reply, then the page got refreshed and I didnt know the restore button. Anyways, here we go again.

Under capitalization is a problem that i do no understand. I mean, if you are doing something wrong, then even a 100k account will be wiped out. On the other hand, if your trading does what it is supposed to do then 10$ account will grow to 100k eventually. The problem I believe with the small account holders is that they try to push it unrealsticly and without patience. For example, when i have a 10 dollars account, i am not concerned about making million and quite my job. I am worried about turning that into an 11$ account then 12…13…15…20…1000 and so on. This was the whole topic of my other thread as well.

The downside of your own large capital is that there is more emotions involved. You worked hard for that money, your hands will be sweaty when placing a trade.

To get the taste of the real money, i would suggest that many brokers offer no deposit bonus. Like fbs (dot) com… they give out bonus without verification so you can get it again and again on every new account if you blew one. its a little tricky to take out the profit but it is yours eventually.

Hi there… You have a good point but the word ‘eventually’ is where we could dig deeper: if you started with $100 it would take years and years to turn it into something like a 10000 account, and that is with no guarantees, hundreds amd thousands of screen hours without ever taking money out…the psychological element is underappreciated here: what activity in the world could somebody do for years and years without any reward, and not feel less inclined to spend time on it?

Would it not be better to work three jobs, save up 50000, open a decent-sized account so that even with small leverage you could make some decent returns and actually take out money at the end of the month to treat yourself or your loved ones to something nice?

There is an age element to this: the older you get, the more value you put on your time. For me, who just turned forty and have become a parent last year, there is less and less time available, so I am less prepared to spend hundreds of hours on something that is so anti-social and has no guarantee of moral, social, or financial reward. I would rather spend time with my child, my partner,and going out…

So in the end it is down to you, but compounding on an account that is too small takes too long and the anecdotal evidence from these forums suggests that people in this situation eventually run out of patience and try to speed up the process by taking on huge leverage and blowing up their accounts… So I think it has no chance of success, because if you are human you will need a material or moral reward for something like this, and that feeling may not come for two, three, five years, but eventually you will need to draw the sums and say: “Is this trading game worth my time?”

It’s difficult to give an answer that accurately covers [I]all[/I] people and [I]all[/I] circumstances, but here’s a “rule of thumb” answer: don’t think about trading with real money until you’re accurately collated the results of a minimum of 300 consecutive trades [B][U]and[/U][/B] results over a period of a minimum of 6 months (whichever criterion is the [U]longer[/U]) and proved that you didn’t make a net loss over the period.

Eew, I know how inconvenient that is!

Yes, this is perfectly true.

Generally, undercapitalisation is a problem because of the way people behave with it, regarding their position-sizing.

If you look at it completely logically and sensibly, of course, and do everything “pro rata” regarding position sizes, it needn’t be. But in reality, that very often isn’t what happens: people get frustrated by dealing with such tiny amounts of money and think to themselves “I’m never going to make anything work talking about with these position sizes” and of course that’s when the “accidents” happen.

What they’re failing to appreciate, of course, is that the purpose of trading with a $200/$300 account isn’t to try to make a living from it, but to gain experience, screen-time and real-money practice with it, until they eventually have enough capital to trade meaningfully.

In my opinion, those are brokers to stay [B][U]WELL[/U][/B] away from, for reasons that aren’t immediately apparent.

Genuine, ethical brokers don’t use promotions like that, and there are reasons for that. Reading the small-print of the exact terms of those “deposit bonuses” will clarify how many trades you’d need to do before ever being allowed to withdraw any of the profits.

“Brokers” who make offers like this (and there are a lot of them), without exception, aren’t genuine brokers: they’re all counterparty market-makers whose business model revolves around attracting a particular type of customer, whose lack of experience they know will make such offers appear attractive to them, because they understand very clearly that they’ll almost never actually pay out at all, on such offers, because (a) their system is more or less rigged, overall, to make it close-to-impossible for the customers to win in the long run, [B]because that’s how they make their living[/B], and (b) that’s the potential customer-group their research has correctly identified as the one least likely to be able to trade profitably over the medium-term anyway - in other words, the odds are stacked [B]hugely[/B] in the “brokerage’s” favour. :58:

These are “brokers” who don’t offer negative balance protection, and they’re “regulated” (if you can call it that) in a variety of “offshore” places, such as Cyprus, where they’ve [U]deliberately chosen[/U] to be regulated for reasons that suit themselves very nicely but - to put it mildly - are far from in their customers’ interests - in other words, they’re “brokers” one shouldn’t trade with. :23:

This is one of the [I]biggest red flags[/I] you can have, warning you [B][U]not[/U][/B] to do business with a “broker” - not because of the bonuses themselves but because the fact that a no-deposit is offered [B][U]tells you something very important about the brokers own business model, the type of traders they’re trying to attract, and why[/U][/B].

In other words, they’re not reasons that are apparent to the inexperienced, and “the inexperienced” are exactly the ones they’re trying to attract … and the fact that they’re promoting “no-deposit bonuses” tells you that, loud and clear - if you understand how to hear it. :wink:

Applause is all I can offer for your mistressful reply…

Oscar worthy!

Top advice.

Thank you.

Hmmm that actually makes alot of sense. Impressed. As i said, i am new to this myself, thanks alot for the clarification. I have the demo account with tickmill. Can you suggest who should i go with? I mean doing a quick research shows that even XM gives 30$ no deposit bonus and they seem pretty legit. :26:

I’m actually going to disagree with this, though not completely.

I do think generally speaking this is a good way to go before getting fully into the markets. Because the psychology of live trading can be considerably different than when demo trading, though, I think it’s important to give yourself some exposure to that very early in your development. This will let you understand the emotional implications of any strategy you develop back in demo. I don’t mean someone should start live right away, and I certainly don’t think it should be done with anything more than a very small initial deposit. One needs to at least understand the very basics, and should only trade with a minimal amount.

Actually Tickmill is a good choice since they have FCA license so considered quite safe. As for the other recommendations I have experience with FXCM and Hotforex so take a glance at them too :slight_smile:
Good luck

As with almost everything in trading, it depends.
Some people believe that you’ll never really get to grips with trading psychology until you’ve traded with real money.

Psychology is only one aspect of trading, it’s also a skillset and you get better and better at it over time. There’s a huge amount of information overload in trading.
It may seem tempting to go to live because you may feel that demo is a waste of time because it’s not real money.
If you go live, you will most likely lose the money you put in. This may discourage you and push you away from trading.

My personal advice would be to stick to demo trading until you’ve developed the skillset and understand the concepts.
Then start on the psychology train and move from there into live.

If you’re under-capitalized then enter trading contests and try to win money. Some contests can make you develop bad habits especially if they are only percentage return based, for some you need like 500% ROI which means some gambling is involved.

I agree with you that you have to learn when to exit the market as it is one of the most important thinks in technical analysis. I suggest you to continue trading in a demo account until you feel safe with setting stop loss and take profit and then start in a live account.

You should start trading live when you feel enough ready for it. If you are tempted by the bonuses that some brokers offer then perhaps you should reconsider the fact that you might still not be ready enough. Try to be disciplined and don’t let fear or greed be your advisors. You could try with a micro account first to see how it goes but don’t push too hard to grow the profit fast as it does not work that way. Test your strategy on demo first and then check it on live (but make sure that the broker offers same conditions for demo and live accounts). The transition might seem hard but it is not impossible :slight_smile:

Even when we think/feel we are ready, I would advice any new comer to start very small and increase their lot by the progress obtained.

Until one is not fully learn basics of trading as well as some months of demo practice he should not go to live trading. He can do trading on technical and fundamental analysis on demo accounts. see how much he is good in funds management . He should be able to take and manage risk too.

In my opinion it’s best to move onto a live account after you start profiting on a demo account consistently over a considerable period of time, such as weeks, even months.

I had this same plan when I started using a Demo account. The plan was to find a trading strategy that could give me at least 5 pips per day. I tried for 1 week and got more than 10pips on a daily basis trading without any pattern or strategy.

What I did was find a pair and identify its current trend. If it is moving in that direction during my watch hours, I’ll just place a trade and pull out after a few pips. It is more like a scalping strategy, but trades last more than 1 minute, sometimes 3 or 5 mins. I raked in good number of pips for that week.

I thought I was ready and made small deposit to a real account. But then I realized a real account is different because there are other factors at play. How did I do in one week? …not a good end.

Lesson: Identify the difference between a demo and a real account. Not just the money. See how you can apply good management skills and emotional control first.

There another simple way to get pips is using bb. If u only want to take 1 to 2 pips per trade, and this is best for u. Bb outer line is the guidelines. If when price action example up n pass bb it sure will pull back. That just Scalping from there. When the price pass bb, and but remember… The price hv to b higher than the can trade, and if pass bb by abit only don’t place order.

[B]How to make money through trading?
[/B]
Studies cutting-edge trends.

Choose a buying and selling website. You can search in google. “Keyword” forexsignals, bestforexsignal hotforexsignal,usaforexsignal,forexsignales,tradeforexsignals, etc…

Create an account with one or extra buying and selling websites.

Exercise trading before you put real money in.

Pick reliable shares.

Purchase your first shares.

Invest mostly in mid-cap and large-cap companies.

Display the markets each day.