I’ve been interested in FX for a few months now, but the need is becoming increasingly urgent.
My wife and I are moving to Australia, and so far I’ve found it really hard to find a job. I’m thinking of trading as an alternative.
So I’d like to know your opinion on the following:
Can I earn enough consistently to earn a living from doing this? Say our family’s monthly expenses are about $2,500 a month and I have $2,000 as capital to trade.
What trading strategy should I employ given this objective?
How long should I practice trading before opening a love account?
You would have less stress finding an actual job and you and your family would be happier. I’m not saying it can’t be done. It would be extremely difficult to support your family trading off of that amount. So what are you going to use to pay the bills when you lose the 2000 and you need money for rent or to eat? Find a job there doing anything, save the 2000 and then look for a better job. When you get a job, save up 4 to 6 months expenses and then set aside some money for trading that you can afford to lose.
Yes, but your in a horrible position to start. Given your psychological burden of the need to pay your families expenses as a ticking time bomb. Let me address your questions in order and we will return to this main point.
Yes you can earn >2500$ per month. But not with 2000$ capital account. This is just ridiculous, you would be earning 125% per month which would make you the best trader of all time. I suggest you have an account large enough where earning 5% per month will give you enough to live on and that is provided you are a very consistent earner. In your position that would be at least 50k.
This you would need to develop on your own. No one is going to give you a holy grail. If they have highly profitable strategies, especially earning the 125% per month you require. They can sell them for 7-10+ figures to hedge funds. Why given them to you?
When you develop a constantly profitable strategy practicing in demo. Then have executed 50 trades perfectly at MINIMUM for statistical evaluation. 100 trades or more is better.
Look here, your not going to make it. I hate to be frank, but its just going to kill you. You will blow out your tiny account before you even get a chance to learn to trade. You will be heavily emotionally attached to the money itself, causing you to make trading errors. Money in this game is a tool, you can not have any attachment to it whatsoever. Most people who look at trading either because they got fired, or they cant find a job and are reaching for straws fail. They just don’t have the time, the capital, and the psychological balance in order to do this day in day out.
Here are some requirements you can consider if you still want to pursue this as a full time endevour.
50k-75k account minimum. Remember the 5% rule, but account for the fact that if you withdraw that 5% every month you never grow. You need to have some compounding in your account.
at least 6months (i recommend 10 months) of family expenses in the bank. This takes the pressure off and gives you the time to get yourself in to right mindset. This is a job and a business like anything else, if you are constantly withdrawing from your trading account to pay bills, you are just increasing your chances of failure. Number 1 reason small start ups fail, lack of capital. Number 1 reason new traders fail, lack of capital.
You need to have a profitable system. This needs to be crafted to your own personality, no one can give you that. If i have a strategy that makes money over the last 3 years, even with performance reports. But it holds for weeks and has draw downs in the thousands of dollars, and has loosing streaks of 8 trades in a row, would that still be good for you? Probably not, it might make you vomit the first few losses and then you miss out on the following winners that make all that up and more.
My advice. Harsh that it is. Get a job, support your family, and come back to trading when you have the time and funds to give this a real shot. Otherwise just take that 2000, put it all on black in the casino. You will do better that way.
Wow this certainly is the most demotivating and unhelpful forum I’ve been to. I wonder why you guys join forums for newbies when you yourself say that no one will give out tips without getting abuck for it.
A “not with your situation, but jack up your capital first and maybe you can” would have been as clear as both your replies. But “look here, YOU ARE GOING TO FAIL”. Wow, talk about sending the new guy out in the cold.
Well, it’s clear I’m in the wrong place.I hope the administrators change the site name from “babypips.com” to “elitetradersonly.com” to keep other aspiring traders from being cut down even before they start.
Obviously I’m not taking both your advice because it doesn’t look like you yourselves are earning anything from trading. I’ll simply move to another forum where people don’t burst at noobs like bulls at matadors.
This is solid advice. Obviously coming from real experience. I have been in the same boat before as Robbiespierre (still am a few years later). Only after going through the motions you realise to put yourself under that pressure is crazy. 100% a month, every month would be awesome though! Good luck Robbiespierre :57:
seriously, you’re INSANELY jaded and naive if you think that with NO EXPERIENCE and seemingly NO PAST EXPOSURE TO TRADING OF ANY KIND, you can DOUBLE your money EVERY MONTH in order to pay your living expenses, because well you just can’t find a regular paying job but you’re moving to a new country anyways.
you WILL fail if you attempt this IN YOUR CURRENT CONDITION.
you CAN succeed if you have 1-3 years of live trading experience under your belt AND IF the money you trade with is “side money”
you want the truth? YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!
seriously, though - if you’re expecting people to give you false hope and be gentle with your feelings, trading IS NOT FOR YOU. money doesn’t cry, money doesn’t care. get used to it.
Lets be honest here, if someone can have no trading experience, learn everything mega quickly & have $2,000 to start with & then be successful, wouldn’t everyone be trading?
I’m still a complete newbie & I’ve had no issues with other members in this forum, why? Because I came here with realistic expectations. As SoundofLight said, you are incredibly naive to think that living off Forex trading at this point is even an option. I would be thoroughly impressed if you were able to make $2,500 a month with a starting capital off $20,000 let alone a mere $2,000. From what I hear, 5% a month is deemed a good starting target & obviously the capital required for $2,500 a month is unfortunately out-with your means at the moment.
These guys are trying to do you a favour & to save you from wasting your $2,000 & you’ve come back all hostile at what are perfectly acceptable & truthful answers. Trading is a psychological game & seeing as a few home- truths have got you riled, the learning curve to detach the natural connection to mon£y will take time, which going by your predicament, you don’t have. Learning doesn’t happen over night.
Your question is almost like saying, “I have $2,000, can I make $2,500 a month playing roulette/blackjack?”. Yeah, it’s possible but lets face it - it’s highly unlikely. You’re deceiving yourself if you believe it & that delusion will quickly part you from your money.
And finally: don’t ask questions that you don’t want to hear the answer to! These other forums may tell you what you want to hear but it certainly isn’t the truth.
My advice is be realistic. Learn price action and concepts such as Elliot wave. Don’t be naive, listen to people that have experience. No one can just start off forex and become successful. Read, listen, and learn. Demo trade, and when you switch to a live account, trade with small capital. It is possible to become very successful, and have all your dreams become real through forex. But this is no easy quick way to become rich scheme. Get as much screen time as possible without ruining your relationships and such. It will take time, but it is possible to make what you need. In the meantime while you learn, find a job because there is no way you can just jump into forex and make $2000 a month with your capital.
No, this is not for earning your livings. This may be a hobby or some people take it as a game to spend their extra cash that they do not need for their living.
Well the goal you set for yourself was highly unrealistic. The posters above have told you those things because they’ve been around for a while and know how the market works. You cant expect $2,500 per month with a $2,000 capital, it’s almost impossible. They’re telling you these things so you don’t lose your money. Don’t be sour about it.
hmm… if our expectation still same at the first time we know FX really are. We will success soon
Coz high optimistic trait one of trader’s traits that we must develop.
There is the [B]inside game[/B] everybody talks about and the never mentioned [B]outside game[/B], these [B]four observations[/B] are [I]part[/I] of the most important [B]outside game[/B], the hidden big picture, that anybody can replicate and observe:
Make bid-ask lines (BA) visible, best seen in 1m or 5m to speed things but occurs all timeframes, time periods, pairs, brokers, accounts, clients, and markets.
[B]1. Mousetrap[/B] - place mouse on Buy (or Sell) button, observation: tick freezes and BA [B]pulls back and reverses[/B].
[B]2. Cat’nMouse[/B] - chase trades in demo, Buy, Close, Sell, Close, Buy… BA [B]pulls back, reverses, and/or sideways[/B].
[B]3. Clone[/B] - FreeStockCharts, settings comparison of any 2 or 3 things, [B]all[/B] markets move together correlated or inversely.
[B]4. LiveWire[/B] - live accounts require [B]signed agreement[/B] the broker-dealer is trading against all trades.
My suggestion is to trade the [B]smallest possible size amount and account[/B] and to only trade when you have a confident setup. The proper mindset for new traders is to [B]focus on risk[/B], [B][B]don’t lose any money on anything[/B][/B], [B]#1 manage the risk not the reward[/B], #2 manage the reward [B]by managing the risk[/B], #3 repeat 1 and 2.
I’m sorry you found some of the responses unhelpful or overly negative. I have to say that, having sampled a few of the other forex fora, BP remains the friendliest and most free of flaming that I have found.
Im sorry to say that I know of no trading strategy that would bring any trader a consistent return of over 100% pcm, and with no scope for increasing your account size on those numbers you would need to sustain that performance.
It’s not what you want to hear, but I would initially aim simply to break even on your trading, then target 5% a month, then hope to hit 10% a month. Most won’t ever consistently exceed that.
For me, the most worrying element of your original post was when you wrote that your need is becoming increasingly urgent. In my opinion, no new skill should be learned under that sort of pressure.
I have been full time for over three years. My wife volunteered to bankroll our total family expenditure for the first two of those years while I learned the ropes. I’m sorry but I don’t see any way that you will be meeting your family’s living costs from the outset, particularly from such a modest account balance.
Trading is amazingly liberating, I love it - but I’d echo others who have said that you need to have an alternative revenue stream for at lest your first year. I’d recommend EOD trading off the higher TF charts, you can enter trades via order late in the evening, and still work a job during the day. That approach can teach you all you need about analysing charts etc., then in due course you can apply those lessons to intraday trading and then you’re away.
Ultimately, you can give your family far more than $2000 a month - just not right away.
trading in the FX market is so burdensome, you should have additional revenue or a job. Because you need to trade money that you don’t need, its a passive income, you really need to find other source of living.
You can do it m8, just put everything on gold this week and put your stop just below 1424.86 . On other hand, don’t listen to me, I don’t trade gold ever…but if I did…maybe…But I don’t!
OK, so…I tested this for you and I made a new demo account just to show you that if you’re an experienced and a good trader - that you can make A LOT of money… I told you here, 4 days ago that I NEVER trade spot gold and it’s true. This was my first trade on xau/usd…ever! So when I told you to buy gold this week I was only looking at price action(technicals on the chart) and was not familiar ,at the time, with the fundamentals, except the general correlation between other currencies and gold…I use very simple rules of >PA or price action trading to determine where price MIGHT go during the week because NO ONE actually knows FOR Sure where it is going.
THis is how (according to the rules of PA) this buying of the gold should have played out.
And, if I did it by the rules, I would have never bought gold because price did not break high of the pin. But, I wanted to buy it at the wrong place just to show that EVEN if you’re initially wrong, that YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO MANAGE THE losing TRADE to minimize the loss and not just let it hit the stop loss!! So…at some point, I saw the trade go south, I checked the fundamentals and news and then actually formed an opinion that the strength is returning to the USD and that gold was overbought for the longest time…China’s fundamentals also played a role in this…Then,.I decided to hedge the trade of 1 lot with 2 lots instead of stopping it and losing 2K I think…In brief, I was never in danger of losing my capital really because I know how to manage my trades ( which is the toughest part of the job but also the one that the 95% of other traders don’t even bother with really) Your arse has got to be in the chair and ALERT!..And, that’0s the point of FX to me…this is how I make my money…
Here is the open myfxbook too…I closed the trades only because I was impatient to show you that you can basically do what you asked for in the title…!
Gold is probably going to go down to 1336 now and further and really just…who knows 1100 …then 700…who knows…and those that don’t ,hedge lol…
