Hello, thanks for sharing this information is a good way to be close from other experiences. Although I don�t think Fx is a way to get a living I have my hopes in there as an economical support, for many people it is just a hobby to play with money, not for me. 
Here is my 2 cents on the matter. First off I am new to FX just since the mid summer. I have been trading since 1997. I started with nothing and made a bunch of money in the heyday at a daytrading firm as a soes bandit :)I scalped the hell out of the equities markets for years always facing the neysayers and people who say its impossible its too much risk whatever. But as you learn and get good, when you go into every trading day I expected to make money just like if you were working for the man, you expect to get paid. Sure I didnt make money every single days but most days. Once you get confident its like any other job you go in do your job and make money some days are better then others. Just like when you have a real job, some days your off some days your on. But as you grow, the stress of making money is gone, and its the newer people that do not understand it. If I went home with a loss be it 100 bucks or 5,000. Its the same I know I make money each and every month not to worry. Thats the feeling you have to build too. And when I first started I had no clue what I was doing and though I was going to never get this, but once it clicks and you put it all into place. Which includes discipline and money management( which was my weakest point at the time) I wanted to trade every wiggle!! I didnt wait for the trades I tried to make them come to me and I was humbled many times. Then I moved to futures/commodities mainly options on energy and scalping minis. Did that for a while. Scalping is great but it taught me to make and expect money quick and now. So when I changed into FX, I learned the hard way to wait for the trades to come to me. And by god I did. So now tis been a few months and I am profitable and doing it for a living, i.e. paying my bills with the profits:) Now I dont trade a big account, I have many thanks to James inside bar thread for the help. I was more of a news trader with other financial instruments but now go with TA and price action. So its all relative, while I am not making what I made with equities or futures yet. I can still manage to make enough as it were a real job with an average salary for now, and thats fine. This way I can learn and earn and survive and not dip into savings for the account. I can also slowly build my account, so as I am profitable now I will make myself earn the right to step up the volume. As for now I walk in everyday confident enough to make money and dont worry about losing becuase thats part of the game, and I know my losses becuase my stop losses are set in stone. And I have a cutoff. But what really helped was expanding my time frames for me which were 1 and 5 min charts to 15 and 30 min charts now. This allows me to watch and read the action and wait for the highest probability trades to set up which was initially the hardest thing for me because of my scalping nature, I wanted to trade every wiggle and expect to make bank on every trade. But now its a perfect scenario for me. I do not hold trades over night, while I do not really scalp( if I have the itch to scalp, I set up a micro account to screw around and alleviate that itch, this way if I am wrong I dont lose much and it takes care of the scalping need I might have:) I know this is long and drawn out and I am sorry but wanted to share it is very possible to make a living, but make sure when you start off you understand what making a living means for you. If you want to start off makein 10k a month I would say thats tough. But after you learn the ropes a bit and get your money managemnet under control and stop looking for the holy grail and start trading a well thought out plan, A few grand a month should be no prob. Then as each month of profitability goes by and your condfident in yourself and trading. You can then increase what you trade and you just gave your self a raise for doing nothing different. For the record, I trade inside bars, and star patterns only as my triggers of s/r lines. No other indicators. I trade in the direction of the trend and this past month earned the right to trade counter trend with some setups as well. I dont demo strategies, if I want to try them out I try them out in a micro account so atleast I have something on the line. I dont scale into a trade anymore, I only scale out. So I never double down. I either made a good entry and make money or if I see its not moving my direction, I get stopped out or take a loss sooner. Then on to the next setup. By the way I was a double down king where I can make a good money for a straight month and then give it all away on one trade becuae I double down and refused to lose- total lack of discipline and respect for money. I learned the hard way and now have a ton of respect for my money and my discipline that took me blood sweat and tears to earn. So I dont wish anyone to earn there stripes trading whatever instrument you chooseby blowing up for lack of discipline. You ahve heard it before and you will hear it many times over, discipline and money managment will make or break careers in this biz, so if you listen to anything I have to say just atleast listen to that. It will save you time and money. Never let anyone ever tell you , that you cannot acheive something. Like anything else if this is your dream you will acheive it thru hard work. Let go of your fear and just trade every trade with the same amount of respect. Never think you have this figured out , we dont . All we look to do is to take some money of the top of the market each day, and be humble or the market will humble you. I have been humbled early on in my career in the form of bankruptcy, so I know! Good trading to all, and I wish you the best.
nyrdarren,
Thanks for the uh … post I loved the insight. It would be interesting to know how you came up to speed in the way of learnin’ material such as books or videos or forums…
Thanks …
nyrdarren, you are the man a good and educational post. To survive in the trading business, it is all down to the individual to condition himself and equip with the necessary tools and mentality.
(Because it is a good post and some people might skip it as it was a little hard to read in block format)
Few people are there who are making their livings through trading this market. It is not that easy to make your living through trading. The present market conditions do not allow you make your living through trading.
What’s wrong with present market conditions?
On the contrary I believe the current market conditions are better to make some money.
I agree, I think the current market conditions are great to make money. Also just becareful, yes its more volatile but remember you control your own risk not the market. So if wider stops are needed just size down thats all. But yes, we are traders so the more volatility the more the oppurtunities.
I can not speak for forex directly but for stocks I can. I am still trading demo and but happy with my results.
With stocks there were more opportunities or potential for reward when the markets were volatile but there was more risk. To be honest though stock trading is kinda boring unlike forex.
Sick post buddy, you definately motivated me to stay in the game. I got really lucky @ the beginning, thought I was on my way to retirement, threw more savings in the acct., and then almost blew it all, from lack of money mgmt, discipline, and a total disrespect for $$$ so I know what you mean.
I’m trading with James too right now, and am getting the hang of it; its just the tgts that I still have to figure out. Super amazing system. I plan on making that my trading system too. What stars are you referring too? Morning and Evening?
I’m wondering though, why would you trade FX if you were making more $$$ in Futures and Options? I thought they were more lucrative. My plan was to actually get some experience in FX, and then juimp over to Futures and Options once I had a larger acct size.
Hey Monster,
Yes I was making more money trading futures, but its all about learning something new and putting in some time. So I figured I would give it a while to really learn FX. I know how to trade so I knew my learning curve would be a little faster but it still took a bit. When I say more money in futures, yes but if I was doing the equivilent size here in FX, I would be making more money in fx. So thats why I am starting slow and earning the right to size up in fx until I get where I was in other markets. I dont think about the money or else if I force trying to make s certain amount, thats when you lose. But honestly I have traded stocks, equities and options. Now remember I was a scalper, so it takes a toll on you. In reality while I trade FX intraday and always go to sleep with cash no positions, I do not scalp like I did in the futures. I could do hundreds of trades a day. Trading a lot, for small amounts whether the probabilities are on your side or not, fx has taught me to wait and patience was my enemy and now my friend. I also like FX due to I can pretty much pick any time to trade over a 24 hour period. Since I pretty much trade the 15/30/sometimes 60 min chart I like the fact that I can trade like 12 hours with lots of oppurtunities. Equities and futures( while futures obvioulsy trade longer then equities- they are not great at liquidity after hours). So for some reason I feel real comfortable with fx and in tune with it. I am not an expert by any means on world economies, just trade what I see that day in front of me. People will tell you fx is real risky but I am sure those are the people who never traded it before or lost quick due to the high leverage. You can trade with the high leverage with proper money management not a problem. I used to be greedy and used all the money I made to keep trading never really taking out to much, cause I figure the more I have the more I can make. So more money of mine was at risk at any time. Not the case with FX. Plus people talk about the crazy spikes and stop hunting. I trade with GFT and have an account with Gain thru Tradestation for the charts and never had a problem with either one of them. There are spikes here or there but I see them on all platforms. You know when I traded futures above and below certain levels on the e-mini indicies there were stops hunted as well. There were also errant spikes from program buying and selling as well. So in all its all the same just pick what you are most comfortable at. Yes I trade the inside bar like james thread, I also trade them off the 30 min. I trades morning and evening star patterns( looking for either exhaustion of a trend or trade them on pullbacks or retracements in a trend depending on what s/r lines they are near. I keep my stops at the high or low of the candle previous the inside bar or the star pattern. And then as it moves my direction I move the stop as quick as I can to b/e and if I get stopped out I get stopped. This way I might have a few quick stops but have a runnner when it runs. And I really try to limit my losses. Sure I can give it more room on the stop loss side . From what I have seen and traded intra day, If I am going to be wrong it will be quick and I dont want to give it to much room. This way if I get stopped, and then it goes my way I can get back in with either being stopped for a small loss or at b/e and then make it back when it starts to move the way I want. Also I will scale out say take 20 pips on half and then move the rest to b/e this way I have profit if i get stopped at b/e as well. Or I might take of 1/3 at 10 pips 1/3 at 20 pips and let the rest run or so. When I say stop is at b/e I mean stop is where I entered the trade not b/e on the whole trade. So If I took 20 pips on the first half I would bring my stop to my intial entry ( so if stopped I would earn 20 pips on the trade) , some people bring stop on second half so they are at entry -20 pips this way they would be b/e on entire trade if they get stopped. While yes sometimes this gives you more room to run, I am not worried about that , there are plenty of trades out there. This is my business and I want my business to sucseed, so I carefully plan my trades and trade my plan to earn money for my business
I had to comment on your post. My hats off to you. Very insightfull and well thought out. Thanks for taking the time to write this. A lot of people, including me do not have the patientence to write something like this.
Thank You,
Riggs
Just noticed you talked about figuring out targets Monster. While I dont keep an ATR indicator up on my screen. I do look at say the past 2 hours worth of candles and see what the range has been and then try to guide my exits with the range of pips in mind plus look for even levels the might be support or resistence, or any levels I have drawn in with horizontal lines that might be sticky. Here is a screen shot I took I think it was a week or 2 agoof the gbp/usd. Now I only took 2 trades that day since it was low volume and I waited for decent trades against a down trendline but they were good trades. I didnt take any inside bars that day, but if you look at my chart you will see the yellow dots on those candles, those are just alerts for inside bars to make it easier for me to see:) But those trades I thought were good risk reward, and I used the 30 min chart to try and filter out low liquidity crazy swings and really try to put the probabilities in my favor.
Thanks Riggs,
I was getting frustrated from hearing from a lot of people that nobody makes money trading, or that fx is the hardest to trade. Which I think both are false. It just comes from people who either are envious of those making money or who are not putting in the time and not fighting thru the emotion to get to the next level. Yes its not easy on the emotional aspect of things but once you break thru its much easier. When you get to the point of wanting to give up and feel you cannot do it , thats when you need to push even harder and beleive you will do it. Actually forex is good for people who dont have a lot of money becuase of the mini and micro accounts and if people are discipline you can make a little bit and learn at the same time, something you cannot do in futures becuase you need more money and they dont break it down like micro and mini accounts. I was on another forum I am sure you guys know elite trader, but people there are just plain rude. And anyone who wants to learn something new or god for bid says they make money trading all you see is people berating them and asking for proof and what not. This forum is great and 99% of people are nice and helpful and thats why I switched to here. I want to let people know we can trade for a living its not as hard as you think, it seems people are just setting themselves up for failure by reading negativity. So I got frustrated and wanted to share with you guys here. I have ben throught the highs of trading, and the lows bankruptcy but I had picked myself up and never gave up. I was so broke from having tons of money back in the heydays where I had to get a real job basically paying like 10 dollars an hour after making couple hundred grand a year. so I said to myself ok, never again will I work that kind of job. I know what I want, what is my dream and its trading. So I will get it and never let anyone tell me any different. You only need to prove yourself to one person, you! And people seem to think making a living is not worth it unless you are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, well sure thats great but in reality people would be happy pulling 40-50k a year trading and having time for family and what not. Then you can step it up and make more. Becuase unlike a real job, we have no politics , no glass ceiling or bosses in our way. Once we make a small living doing this, we know we can do it. We at that time have the skill and then when we want a raise we dont ask for it we just step up the size of what we trade and make more money. But like a job you earn a promotion, earn the right to move up your size this way you deserve it and will be ready for it and it should not change or make you afraid and make you trade any differently. If it does it means you were not ready for the promotion yet. What we have is a skys the limit scenario that we control once we are confident in ourselves
I see it has been mentioned here already but I will reafirm> I have been trading over 2 years and my biggest issue was letting loses run. Even if I knew I had entered incorrectlly. It is so much easier to makeup a small lose than a major one and there are many charts showing this. Some of the best training you could do is learning that what ever strategy you are using when it is a goneer and marking that in stone. GET OUT and WAIT for the next one. HE WHO LOSES THE LEAST WINS … In the Forex game. Another idea for this is to use a seperate charting package from your account and just hit the buttons based on the charts not looking at your account ballance or running pips. This way it becomes like any other job you do this here that here. Will help with emotions.
I have been trading fulltime since October and find it will be the most satsifing carreer yet. Also as your account ballance increases bring your $ per pip up slowly maybe a little everyday as it can be upsetting if you went from 2 or 3 dollars to 10 and those loses can make you panic when the market can really careless how much you put on a trade. Anyway There are people making money doing this and the key is not to get too greedy and learn all you can. It always amazes me how many folks are looking for a automated trading system. When the best thing you could do is learn price action. Then know matter where you are you turn on a chart and spend a few minutes looking and there are always trades to be had. Don't limit yourself to one thing there are many aproaches to trading and hardlly any are wrong..
I personnally like price action for trading using mainlly fibs and swings on 1,5,and 15 minute charts some of my best trading happens when most say you shouldn't trade when it gets slow, then I switch to the 1 and 5 minutes using the same things I look for on the 15.. less volital and a little more time to make choices. I look for trendline bounces and breaks on the 1 minute, that correspond to where the price is on the 5 and 15 .. ( ei. Fib levels etc..) I trade 50% and 61% retraces off the 5 minute when it is slow using 1 minute to enter and exit. I use some of James 40-100 pip per day ideas for good entry points and when to look for the trend to be changing and caution to exit . I try and limit my loses to 10,20,30 pips unless there is a turning area coming then I might hold to see if it holds or breaks if it breaks I am out.
I hope this helps with your question. I think alot off times those that
start making money stop using these sites and that is why you never hear from them. But if you really look there are quite a few who give back to newbies as we all had to learn at some point . Yes you can easilly make a living off Forex , But like anything else it is a job that requires skills that you will need to learn. Good Luck and don’t give up… Happy Trading to all… Ken:)
Inspiring advice all over this thread, thanks guys!
hey nyrdarrin
you found SCALPING the forex market difficult ??
hmmmmmmmmmm
considering that our backgrounds are so similar, and that reading your post is like re-reading a few dozen of mine with the ONLY exception being that i trade EVERY timeframe there is, it leaves me to wonder WHAT you did wrong on averaging DOWN !
with the experience you post, equities, commodities and futures would have given you an EXCELLENT foray into forex, which out trends ALL of the others !
but i have to agree, considering how often ive said the same thing, including having been a SOES bandit and the YEARS of experience -----
[B]
INTERESTING ![/B]
Sorry , I went and re-read this thread, Thought about another comment or 2.
First just to give some creditablity to Forex. I personnally have a freind who 4 years ago quit being a airline pilot to trade full time. His best single trade to date was over $500,000 dollars it was a postition trade and was added onto time after time. ( trade with the trend) It all sounds to good to be true but his trading account equals his risk. my personality is not good with long trades like that…
The Recipe for Success. This is was it takes to succeed at anything, If you spent as much time learning what you want to do, as you do complaining about your current situation, it would not take as long to learn a new career or even Forex . This is not pointed at anyone just a general observation of life.
Recipe 1 part DESIRE - We all have that desire to be our own boss to make our living on our own terms, Forex is the perfect TOOL for that. Need extra money for that new car , Trade a few extra hours, Get up and trade that UK market at 3:00 am good money maker there and only a couple of hours back to bed usually by 5:00 .
1 Part PASSION, FEELINGS, & EMOTIONS - These are all the same thing . You need to be positive and feel good about what you are doing . You need to see yourself in the future trading successfully. DO NOT FEEL LIKE A LOSER
EVER. If you find yourself Thinking Negativlly stop reassess get in the right frame of mind. I am going to make money today.This is why so many people tell you that if you have 2 losing trades quit for the day come back tomorrow
A good idea is a affirmative action plan to read prior to everydays trading, This should include thoughts of positive trading and where you want to be. Also it should include a brief description of your trading strategy, what you are looking for where your stops are what are your tagets are.. This is no different than corporate America. I ran a wholesale company and every year we had to write a Forecast of what we wanted to accomplish in the next year and every 3 months we had to look at that and see where we were in comparision to our goals. Why should we be any different. This is our lives here not a JOB ( JUST OVER BROKE ) I stole that not sure from who though.
Many people look at ideas like this and it sounds just stupid, but if these are things that some of the bigest companies require of the people that run there companies it can't be all bad and on top of that it is FREE.
Last 1 part ACTION - In the first part of this recipe I highlighted Tool . Forex is a tool .Every tool you ever owned came with instruction manuals. Most so big you never read them, and if like most of us you do read it later and you go WOW, IT CAN DO THAT TOO! . Forex is know different it is a tool that ANYONE can learn to use. The key is to focus your DESIRE and THOUGHTS
to this end. WE all know people that are great successes and very happy why. They are doing something that love to do. We also know people that are Successfull and miserable , why they are doing something that don’t want to do, But know how to use the tools. So anyone can learn to use the tool called Forex. We want to be the first type of person. Many people want to skip this last part of the recipe. I trade in a group and have been there over 2 years and it is amazing to hear the same very basic questions from the same people over and over they don’t have the right recipe for success. They don’t want to learn to use the tool, and are leaning on someon elses desire for them to succeed.
I will get off my soap box here ,,, and again Good Trading to all. Ken:)Hey MP,
Yes it definately out trends all the others, thats why I like it now. But when I was back in the days of soes and late 90s and early 2000’s even amidst the bull market of the the techs, i was contrian, I never traded with charts, so never follwed the trend or did TA. I would short quick spikes or buy quick tanks in the stocks, also the days of the old instinet green box, and ipo’s and I had a bloombeerg terminal becuase mainly just traded off news as well, so lots of size and quick profits so never needed charts. And the avgin down did hurt me then, it hurt me in index futures, where I would still play counter trend and say I was trading the ym, or er2 . I would try to time the top of the trend and keep shorting as it went up trying to bring the ever so elusive cost basis close to where the market was but as we know the market remains irrational longer then we can remain solvent. Thats where the avg in killed me then. Now if I scalp I go with the 5 min chart but just strictly playing around now with little money on the scalping. Basically being sucessful before I had to relearn to trade with charts and less risk, since I was sort of a rogue trader:) But I do miss the fractions of the stock market and when it was spread by 1/4’s and 1/8s I think then easier to trade and make money andthe level2 actually told you were the market was going. I am dating myself now but using the term follow the axe in the level 2 made me a lot of money. But I have not trded equities in a while. But I am sure in time I will be scalping as an added part of my forex trading repatoire. You can take a man away from scalping, but can not take scalping away from a man. For now I am more comfortable trading the higher timeframe fx, which is th 15/30/60 min charts and learning the lower times frames in smaller account. Just want to see the ATRS in those time frames and what not so I get the feeling how long to hold. I wish back in the day I studied charts and pa but never had the need. As you know back then even if you were wrong intra day wait a few minutes with the likes of msft, csco , sunw and amat all trading over 100 bucks a share it came your way eventually! Glad to see someone from the old days doing well in fx!