My Struggles with Forex

Trading Discussion
1

Hi everyone,

While some of you guys probably don’t care, I figured that I write something here and hopefully find words of encouragement. Please skip to the bold part of post to get straight to the main content. I was always into the idea since the age of 20 of being independent from Corporate America. I wanted to travel and make enough money to afford things that I feel that I deserve.

During my journey, I have spent tens of thousands of dollars on education courses. I believe the first thing I got started with, was affiliate marketing. Ebooks were free to produce after the hardwork was already put into by the developer, hence, you got a good payout. Well, it was hard to get traffic to websites–at least with a cost less than the expected return per average visit.

Then I looked into MLM, but couldn’t recruit. I tried selling on Amazon and eBay, but the competition is too great. I tried pretty much every ethical way of making money. I then discovered forex. After looking at it, it appeared to be the best opportunity that I came across. You don’t need to spend a lot of time watching prices and the money you can make has very high upside. You have a 50/50 chance of being right. The fees are not that high which will not stack the odds too far against you, but you have the ability to close out trades as you please and implement any strategy.

Now, maybe the forex market is random. Heck, after my experience with this market, I wish that it really was truly random. I take that over the crap that has been going on. Let me give you my typical experience:

1.) I open a trade with a spread of like 1.5 pip. You would think that price shouldn’t have too much trouble overcoming that to put me in the green, but it seems that the market always make a pivot and goes against my intended direction.

2.) I try to set & forget and use good risk-to-reward, but when the market struggles to move in your favor by 20 pips and can go against you like 50 pips in a blank of an eye, it makes you almost want to have big stop losses and small targets. One frustrating thing too, is that in the rare cases that I’m up 20 pips, in a blank of an eye, I’m in a red. It also wouldn’t be rise to have stop losses too large, because if I lose 300 pips on a trade, and how difficult it is for the market to move in my direction, that is something that I may never overcome

Sometimes I’m in a trade and I’m like 50 pips in the negative and I’m getting a sign of light. I see hourly candles agreeing with my direction. They are very small, but it is better than prices moving against me. But then, I will see a huge candle going against me, erasing the progress I made in like the last 8 hours.

Now in a perfect case scenario, if I could do price action to give myself an edge, that would be great. Heck, if the market was totally random, I could make money with good risk-to-reward ratio. But when I’m trading and it seems like there is always someone on the other side looking at my trades and ensuring that I don’t see any profits, that is what causes me great anger.

It seems like you have to be a lucky guy to do well in life. I feel that life shouldn’t be that way. Even if working hard doesn’t get you there, good skills should. After the bullcrap that has happened to me yesterday, I have had some very strong words for the God above. I don’t go around lying to people talking about how good God is when I see this crap. My broker has nothing to do with this. I checked other charts from different brokers to ensure nothing fishy is going on with Oanda. This is just bad luck.

Now, I have been getting very serious about trading and just want to trade channel and H&S patterns, which should have a high probability. I’m trading textbook channels too. If this doesn’t work, I don’t know what’s going to. People preach price action like it is the best thing since the slice of bread.

Well, thanks everyone for reading. I feel really lost in life right now. It starting to feel like I was born with the destiny of only earning money from a day job.

2

Chris oh Chris… Your story is really intriguing, and it’s something I hear a lot from a lot of people around this ‘Online’ industry, the first thing you need to find is your ‘Niche’ - Finding what’s right for you, when I first started my career with Forex trading best believe I was studying Chemical Engineering in university, only to realise my ‘Niche’ was not with engineering even though from a young kid I’d always tell my parents and friends that I wanted to become an engineer… but life is full of surprises aye?

That led me to change my career to Economics & Statistics, and through this, I realised that numbers were my thing and the fact that my niche all correlates together, studying economics and trading forex, so it made sense to me.

You’ve jumped from one pond to another, going from internet marketing to trading forex, so find what field suits you the best and you should know that not by how much money it’s making you, but how do you feel when you’re doing it. When I’m behind the charts, looking at numbers and graphs oscillating and changing, it makes me feel so free, free to make my own decisions, free to think widely, and it also makes me feel like some super uber smart dude behind a computer trading matrix numbers, this is just an example on my side, but it should be similar when it comes to you, does trading forex make you feel alive, if yes then it’s for you, if not then it’s not for you. Simple.

And you’ve been mentioning about your wins and losses - think of trading as a business and not a virtual platform where you can trade currencies, treat it as an actual business, and in every business there’s loss but its all about how you can re-cooperate those losses and make up for them, and that leads you to plan ahead for your next move so you can minimise those losses.

The mistake you’re doing when trading, from the way it sounds to me, is that you’re counter-trend trading, you’re buying at the highs and you’re selling at the lows hence why you always find yourself at negative profit before the market goes back in its initial direction, this is something that only ‘Price Action’ can help with, I’m sure you’re fed up of the word price action, so let’s change the name and call it The Source - The Source should never be doubted, because the source is the only way to accurately trade this market with high probabilities, but it doesn’t work to its fullest extent if you use it alone… trading price action you have to mix it with fundamentals and understand economic indicators and data and know what they mean.

Don’t give up in this industry - a few years back when I first started trading I went live with £1000, I lost it all within a week, but that didn’t make me give up, I pursued my dreams, worked hard, dedicated myself to learning, got myself, mentors and coaches, now I’m trading a 6 figure account and helping thousands of others just like you.

Keep going for your dreams, you’re a young lad, you’re only 20 think deep and work hard and find yourself living lavishly in your late 20s!

Good luck and I wish you the best, hope I managed to shake you into a positive mood.

3 Likes
3

Hi AbdulLight,

Thanks for that long post. I needed it during a time like this. :slight_smile:

I’m not jumping niches. I’m actually in my fourth year in college, studying economics and pursuing a minor in engineering. I started focusing on forex back a few years before college, maybe 2012, I believe. I do admit that previously, I have been focusing on automation, so that when I do graduate from college, my algoBot can still run without me (I might be working a day job). Recently, I decided to go manual, because I wanted to be engaged in the markets. But I figured that it is nuts that one has to lose thousands of dollars or spend years trying to figure it out. I feel that if you buy a book from a successful trader and you do what is taught, then you should receive the benefit. None of this bull crap that results may vary and that the only way you will get good results, is if you are a lucky guy in life. It should be, if you have the skills, you get the benefits.

I haven’t done the other stuff in over 5 years, with me spending a decent amount of time on each. For MLM, I hate that I had to convince someone that they needed to make more money. If they are happy, then they are happy. So that wasn’t my niche. Affiliate marketing was good, it is just very hard to do these days. Back in the early thousands, when PPC was like a nickel a click, people made a fortune. Now time has changed.

I personally feel that forex is the best niche out there, even though it has people that it likes and doesn’t like. So no worry, I’m focused on only one niche.

The mistake you’re doing when trading, from the way it sounds to me, is that you’re counter-trend trading, you’re buying at the highs and you’re selling at the lows hence why you always find yourself at negative profit before the market goes back in its initial direction

You’re 100% right, I’m selling at the top of a downward sloping channel. But I’m confident that even if I started buying at the top of the channel, the bad luck monster is going to look at my trade and make sure that the market goes down instantly, leaving me to not see any profits.

What is worrisome, is even with a simulator from Ninjatrader, channels don’t work well. At least when I have TP and SL. If I have an SL, the market will go hit it. If I leave one off, the market would allow me to make profits for a week and then move against 500 pips to take away all my profits and leave me in a big hole. The reason why I’m trying this off a simulator, is because I can be more aware of the news, which is more difficult on a simulator for obvious reasons. And I’m going at normal speeds, instead of 1000x. The downside, the simulator doesn’t test patients and you can watch the market 100% of the time, which is not possible in real trading.

So it seems like a lose, lose, and lose situation.

Thanks for a reply and have a great day!!

4

I’m glad to know you’ve got that niche, you’re a step closer to getting where you want, trust me on that.

And hmm… I understand where you’re going wrong in this

Avoid using robots Chris, they’re really unreliable and they’re just made to take that subscription money off you, that being said I wish you the best, just keep the chin up and the smiles there, negative emotions leads to loses, keep yourself positive and happy mate ! Good luck !!

1 Like
5

That belief (maybe a surprising one for someone in his 4th year in college?) is why you have the problem.

As long as you believe that it’s a reasonable expectation to “just copy something”, without putting in all the necessary education and screen-time first, forex trading isn’t going to work out for you.

Or, rather, it will work out for you, but the way in which it will work out for you will be exactly the same way that affiliate marketing, MLM and Amazon/Ebay sales all worked out for you.

And that may be a very good and accurate assessment, that you should embrace.

Self-employment and running businesses are not for everyone.

6

Not so.

Even highly educated people very commonly imagine that learning to trade successfully (perhaps even just “competently”) will be significantly easier than a college degree, in terms of both effort and duration.

7

What are you trying to say Quickly? Trying to say that I’m a bit naive for a 4th year student? Please hold on to your negative thoughts for another thread.

Now, let me get things straight. You need a skill and you look for a book to expedite your success. I’m sure you have a problem with that, but I don’t. If I want to spend thousands of dollars, or what I like to call it, invest thousands of dollars for my future success, that’s my problem. So if one implements what is taught and if the strategy works and you implemented correctly and didn’t violate any rules, then over time, you should come out ahead. This crap about it takes years to learn how to trade a channel and money management that you are trying to suggest is false.

Now, it is possible to take a long time to master forex if you buy books that are scams, you don’t implement the real stuff, or if you can’t follow instructions, or too emotional for trading. There are many reasons. But it is the skills that matter. I truly want to believe in that. I don’t want it to have to be about luck.[quote=“Quickly, post:5, topic:108736”]
Self-employment and running businesses are not for everyone.
[/quote]

I didn’t say that it was. The sole purpose, is to receive inspiration from people that had similar experience and overcame it.

8

Thanks AbdulLight,

I will make sure to follow you. This is something that I really want and I wish that I would have started implementing instead of spending so much time in the library or writing an algoBot.

I have to politely disagree with that :slight_smile: . Now, I will stay away from those until I learn how to trade before trying to automate it. I never had any success with algoBots, but that’s because they are hard to get them to work. This year’s market is different from last year’s. So in order to get this thing to work, for years to come, is to implement a complex machine learning algorithm. Enough on that topic :slight_smile:

Thanks for your advice man and you’re an inspiration. I’m trying to chase what you are, based on our conversation so far–a professional trader.