I dont know really where to post this, so I hope this post doesnt get deleted.
I always see people posting on here about trading Forex for a living. Personally, I like my health insurance, so it is not for me, but does anyone have knowledge of someone FROM HERE who went from recreational trader to full time trader? I would be interested in know some stories. I used to be involved in poker and there were always stories of people “going pro” and they never ended happily.
I was just curious to hearing some “bad beat” stories. Or the rarer happy ending?
If you like your health insurance why not just buy health insurance? Its a cost you pay either way so whats the difference? I’m going to be uninsured officially starting in June of this year but i’ve already looked into it and its really not that difficult to get another provider. Especially if you consider the increase in income you can make trading vs. any other job, your health insurance becomes a very small expense.
I’m a full time trader here, and while i’m admitidly nowhere close to considering myself “master of the markets” i’ve been consistently increasing my account size every month (almost everyday too) and i’m starting to systematically increase my trade size. I’m going to make it and there isn’t anything to stop me!
That being said it took me over a year and half to get where I am today and I lost A LOT getting where I am. I got to a point 4 months ago where I blew out an account and had to make a decision to either sell my car to refund my account and give it one more shot or give up and walk away. I made the right choice, I didn’t give up, and I couldn’t be happier with my decision! I have a lot of friends who are full time professional traders and they all have happy endings!
Hey guys am not a full time trader but i plan on becoming one soon. Am 21 so i got lots of time to learn this stuff if i want to make a living from it. I just wanted to say for the people wanting to become full time, don’t let anyone tell you you can’t. I believe if someone sets their mind to something, and put in the hard work and learning the basics anything is possible. daedalus your story is truly inspirational, what someone can do when they don’t give up.
Don’t give up, learn all you can and think positive.
Well if you make it, it is great. I dont want to make anyone feel that they CANT trade professionally, just was curious if it has been done. Again, I am coming from the poker world where you really can make a decent living with a 5000 USD bank roll, which is not really even a starting point for recreational trading in the Forex market.
I just dont think personally I could give up my job, which I enjoy, and the stability that it provides to risk it in trading, PERSONALLY.
Don’t want to be too personal, but how much would “enough” trading capital be in order to make a living. Even at 40% yearly ROR, it seems you would need quite a bit to live solely by trading.
I agree with you, you do lose that stability - but only initially. I’m at the point where I don’t even think about that any more. You do need to plan for the unexpected though. For example, i’m building up an “oh ****” account for a worst case scenario. My goal is also to build up enough to start getting into some fixed income investments to generate monthly income to help increase that stability factor.
To make a living? Not much… I could make 100k a year on 2 standard contracts. So figure 10k conservative to safely cover the margin… I’m not at that size yet but my goal is to be there by May 31st.
I average 20-70 pips a day, so thats 400-1400 bucks a day? Thats pretty good cash flow IMO.
And I plan on trading MUCH bigger size than that. As long as I keep my trade size relevant to my account size and don’t increase my leverage over what I trade right now - whats the difference if i’m trading 100 lots or 1? Thats the beauty of it!
I totally agree with your strategy daedalus. I must thank you for pointing that out to me a while back. I was initially confused about the 20 pips a day with 100 lots equating to 4.8 million /year because, as I read it then, I thought you meant one 100k lot, not 100 100K lots :eek:…I didn’t realize the power of that but I do now!!
So my goal is to use micro lots at 1:100, targets of 20-40 pips to set b/e stops, trailing stops after that and 2% risk of account balance per trade which means increasing lots as balance increases.
It is slow when starting with a low amount (baby steps), but once your balance builds it really starts compounding faster in a big way. When I’ve done it in demo from 1K up to say 20K, then I figure it will be time to try it for real…right now I’m only at 3K after a couple of months of trial & error :D, but something is starting to click, so one must just keep trying
Your pattern of progression is similar to mine and many other successful forex traders out there which is to have early success, then blow up your account a few times (or 7 times like me) and then finally begin to get the hang of things.
I actively started trading on Feb 1st, 2007. I played with the demo for 5 months, did very well and then went live on June 10. My success continued into my live trading until I became reckless and suffered a string of margin calls in the month of October. I had to keep pumping more money in to prevent further margin calls to the point that I had invested just over $50,000 (every dollar I had left at my disposal) and was left with only $8,000 on Nov 5, 2007.
Since then I have become a more much wiser, savvy trader. Those margin calls taught me some very good lessons. In fact, I have managed to pull off a “2004 World Series Red Sox versus the Yankees like” comeback. My account now sits at $104,308.41. I have nearly increased my balance by a factor of 13 in 15 weeks. At my current pace, all of our $250,000 debt will be paid off and I will should still have $100-150k left over to trade with in 3-4 months and both me and my wife will quit our jobs.
You CAN trade forex for a living, but only if you treat it like a business and not a hobby or a side investment. Also, as with any business, you must be prepared to incur losses before you become profitable. Most businesses take 2-3 years to get over the hump, forex is no different. But again, as with most new start-up businesses, there is a high rate of failure, and an EXTREMELY high rate of failure in the business of forex trading.
The four elements needed to make a living in forex are:
8K to 100K in 3 months, that is quite a haul. So, the answer to my question about how much is need can be as low as 8k and some luck.
In poker (my former love) you have to play many hours (3600+) to get a real sense of your ROR. What is the the min you have to trade before you can get a sense of your ROR?
Well, I’m ubernoob at this forex thing, so might answer might be less the accurate, but I’d say it all depends on what time frame you’re trading on.
To get a feal of your ROR, you must have a descent number of trades under the same tactic so the % of your wins is as close as possible to the real win % of the tactic you use.
So if you trade on a 15 min time frame, with a few trades per day, I’d say you can estimate your ROR in a few months. If you trade on a daily frame however, might take as long as a year to be sure your ROR is accurate. (better safe then sorry).
I’ve been having great success with some longer-term/swing trading off the daily charts. I was in a 45% drawdown about a month and a half ago, and now I’m only down 15% with the “new strategy”.
I dream of being a full-time trader too! But with this strategy I can have my cake and eat it too, really. I check the charts before work at 7am and after work at about 5pm for adjustments. I do a little analysis from 5-6pm and set orders at that time if I find something good. So just an hour extra “work” (it’s actually really fun!) and percentage-wise things are looking pretty sweet. My account is hovering above 2000 currently, so the dollar earnings are not enough to quit my day job.
I will consider trying out full time trading when I have 50,000 dollar account, but the way things are now, there’s no necessity to quit my job with this strategy.
To daedalus: You must have one killer strategy to be raking in those pips every day! I have no intentions of attempting to mimic you, but I’d really be interested to hear a quick summary of your basic strategy.
I am not there yet… still in consolidation phase and by trial & error (more error… ) of diffrente approches, systems, to find the one that suite me best. Are you willing to share your “system-approach” against a 10% fee of my profits over twelve months (basis: trust). I will send you all my reporting from FXCM, where I have a life account. So the question is: do you trust yourself enough to trust a complete unknown like me?
Hey, thanks for sharing your experience. My failure was due to a couple key things. First was the market I was trading… The S&P e-mini’s had gone ape**** in the past months on all of the subprime crap and literally changed overnight. I learned how to trade that market when we had 8 point range days and it was easy to make money. Then overnight we were getting 30-50 point days and I couldn’t hold a stop in the backfill so It was just handing my money over to my broker. That brought about my second problem which was handling my emotions.
My fear of loss was spiraling out of control which created hesitation and second guessing, jamming stops too soon, jumping out too soon… It absolutely crushed my ability to trade. That and it exploited the weaknesses in my method. The good news was it also brought those weaknesses to my attention. In retrospect i’m glad it happened because I became aware of what I needed to change if I ever expected to be successful. I handled the emotions thing by reading “Trading in the Zone” by Mark Douglas - GREAT BOOK. I wish I had read it before I ever started trading. The other part of the emotions comes with confidence, and to do that I had to start trading again. But my system had flaws, and I had to fix those. More backtesting and I came up with a great way to limit my risk, and take profit consistently on every trade. Then a trader friend of mine told me to take a look at the Forex markets. He too had given up on the e-mini’s and said there was more money in these markets. So I took a look, and i’ve never seen such nice charts to trade anywhere!
Long story short… its a process. As you say, it demands the same (even more probably) respect that any business would. The last problem I had was how leveraged I was trading the e-mini’s relative to my account size.
I was trading 1 and 2 contracts in the S&P 500, which is 12.50/25.00 a tick or pip - On a 9,000$ account! One loss was huge to my overall account, and demoralizing to my confidence. By relative comparison i’m trading much smaller size relative to my account size in the forex markets which has allowed me to start with a small account and just keep doubling it.
And thats the last point I want to make in this novel i’ve created. Account size! I can’t stress enough how important it is to start with the SMALLEST dollar amount your broker will allow (say 500.00?). A lot of new traders get caught up on “How much should I start with?” Many of them dump 5000 bucks into a forex account and wonder where its all gone in two months time.
If you’re truly a pro that is disciplined enough to do this for a living it should be no problem for you to just keep doubling your account. If you can’t take 500 bucks to a 1000 bucks trading one mini lot you’ve got no need to put any more money into an account because you just can’t produce results yet. And worst case - you lose 500 dollars and not 5000 dollars. Best case? You develop your skill, confidence, and DISCIPLINE and continually double your account by gradually adding size. For example, i have a rule to trade 1 mini for every 333 dollars in my account. So if my account is 1000 dollars I trade 3 lots, when i take that account to 1333 dollars I add on another contract to 4 mini’s and so on. It keeps my risk per my account size consistent and makes adding size a no brainer that has no scary side affects because you can simply rationalize it as being no different than trading 1 lot on your initial account balance.
) of diffrente approches, systems, to find the one that suite me best. Are you willing to share your “system-approach” against a 10% fee of my profits over twelve months (basis: trust). I will send you all my reporting from FXCM, where I have a life account. So the question is: do you trust yourself enough to trust a complete unknown like me?