I was finally starting to be consistent, I have been studying for about a year all trading basis, got tons of notes, filled notebooks etc, but didn’t have the capital so I wanted to get a job to fill my trading account but couldn’t find a part-time one and ended up with a full-time job that has me stuck in an office from 8 to 18.30 with launch break where I’m stressed and full of responsibilities. So I’m away from the chart most of the time and most importantly during the main sessions. That’s how I had a breakdown, started trying to trade with my phone from the office and lost all my profits and part of my initial capital.
Trading full-time is my dream but I feel like I’ll never be able to commit to it this way, anyone’s been in this situation?
EDIT : thanks everyone for the support! I’M BACK BEING CONSISTENT, I found some balance, back to the 5 minutes timeframe, I only take a maximum of 3 trades a day at the same hour everyday and take profit anywhere from 20 to 40 pips. I’m also only looking at price action, and divergences on the RSI, removing indicators has also helped a lot.
But all professional suggest to catch trades during the main sessions (London/New York) because market movements can be choppy early in the morning and late at night. I’m really concerned
Had a similar experience in 2010. Not trading related but I was:
overwhelmed with work
in physical pain
a lot of mental stress
missed potentially 2 possible opportunities at a promotion and had no time to work on career advancement (possible substitution for your trading scenario and a huge source of my frustration at the time)
No two people are alike and my circumstances will differ vastly from yours.
My Story and the context for my recommendations. Caution: Long read
I was in a huge rut. To top it off it affected my performance at work & attendance. A the time I was at times spending 12-16hrs a day at work trying to keep up with demand with occasional weekends at the office. Easily 60-90hr work weeks. Had no life away from work.
It got so bad I was recommended to a company therapist. The sessions were useful in the sense that I realized that being able to finally talk to someone about my situation was a relief (usually bottle it in). Also realized that I was letting the situation dictate my life and choices. I was being very reactive about it.
A few months later I decided to drop by a gym on a weekend (after I visited work to check on somethings of course). I wanted to go-kart but my back couldn’t take the g-forces. I was too weak. I had spent money and time on physical therapy to no avail (there were days I couldn’t get up in the mornings cause of the pain). Based on what the instructor demonstrated (he accurately pin pointed the exact spots I was in pain and detailed why it hurt) I decided to enrol and commit to the gym.
Probably the best thing for that could’ve happened at the time. My physical condition was pathetic. My diet and nutrition was shot to $hit. I wasn’t getting enough sleep and was relying on cigarettes, tea & coffee to keep me going during the day.
After the first week or two I was getting up early (too exhausted to stay beyond 11 pm). I woke up in the morning with energy. I started planning my day as soon as I got into the car and by the time I got into work half an hour early I was already in the zone.
My diet improved considerably because my instructor was all about boosting my resting metabolic rate (more fat burned while resting). To that affect he strongly recommended I change the diet to promote the buildup of lean skeletal mass. I changed my dietary habits with that sole intention and saw immediate improvement in my metabolism. I also started at a routine and didn’t have the appetite for fast food and junk. At most diet cokes and the occasional chocolate bar.
I discovered through my exercise and change in diet that I had a lot of energy and was working more efficiently. I was also very positive and upbeat through the day because I looked forward to my time after work (started reading certain more and re-engaged with friends after work). I was still spending 10hr days at work but I was a lot more efficient with my time at work and had way more time and energy for other things after work. Plus on weekends I’d go-kart
Certain things you can focus on:
Building a routine and compartmentalizing your work is critical
Take care of your physical health. Your physical health influences your mental capital and daily outlook. Trading, like chess, is a mentally taxing endeavour. If you’re not taking care of your physical health there’s a good chance you won’t have enough mental capital for trading. Almost every chess world #1, since GM Alexander Alekhine (skiing in his case) has implemented a physical regimen to withstand the rigors of long hours of concentration on the chess board.
You are what you eat. Garbage in garbage out.
My recommendation is to avoid live trading for now. Take time away from trading to manage the stress from your day job. If you have free time for trading read up on swing trading systems that require perhaps an hour or half an hour a day at the most.
You are going through a critical phase right now and stressing about not being able to trade will only get you down. It’s a phase and it’ll eventually pass as you get more used to coping with the daily grind. The markets will not go anywhere and will always be there when you’re ready to trade
Move to the D1 charts. Demo a set-and-forget strategy first. I recommend a trend-following approach in which you can aim to pyramid your with-trend winning positions once the risk has been covered by gains and the stop moved ahead. You won’t feel anything like the stress levels.
Besides swinging on higher timeframes, another option is to focus on pairs that move in the Asian session. Aussie, kiwi pairs with the USD, GBP, JPY are potential candidates. You can also get ideas from looking at journals from Filipino/Aussie traders who focus on those sessions.
Thanks for sharing your experience! I should probably slow down and take time to separate all aspects of my life before pretending to see positive changes in my life
This is also a good idea, most professional traders I follow only scalp and close their positions within few hours so I always thought that was the most reasonable option
Im facing this problem ( capital ) im searching for a job about 3 months now living in a hard country … my advice to you keep learn intel you work for 3 month to get some money #holdthisjob
Is that local time in India or UK time? Depending on which, you may be able to go to bed straight after work and awake at silly o’clock in the morning to do your trading. Either way, you can change your trading plans to set up limit orders based on start of trading price action. You can modify your plan to suit your life circumstances instead of thinking your full time job interferes with your trading life.
Edited. below is a very old link to a very long post from a guy in Australia who created a massive scalping plan. At the time I was looking at some trading plans, but never tried to replicate this one. It was based on the Asian drift time of day (Australian time during the night - 9 or 11 hours ahead of the UK depending on summer time or GMT). This will keep you busy if you read a lot of the content, but most of it is in the first 1,000 posts of the thread
You should try buying evaluation packages of mutual fund companies. You will have a large enough account with cheap fees. I was like you, now I work for FTMO, MFF and a full time trader.
I understand your situation. In fact, many of the traders have been through this situation where some of them lose patience and quit trading. But, some are really consistent and pave their paths to become a successful trader. I suggest you make a proper routine where you give required time to trading. Also, make sure you have good physical & mental health. Get enough sleep, eat healthy, and stay calm; do not stress yourself over. Your mental health is also very important to be able to do trading efficiently & accurately.
Consistency and balance is the key to success. It does not matter whether you are only focusing on forex trading or focusing on both the things, side by side, surely you can balance it by being consistent.
Go for short term - swing trading and you can enter based on the H4/H1. Like this it will not take too much of your time. I understand scalping and day trading is most wanted as it gives fast results. However it needs to fit your lifestyle.
Look for a pattern that is being repeated. You can do this over the weekend when the market is closed. You can backtest this repeated pattern for 5 to 6 months, check the number of times it’s positive and number of times it’s negative. KNOW THE PARTICULAR TIME THIS PATTERN SHOWS UP IN THE CHARTS, know your confirmation, know where the pattern becomes invalidated, then backtest this again. See this pattern so much that everything in your world will be in patterns. The moment you start seeing behavioural patterns in humans too you can fund live, observe risk management so you can have enough money to play with your pattern. Forget about the money, concentrate on this your pattern. You become your pattern your pattern becomes you. Do not trade if the pattern doesn’t show up… This method is boring but I can assure you you’ll double your account and you wouldn’t know it. Be humble
Seems that you are very busy so why focusing on the main session when you have not time to watch your charts at all tho? I guess you can’t daytrade with such a stressful work-life-balance. So my suggestion for you: simply swing trade. Forget those mini screens at your mobile devices and just go on you pc when you finish work. Look for some nice set up which fits your personality and capital and just put some orders, you said yiu have a lot of notebooks and studying trading for 1 year so you will know how and where to place your order and maybe over night or during your working day the order will be filled and in the best case your TP get triggered. I know it might be a lil bit boring and far away from “action” but I guess your main goal when trading should be generating profits and not havin the feeling of action. This feeling can be experienced in casinos
