I am so grateful to all the posts here. I have really learned alot.
First off, let me share my problem. Last year, I started a Forex account, and lost almost 70% of my account. I read everything I could get my hands on, but I don’t blame anyone but myself. I broke all my rules, and made alot of emotional trades.
I want to start trading again, but I’m having a hard time convincing my wife that I want to make trading Forex as a career. I don’t have a mentor, and the only education I get is online. It is hard to convince her that I could possibly earn enough to live off of, since I don’t know anyone who does.I also believe that I have learned from my mistakes.
I could use advice on dealing with this situation. From reading these threads, I know their is alot of wisdom and knowledge out there, so please throw some of it this way.
I did the demo account, and did well. BUT, like so many others, I had a $50,000 demo account, but started my live account with alot less then that, and didn’t have the leverage of $50,000.
Also, with the economy the way it is now, it is even harder to convince her. Forex trading is something I want to do, and I am very passonate about it.
I recently had a similar argument/conversation with my wife. While I havn’t traded live yet, like you, I’ve been studying and demoing.
I explained to her that I was approaching it like a business and not just throwing money at it and hoping. I got the same resistance, because her father has often repeated the phrase, “95% of day traders fail.” (That same figure applies to small businesses, but I’ve already started a successful small business) My response is that nothing is a sure thing and you have to take some amount of chance when you do something new. If you don’t ever try to do anything new, you’ve got no one to blame but yourself if you don’t like what you are doing for a living. I HATE working for other people so I am always looking for legitimate business opportunities.
I like forex because all you have to do is become a skilled trader. You don’t have to open up a brick and mortar business and hope people come in. You don’t have to get sales leads, you don’t have to get clients, you don’t have to hold inventory. You don’t have to ship things. Everything you have to do can be done from your computer. I also pointed out that if it weren’t possible to make money off Forex the market would not be so liquid and huge.
I explained to her that this is something I AM GOING TO DO. But, it would be hard to be successful if my wife was not supportive. Her being negative about it would just be a self fulfilling prophecy when I lost money.
When you talk about it be realistic with her and let her know that you know people lose money and that you are not expecting to get rich overnight, but want to learn a valuable skill, that in the long run could mean substantial profits. Sounding like you know what you are talking about doesn’t hurt either. Let her know you are aware of the scams and purposely avoiding them.
Involve your wife, don’t make it a big secret that you are going to divulge when you are profitable.
When I’m learning new Forex strats/indicators/whatever, that I find exciting, I call my wife over and try to explain things to her. If you are excited about it she will be. I also told her to go to the babypips school so she would understand more of what I’m talking about. Don’t think she will, but it didn’t hurt that I found a nice online school that had good info, and not just some asshat trying to swindle me out of money by convincing me if I pay him 3K he’ll teach me how to trade forex and get rich.
Also, it didn’t hurt to tell her that I can’t lose more than I put into my account, or more than it builds up to. In other words If I put $500 into an account and I get margin called someones not going to call saying I owe 3k, like can happen in stocks if a trade goes bad.
Bottom line, what my wife was most concerned about was me losing money.
I let her know I wasn’t going to throw all my money into an account, and hope it gets huge. I told her I was going to start small and if I was profitable slowly add to it, and then compound it from there. And again, that I am very serious about forex and that it is not a hobby, not a get rich quick sceam and I am approaching it as a serious business.
Thank you so much for the response! I t was really helpful. I shared it with my wife, and I think she understands better.
Speaking of working for someone else, at my job, I have a great retirement package, and great medical coverage. That is something she always brings up.
Hey Phoenix - that’s some great advice man.
I wish you both the best of luck on your endeavors.
The advice you’ve offered is among the best so far.
In a nutshell: start slow and get rich - slowly. You gottastart off with small cap first. The good news is you can trade micros. It doesn’t give you as much of a boner when things are going well but on the other side of the coin … When you experience downturns it’s not like prison sex.
It’s also going to be tough being married to someone who doesn’t support you.
Be yourself. Let your passion shine. Be careful and let your excellence prevail.
If you start doing well and she can’t still won’t get on board then leave. Your ship will never sail with dead weight anyway.
Agreed pheonix, overall great advice. I tailored my arguments in a similar way to my girlfriend (not like she could stop me anyways! :D) as well as my parents.
In all honesty though, and I don’t mean this to discourage anyone, I blew up my first acccount shortly after making 3 or 4 consecutive $100-200 daily gains on a $600 micro. The emotional and psychological aspect of trading in high volatility markets prevailed… Let that be a lesson to those of you that are wanting to “get your feet wet” with forex.
Currently (1 month later), I am demoing by choice and default since I am trying to gather enough funds for my next account. It is nice to step back after incurring such huge losses without emotion and say, "well we’re not gonna do that again!"
It is imperative to formulate a sound money management system to accompany your trading system… something i had not done.
I’ve been working for myself for the last 15 years. I make a living, but I’m not rich. I’ve pretty much hit the top end income potential of the things I’m in. That’s why I want to get into forex, you are only limited by your skill and account size as far as how much you can make. There are times when income is slow now, and I wonder if I might have to go out and get regular job, or get a degree.
If I had a job with good medical and retirement I would not give it up either. I get hammered on health care. Both my wife and I are self employed and it costs us $400 a month to cover the both of us. That is freaking crazy. When I was younger and worked at a factory I had better coverage through them and it cost me like $80 a month for the both of us. Bluecross of freaking crooks.
Good thing about forex there is some action at night too, so you don’t have to quit your day job to do it.
open a demo with ONLY THE AMOUNT OF MONEY YOU WILL BE ABLE TO DEPOSIT WHEN YOU GO REAL !
trade the HIGHER timeframes and STICK to proper money management (plenty of that advice on the boards)
you will get drawdowns on the higher timeframes, but learn to read them and understand whats happening.
Forex TRENDS, better than any other trading vehicle because thats what the banks want — they want it to go up, and then they want to short, and over and over and over again.
if you want to see it in action place the SHI channels on your charts (theyre really moveable linear regression lines, but who cares what they call them)
learn fibs for profit taking and try a program called “support and resistance” and make sure to get the one with the “AND” in it, as there are many.
armed with a 5/3/3 and a 10/3/3 stochastics you will soon be able to understand the ups and downs of the market, even though it may be trending in one direction — it just looks like a drunk walking down the street, but sooner or later that drunk makes it home !
hardest but best is a mentor because NO one learns without a good teacher, otherwise none of us would be able to read and write.
In a year, you will have the hang of it and in two you should be competent enough to call it a full blown business with taxes and all that pain in the butt, BUT you MUST gain the experience first and once you have that, the sky is literally the limit !
try that on a demo as instructed, keep working because you wont need to sit at the computer if trading the H1 or H4 or daily, and when you hit 8 out of 10 honestly right, then tell your wife how she will live on a yacht, travel the globe, have diamonds and furs and be the envy of her friends, while you sit on the fo’c’s’le of your yacht, every now and then jabbing the buy or sell button and then going back to your daiquiri !
btw — u prob blew your first demo because you overused the margin with too many trades ---- make haste slowly and try one or two at a time, and let them come to the tp point first !
I am a union ironworker, and my medical and retirement benefits are paid by the contractor, so no money comes out of my pocket.Plus, my wife is a stay at home mother.
I am going to study and work hard to prove that I am passionate about this.