The rookie athlete who doesn’t believe he can be a world champion will be unlikely to ever become that champion, whilst the one who believes he will be a world champion stands a far higher chance of getting there.
Only a minority are [U][B]“truly”[/B][/U] successful in most areas of business/career and sport. It’s all about attitude and preparation. Most people remain mediocre or worse they fail.
Forex is just another place to fail or succeed.
Hello Tess,
I want to start out saying thank you to you and a number of other people here at babypips.You guys have a wealth of insight, that would take many of us Quite awhile to gain without the kindness of you and others sharing your knowledge. I don’t mean to complain here but I have been getting quite frustrated in the performance of my demoing.I feel like I should be further than where I am at with 4months of nonstop studying.Or maybe this is the learning curve I hear so much about.I guess I need reasurrance that I am on the right track and I need to settle down and let the knowledge come to me instead of trying to force it.Thanks to all.
I feel like I should be further than where I am at with 4months of nonstop studying.
I would say this is possibly the main reason for the figures of
95% of traders failing.
We are lied to on the 'net about “systems” which produce unreal
amounts of profit from little or no input, so we start to believe
that everything is easy.
If it was that easy how many forex billionaires do you think
there would be?
I need to settle down and let the knowledge come to me instead of trying to force it.
Yep & this also applies to trading.
:wishes:
daydreamer65 wrote:
“We are lied to on the 'net about “systems” which produce unreal
amounts of profit from little or no input, so we start to believe
that everything is easy.”
jlmac27 - I agree with you completely. I too have been demo trading for around 4 months and feeling like, why can’t I seem to ever be right about the trade. So, you’re not the only one feeling frustrated. On the other hand, I’ve been energized by all of this to really get my system down right to something I can work with.
daydreamer65 - Your above quote seems to be quite to the point. I have never bought any of those systems, but I admit they are very tempting and lately there was one or two that seemed good. They also always offer a moneyback guarantee. Is all of this a complete hoax? Do they really give back money? Or are they legit and you just have to take them with a grain of salt, and learn what you can from them, and maybe for $67 or $97 they may be worth something.
Joe
P.S. How do you get the quotes in that separate window?
A person can mak a living at anything that they want to provided they want to put in what is required to be sucessful. like all things it takes the right mental attiude first of all. then learning then practice. what is most important is to be patient with yourself. when I feel i am on overload I step back to clear my head then digest what I have learned so far.doing this has helped make learning the material easier. I fee4l that slow steady growth is better than trying to cram it all in and setting myself up for failure. I have to remind myself that I am the only one responsible for my success or failure.
After practicing every single trading days since beginning of july I finally opened a Live account (I trained much more than the Babypips.com recommended 2 months)
What is great when you do train longer is that it made me search for more than “simple” day trading or “scalping” for few pips. (i did train exactly as if I was using my real own money, which means staying up till I was successful)
I have a small shop and while being not busy, which is 99% of the time I just kept learning and reading various books, newspapers, homepages etc…
Currently, I have no single trading losses from my Live account and I accomplish wonderful return (in fact I “make” 1 month salary per trading day on average)
I don’t over-leverage so I can stay relax when a trend turn and I don’t have to close my positions.
As my gains are very nice I did set up a LLC for my trading.
So far so good, wish me Luck! (well, I know it is not luck I need but it is still good to have luck 
)
What a great attitude Nytrader1958.
I have read through this thread and have come up with a very positive feeling about the contributors generally.
Here is an abridgement of a post I put on a share-trading forum of which I am a senior member in Australia:
**************************
Personally I began as a “Learner Investor” knowing not much more than the Courier Mail (Brisbane) printed every day in the “Business” section.
I discovered charting about 3 weeks later, and bought two stocks. Soon I started to count my profits, but when I saw the prices retrace, I thought: “I should have taken my profits.”
So I became a sort of de facto day-trader without consciously wanting to. But I began to sell when the prices were dropping (fear) and buy when prices were topping (fear of missing out). I was then introduced to IncredibleCharts.com and the possibility of using indicators. MACD was Lassiter’s Lost Reef at the time for me - a gold mine.
But MACD can “look positive” even when the price is heading down, and so I became disillusioned with it too (later I came to understand how to avoid this, and yes, MACD is still in the Lassiter’s Reef claim area.)
I moved from equities to CFD’s and now to Forex, where I can consistently turn a profit, after much tweaking.
MY POINT
All of this experience has been gained through hardship on the personal level. Had I known what was in store for me, I would have simply invested in BHP at $9 and said “Hang the rest of it.” (BHP is at $42 at time of this post)
But I have developed a passion for TA and all things trading, and have come to fall in love with it. The romance, after 3.5 years, is blossoming!
However as I move from “mucking around” to seriously trading for a living - or worse - leaving my day job and relying on my trading - a couple of things have happened.
My personal level of fitness has gone from being able to run 10 km to getting puffed walking up 20 stairs.
All in 4 years. I’m waking up to myself before it gets worse.
I bluffed my family into thinking that “Dad is doing an apprenticeship in trading while also working full time.”
Partly true - but there was no reason at all why I had to take myself away from the family - plonk myself in front of the computer, and read emails, look at charts, contribute to forums, and so on, AT THE EXPENSE OF THE REALLY IMPORTANT THINGS IN LIFE.
I kidded myself that “I am doing this for our future.” It was true, of course - all of it.
But how out of balance was it all? I did not need to neglect anything or anybody - just prioritise my time, and continue to participate in family matters as before. But I did not - I took their time and used it for myself.
Is this what trading is about?
Is this the life of a trader?
As my wife reminded me … “If you get ill, will these anonymous ‘friends’ care, or come to your assistance?”
Actually doing this full-time - quitting my permanent job and relying on what I have learned to produce an ongoing income at the level we currently enjoy.
Scary indeed.
We are a single income family - Mr 20 is working, living at home and paying board. Master 14 is in High School. Mrs Ingot keeps us all together.
Some weeks I work 32 hours … some weeks I am able to work 64 hours, but the average is over 5 days per week, and less than 6 days per week - sometimes 12 hour shifts are available, thus the longer hours I pick up.
(Bear with me - long winded I know).
Looking over my equity curve, it dawned on me that if I take out my profit to live on, suddenly I am faced with having to do it all over again - EVERY month!. This introduces the spectre of “what if…”
What if I became unable to trade …
What if I have a bad run and suffer a large drawdown over a couple of months …
What if my strategy stops working …
What if the strategy has been going through a golden period, and I just happened to use it during a good period …
What if my confidence gets weakened and I become paralysed - unable to execute trades …
There are ways to overcome the ‘what-if’s’ of course but they are VERY REAL considerations.
Few people have over $150k sitting there as a back-stop to bail them out, and in my case I have a big task because others are relying on me to keep them in the accustomed manner.
There is a common-sense side to this … and I have found it and solved my own problems …
I have trashed the idea of day-trading - for the family reasons, health reasons and quality of life reasons I mentioned (more to do than sit in front of a piece of apparatus which stops communicating when the electricity is removed).
I have discovered how to trade over the Long Term in a way that does not require me to log in for more than 10 minutes each day to monitor my trades.
And it takes just 30 minutes to properly analyse the market I trade, to isolate other candidates to trade.
My equity curve is increasing by 5% per week (hope THAT continues) based on the starting amount. Some of my trades have been untouched for 21 days, as they run. (Actually the average is 6% now)
SUMMARY
We are advised at every turn to “Have a trading Plan” and that is as it must be.
But I advocate having a LIFE PLAN too.
Where is your trading heading? Hobby? Full-Time? Supplemental to income?
Only you can control this, and I urge you to think it through honestly.
Don’t forget the ones you are “doing this for” or the rest of your “raison d’etre”. Life is NOT trading only.
Keep perspective and prosper.
With best wishes
Ingot
**************************
Food for thought in there. The main theme: “What about your family in this?”
Just want to add: Yes, it is possible to make a living from FX. But it is only preferable if you have the strategy that is right for your personality - right your risk profile and - right for your loved ones - right for everything else important in life.
I would add that day-trading and scalping is the stuff of really experienced traders - the professional traders I know leave this alone - unless they have an “alert” system to tell them a particular trade is “ripe” for picking. Even then …
I am commencing a Position Trading thread at:
and invite everyone to have a look.
As it begins to develop, I hope the “aha” moments begin to occur for you.
I am not a guru - I am a Registered Nurse/Midwife and expect to stay that way for a good while yet - but I hope together we can make trading more enjoyable - getting those pips with MUCH less risk, and MUCH more certainty.
And I have no private group that I mentor (sorry - no time to do that). Nor do I have anything to sell - this stuff is freely received and I give it freely back.
Can you make a living from FX Trading?
Do you really WANT to?
Who knows where your life can go after it is driven by life goals. You may find yourself landing on the moon someday.
Whatever your dreams may be, when you’re doing your goalsetting, make them BIG and WRITE THEM DOWN! Don’t be like the chap in this poem that Napoleon Hill included in the original edition of Think and Grow Rich:
I bargained with Life for a penny,
And Life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store.
For Life is a just employer,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.
I worked for a menial’s hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have willingly paid.
And to close a very long post:
If you think you are beaten, you are,
If you think you dare not, you don’t
If you like to win, but you think you can’t,
It is almost certain you won’t.
If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost
For out of the world we find,
Success begins with a fellow’s will�
It’s all in the state of mind.
If you think you are outclassed, you are,
You’ve got to think high to rise,
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.
Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man,
But soon or later the man who wins
Is the man WHO THINKS HE CAN!�
With best wishes
Ingot
you can ake a living at forex just as some have professed but you have to believe you can.This is a business and the risks are exactly the same. When you go out on your own the same risks you experience being self employed are realized in forex trading for a living. So if you dont have the risk tolerance to open your own business and know that your income is dependant on yur performance dont do it. As with forex start up business failure rate is very high. But it can be done if you truly believe you can do it. Half hearted effort will not produce the results you can live off of. I once heard a great statement “Entrepreneurship is living a few years like most people wont so you can live the rest of your life like most people cant” I plan on making a living in forex and as one of the previous post stated they started an llc. You have to have a plan a timeline goals and targets. Planning, preparation, discipline and a positive attitiude will make it happen. Good luck to all who choose to make a living in forex and those that choose to only make extra income. It is you choice but be clear in your choice.
(1) advice DONT borrow it
(2) you MUST use an ante you can afford to walk away from
(3) I’d say start with 3,000 AT Least
that’s your start. If you can turn THAT into 30-50,000 then you might think about making a living from Forex. but if you can’t turn 3,000 into 30-50,000 then how would you manage to make enough profit to take money away from your capital/equity to live off.
And hopefully by the time you managed to turn your 3,000 into 30-50,000 you would have made enough Rookie mistakes that you won’t blow your entire 50,000!
(also you could do as I have, put in about 3,000. double it. take out the 3,000. then double it again. I was 20,000 up couple weeks ago, only 9,000 up now due to a learning experience. Thing is with the profit - what I am supposed to do with it?? I can already cover my nut (bills, kids etc) and the best return I know that I can get is… back in the Forex! )
I tried many times and failed. years actually. I tried all market types too. And failed. But the education I picked up so far, in real life stuff, and stuff you won’t learn in the school of pips I’m afraid, although that’s a good starting point …
Now I am quite able to control my impulses and emotions, especially in a losing streak and that takes time, unfortunately, to develop.
For instance, In Sept. I trialed a new system and made 50 % on a small $1000 account. But with the same system I lost 30% in October. No difference in approach, just market conditions changed. You can’t give up no matter how many set-backs like that. Staying power is important. Being objective, and not spitting dumby is important. Having a plan of what to do, and how to react is crucial. For instance, I developed something I call S.C.R.A.T.C.H. = Stand back when hit pre-determined loss level, Cancel all orders, Review in detail what happened, Acknowledge any weaknesses in system, Train to overcome the weakness or study further, Confidence will come back with a short break or time out and well developed new rules, Hone these new skills in a real-time small account etc…just my 2 cents worth
Halfway my forex career I noticed that the drawdowns in my Equity mostly came from my decisions to interfer with the plan. Stuff like: “Oh it is on its top now, I quit so I can take and extra dozen of pips” or vice versa. It appeared that I more often could have made more profit or that the backdraw would turn into profit, if I had followed my system. So learning this I decided to FIRE MYSELF.
I decided to invest time in learning how to automate my trades. It took time, was a steep learning curve but also a lot of fun. I became addicted a little. With some ups and downs, which helped to improve my scripts, I am now at a level that my trading of my main strategies is 95% automated, and I get an email when my help is needed. I trade fulltime now, even when not at my desk and I love it. Is still have a dayjob not to bore to death, but that income is actually more fun money than neccessary.
My point: I fully agree with some previous posts. Yes, it is possible to live from trading alone, Yes the road towards that goal is full with obstacles and YES you need a life plan. With determination (Hands off!!) you will make it.
One lesson. Although all the valuable advice on this and other sites it is important to follow your own plan and make your own decisions. If you are not able to do it independently, you have a greater change of failing. You will be dependent on the good will from others, and they can be wrong or disappear. Take the interesting stuff, learn from it, apply it and throw away what you don’t belief in.
Example: The don’t bet more than 2% of your equity in a trade. Excellent advice (and perhaps I am just more aggresive) but think about this. The rule is there to safely grow your equity while it is not your main income and it considers that you already have some equity to start with (Banks). With any luck, you may be able to trade fulltime in the last year of your working life. This is just my thought, you have decide for your self, I just want to give a opposite opinion than commonly read on this forum.
Also Higher timeframes may not be a good idea. If you trade on the daily charts and you have a significant fallback that will take months to mitigate, you lost those months to make your income. This will not be acceptable if you don’t have a sufficient war fund to rely upon. Perhaps a bit more scary, but the lower timeframes is where it has to come from when you trade for a living.
Manual trading is noble and pure, but it involves risk if you trade for a living. The more own involvement, the bigger the changes of errors. It is no coincidence that banks trade in teams with supervisors. The supervisors are there to kick you in the butt to keep moving and to slap you in the face if you make mistakes. You don’t have that when trading on your own. Be your own supervisor and let scripts be your traders. The scripts have no emotion and you will be able to jump in when it is really needed.
Also, keep the ideas flowing even if your current system is working. Have some back up strategies in place when your current one is not working, also it will help you to stay on the market and to know what you are doing when things stop working. As an athlete has to rely on its body and takes good care of it, you need to keep your brain in tiptop condition.
Well, take it for what its worth.
Happy trading.
IdeFX
It is a great feeling to make your own money
It is possible to make living from forex as you get $100 no deposit bonus when u join but the thing is that you cannot totally rely on this inconme all the time as it waries greatly with market fluctuations.
There are differences between demo and real trading. In a demo system (a) the market doesn’t respond to your actions, and (b) you don’t get ‘stop hunted’. Just a bit of warning for when you go live.
Here’s a suggestion. You should be noting down your trades in a log book at this point. If not, then do so.
Make sure you make notes of -why- you thought a particular trade or sign was good.
Then if it doesn’t go to plan see if you can spot any reason or indicator that would show the “foil”/“spoil”.
Perhaps go out to wider time of the same candle chart…what looked like good moves in the last 3 hrs, was just a small part of a larger trend. I like to go out to at least a week, and sometimes a couple of months/years to see if there’s time or seasonal trends. Go out to different time charts - perhaps you were do a plan based on a 15min chart, and got caught out by a corporate account working on the H1 or H4. Check your news feeds - is there a fundamental or news release that side-swiped you (remember much of the time more seasoned players have already heard or predicted much of the news so some event fundamentals might not be quite as noticable as you thought (or differences to predictions might be more unstable.)
Don’t forget to keep an ear open for bond, share and commodity movements, they seem to effect the “ebb and surge” of the forex tides.
I know this pretty basic stuff. But you’re working off the log entry you made, why was it wrong. Perhaps all the was wrong was you didn’t wait long enough - which means if you’re day trading, your planning ideas are too wide for your time strategy. So you have to adopt (learn) the differences for handling longer term higher risk trades, or use your existing “predictions” as background and work on more tighter focussed market indications.
Also don’t change too much of your plan at a time. make one (at most two) changes and test it for a while, let your mind settle in and appreciate what it sees. You wouldn’t (hopefully) drive by overreacting to every little stimulus you notice, so don’t change your trading too rapidly either. Because if you think you’ve found the foil, then you have to test to see if you were right about it - or it was just a coincidence.
There are so many advantages in forex trading today,forex today has become the most profitable business ever ,the most liquid and the most lucrative ever,forex is so good that i have made it my source to make extra money
its easy … make 10 pips a day and withdraw the next day … everyday … but if you lose 10 pips one day … you will be hungry the day after …:39:
Forex trading to me is a blessing in disguise for those who decide to master it. But to master Forex trading (or any highly leveraged/highly lucrative market) takes tons of discipline, persistence, patience, and time. I have been trading for 2 years now and I’m still on the learning curve, but one thing I know for sure:
to ask if one can live off just trading forex is a dumb question.
HELL YEAH!!
One can make an extremely comfortable living off forex trading PERIOD… Thats what it was created for 
I think that Forex is a great way to invest money and get nice profits.
But do not forget that investments in Forex are very risky so you can actually lose everything.
That’s why I’d not recommend treating Forex like the main source of income… do not put all eggs into one basket especially if 90% of people drop such baskets.
Forex is not an investment. It is pure trading. And I currently earn enough from forex but I still have my SQL programmer job. I currently net avg of $5,000 a month from forex trading. But as others have said, forex is always volatile and unpredictable. So it is always advised to trade with a base balance and always withdraw your earnings every month. If you decide to use $50,000 and a “base” trading balance. Always withdraw all profits above that amount and always trade with $50,000 sitting in your account. A lot of people fantasize about having a $1,000,000 trading account. That’s the killer. You could do very well with just a constant $10,000 trading account and withdrawing profits every month.
Even master traders are on the learning curve … Even if you have 100 years of experience:22: you are on the learning curve … forex is an unlimited knowledge … every day something new …:46: thats why its uncertain …
well said, i re-entered, and working on the demo account, and i dont intend to give up but to learn better and be more ready! hope you are doing it good now since it’s a post 5 yrs ago, thx for the share! 
oops, i am replying to roddy in the first page of this topic