It was a honest mistake. I confused a Pipette with a pip. I’ve only been trading for the last week or so. But 10 pips a day doesn’t seem like a difficult goal. I made 20 pips for 5 straight days with a 8.5 pip on my recent day of trading but the day isn’t over yet and I have a position that if closed now would give me a 5 pip profit if I closed now with the trend going in my direction.
And even if someone were making these numbers, no one would ever believe them.
I understand those with a commercial agenda would exaggerate their profits. But why regular people on a forum? There’s nothing in it except ego!
There’s no shortage of people on various forums who seam to believe the most outrageous claims.
Part of the problem is that it’s so easy to look back at a chart retrospectively, and see set ups where maybe you could have made 100 pips, or trades where you bailed out too early, or trades where you should have obviously cut losses sooner. You get a few good days each month where you maybe make 100 pips + and you say to yourself, we’ll if I could just do that everyday, 2000 pips a month has to be possible. Then maybe you tell yourself, if only you could achieve a quarter of that, 500 pips a month you’d still do ok, I mean how hard can that be ?
The numbers look sort of ok, you can see the trades in retrospect, and it looks achievable, and some days you achieve or surpass those goals, and you start to believe that with more experience, you’ll get even more days when you meet or exceed your goal. It’s so easy to play these woulda shoulda coulda type games with yourself, there’s always a trade that could have been managed better with the benefit of hindsight, and so those kinds of numbers look achievable and realistic
Consequentially, it becomes relatively easy to persuade people that 10 pips a day, or 30 pips a day, or 70 pips a day is achievable and in fairness, it is, but that’s only one part of the problem. It’s a common enough occurrence that new members pop up, they achieve unrealistically high win rates by trading without stops, grabbing 10 or 20 pips, waiting for price to return when they get caught offside, we’ve all done it at some time. There experience tells them that its easy to make 30 pips a day, cos they’ve been doing it for weeks or months. Alternatively they see some guy’s EA’s martingaling on sites such as Zulu trade, and making great profits. There’s no shortage of examples of people making money over the short term
It doesn’t surprise me that people do believe these claims, you have to do quite a lot of work before you start to understand what you are actually seeing !
Just look at this thread, or hundreds of others like it, there’s an overriding belief that these kind of returns are achievable, despite mountains of evidence that they are not !
[QUOTE=“MoneyNVRSleeps;518791”]Still, cant get a pat on the back, its amazing,
Its all good tho, because this forum is a big ball of Negativity and haters…
Its about baby steps, learning, and getting better, and over coming our mistakes. Its a process… But yet, people FIND a way to throw trash in your face, instead of pumpin up one another, and nudging one to greatness in this business.
So, because Im not “consistent” im a failure? Isnt this about learning and getting better?
A pitcher in baseball goes out, pitches his a$$ off and has good games and bad games, but his teammates NEVER dog him out, or ridicule the way he plays… Its not about that, its about being behind him, and letting him know, it happens…
Some people just arnt team players… I put up an offer to make millions, as a team, and I got 1 player… Just like in the video I posted, how ironic, huh?
Its not sopposed to be like this… Especially you PipNRoll… With your “talk to me” thread, that is basicly aimed at ones inner problems in find the way in this business…
Im not going to lie, of everyone here, I thought for sure I would get a " Good Job" " keep it Up", but you just basicly urinated on my fire, lol…
Its all good, really…[/QUOTE]
With all the scams in the world and risk out there noone wants to take a chance especially if they have a relatively good life. I just started trading my self and have met both success and failure so far with every win I stop take a look at what I did and continue to research how this all ticks. Noones going to divulge the winning formula but I’m sure point you in the right direction.
I hope you keep learning and find a way to a better life but don’t pin your all your hopes and finances on it.
Its entirely possible to consistently make a few hundred pips a week. But I’d add a caveat. These numbers cannot be made trading the shorter TF’s and you need a good few years exposure to the market and a solid strat. Yesterday I took a short during Asian on A/U @ 91.70 and closed out today @ 90.73 (just shy of 100 pips) . Also today I took a short on U/J @ 98.45 and this trade is still running (currently 119 pips). I don’t post this to impress or boost my ego. I have need of neither. Simply to demonstrate, that with the right strat and time served these numbers are indeed possible.
I’m sure consistent returns are indeed possible. Almost all large banks engage in currency speculation. If they can’t make money, they would have shut down their trading operations long ago.
Nevertheless, if someone has a winning strategy, they surely won’t share it. I wouldn’t. Just like, JP Morgan and Citibank won’t share their trading formula either.
I don’t think you can underestimate the psychological aspects involved with trading. There’s no shortage of people suggesting traders develop a positive mental attitude, think like a winner etc. As I wrote in my previous post, it’s so easy to look at a bunch of trades in retrospect, and see where you might have handled things differently. Maybe you look at 10 trades, you had 7 winners, and 3 losers, but the losses where greater than the gains. You try to put a positive spin on things, you tell yourself you have a 70% win rate, that you can call direction better than random, if only you’d closed those losers, you’d be profitable etc, its almost as if you are already successful, you figured out what needs to be changed, and next month, things will be better, but of course, the inexperienced really don’t understand the first thing about the game that they are playing.
I can remember lying about my trading performance in order to blag my way into a private trading group, it was one of those situations where I wanted to hang out with people who I thought knew more than i did, they didn’t want complete newbies, and they wanted people to contribute, so I exaggerated a bit. I distinctly remember claiming I was making 200 pips a month, a fraction of what everyone else was claiming 
the reality, I was 2 years in and trading at around break even, but retrospectively, I could usually identify a few trades that I hadn’t managed according to plan, and I almost felt justified in the claims I was making. 10 years on, I can see the absurdity of that claim, Ive averaged 200 pips per month twice in the last decade but it seamed a reasonable claim at the time
In retrospect I can see why I did it, and the damage it did, but it made sense at the time (except maybe it didn’t, because I wasted another 2 years listening to advice from people who knew less that I did !)
As I write this, and I try to justify the way I behaved, I have to admit that you are right, a great deal of the problem was just ego really, and I suspect when you strip things right down, a lot of trading problems are caused by the same thing.
This is for you slim. Pay attention to the part where he says " people wanna tell you you cant do it because they cant. You want something go get it period"
Who are you to say someone cant consistanlty make 2k pips a month slim? Just because you haven’t done it means it cant be done?
In principal, I agree with what you are saying. I’ll try to put things into context. I trade roughly 5% of my personal net with in forex. I’m fairly risk adverse, and I like to keep drawdown less than 15% or so. Consequently, leverage never exceeds 5:1 and most of the time, I’m trading below that. An average of 200 pips a month uncompounded, at that leverage makes me approximately 125% per annum, compounding can get me closer to returns of 200% per year.
I do this for a living, and I’ve been full time since 2004. If I could find someone who could produce similar or better returns, believe me, they’d be trading for me in a heartbeat. These days I probably spend more time looking for people to manage capital, than I do on developing my own methods, and yet, in over a decade, I’ve yet to find anyone capable of achieving better results. I’ve found people who could triple my returns, but I’ve also seen those same people blow accounts.
The truth of course is when you actually go in search of these people making the types of return that you believe are possible, you’ll find that they don’t exist. You can trawl through CTA data, large financial institutions etc, and whilst there’s no shortage of firms making billions, the percentage returns, when adjusted for leverage, very rarely exceeds 20% per annum.
As the 2000 pips per month thing, it’s a bit of a pointless argument, I could make 2000 pips tomorrow, and can tell you exactly how to do it, but it wouldn’t necessarily make me any money. 2000 pips is a meaningless value, is that with 1 pair, 10 pairs, 30 pairs. The truth is 2000 pips per month would increase my returns by a factor of 10. I’m prepared to accept that maybe once in 20 years I might outperform Goldman Sachs, maybe by a factor of 2, but to consistently outperform the best players in the world by a factor of 10 or so is completely ridiculous.
We had this debate recently regarding returns by traders such as George Soros etc, and of course when you look in depth, you find 20% per annum on un leveraged capital is an upper limit, and even at that level, drawdowns can be brutal.
It’s not just me who can’t make these returns, no one can. Soros can’t, Paul Tudor Jones can’t, no one can (apart from most new traders on baby pips)
There’s a mountain of evidence out there, take a look at the equity curves of some of the greatest traders in history, that should give you an idea of what you might expect if you get to be the best in the world. Then maybe look at the other end of the spectrum, myfxbook, collective 2 etc are a good place to start, take a look at the worst in the world, and see what jumps out.
If you want to gamble chump change for short term gains, by all means go for it, but long term, there’s only ever going to be one outcome.
+1, great posts.
Despite everything nobody is going to change his mind, ignorance is bliss and life inside matrix is by far more pleasurable…
[QUOTE=“simbafx;519396”]
In principal, I agree with what you are saying. I’ll try to put things into context. I trade roughly 5% of my personal net with in forex. I’m fairly risk adverse, and I like to keep drawdown less than 15% or so. Consequently, leverage never exceeds 5:1 and most of the time, I’m trading below that. An average of 200 pips a month uncompounded, at that leverage makes me approximately 125% per annum, compounding can get me closer to returns of 200% per year.
I do this for a living, and I’ve been full time since 2004. If I could find someone who could produce similar or better returns, believe me, they’d be trading for me in a heartbeat. These days I probably spend more time looking for people to manage capital, than I do on developing my own methods, and yet, in over a decade, I’ve yet to find anyone capable of achieving better results. I’ve found people who could triple my returns, but I’ve also seen those same people blow accounts.
The truth of course is when you actually go in search of these people making the types of return that you believe are possible, you’ll find that they don’t exist. You can trawl through CTA data, large financial institutions etc, and whilst there’s no shortage of firms making billions, the percentage returns, when adjusted for leverage, very rarely exceeds 20% per annum.
As the 2000 pips per month thing, it’s a bit of a pointless argument, I could make 2000 pips tomorrow, and can tell you exactly how to do it, but it wouldn’t necessarily make me any money. 2000 pips is a meaningless value, is that with 1 pair, 10 pairs, 30 pairs. The truth is 2000 pips per month would increase my returns by a factor of 10. I’m prepared to accept that maybe once in 20 years I might outperform Goldman Sachs, maybe by a factor of 2, but to consistently outperform the best players in the world by a factor of 10 or so is completely ridiculous.
We had this debate recently regarding returns by traders such as George Soros etc, and of course when you look in depth, you find 20% per annum on un leveraged capital is an upper limit, and even at that level, drawdowns can be brutal.
It’s not just me who can’t make these returns, no one can. Soros can’t, Paul Tudor Jones can’t, no one can (apart from most new traders on baby pips)
There’s a mountain of evidence out there, take a look at the equity curves of some of the greatest traders in history, that should give you an idea of what you might expect if you get to be the best in the world. Then maybe look at the other end of the spectrum, myfxbook, collective 2 etc are a good place to start, take a look at the worst in the world, and see what jumps out.
If you want to gamble chump change for short term gains, by all means go for it, but long term, there’s only ever going to be one outcome.[/QUOTE]
Great example . I am impressed how you make 125% a year .
With my plan it a target of 30%
So this show that you can really do it
Thanks to all the above post of hijacking this thread . If you want to talk about ego and trade history please open a new thread
Simba: wait, so you make more than soros?
I’m gonna become really successful and prove you wrong. How long a track record do we need to make a point?
Pics or it didnt happen:23:
Pics will come in the future when I become a millionaire. If babypips is still around…
…
[QUOTE=“80sDonDraper;519507”]a properly trained trader can expect to average 15-20% monthly, never risking more than 3% per trade.
doesn’t even require a lot of trading either.[/QUOTE]
That what I thought .
When I had a interview with a investment firm . I had to show my trading history . I avg around 8% but I was risking too much ( close to 5-10% of my account ) , he laugh at me and said some of the floor trader avg 30% / month and only risk Max of 5%
( if you hit a margin risk of 10% they fire you on the spot)
The pay was commission only 10% of all profit with a starting $100k moving up to $10million within 5 years bla bla bla
So he told me that I wouldn’t stick it out and try to study more and get my avg higher
$100k x 8% $8k a month at 10% is $800 month He thought I would quit because that only $200 a week (?and they keep half to pay for any slow months )
So I am hoping that after I open a new account this year and my avg is 10% + mite get a job
Hey Bub. What’s with the attitude Bub?
Why all the hoopla, and condescension, and derogatory naming especially when it didn’t concern you… Bub?
This sounds like a trading prop shop, and not a trading firm/commercial bank because there is absolutely no way that 5% is risked on any single trade or a traders allowed balance. That might happen in the retail side, but certainly not in the commercial side.
lol so they take 90% of the profit you make…and fire someone when they lose 10% and they are risking 5% a trade - so they fire people after getting it wrong twice in a row. Plus they take half of your pay… LOL