No lessons whatsoever can be drawn from one trade, other than confirmation you found the buy and sell buttons on the broker’s platform.
As to whether you can make a living, the odds are pretty good as long as you don’t do what 90% of other traders are doing. Its worth spending more time watching what traders do rather than studying economics or fiscal policies or what have you.
New traders comprise the bulk of the losing traders. Mostly they are day-trading. Mostly they wish to “beat the market” by seeking reversals and buying after a downtrend or selling after an uptrend. They place blind faith in technical indicators and candlestick patterns to give them entry signals. They mostly use very tight stops which get tighter and tighter as they lose, or no stops at all.
Don’t do these things and your probabilities of success are suddenly very worthwhile.
Most people need to scale their trading expectations down a lot.
My only way out of this was to prove I was a profitable trader with my small account and then generate interest from friends willing to let me trade some of their money and then ultimately getting on with a firm that gave me access to large capital so that I could build my account and launch a career.
To do something like this takes years of dedication and more motivation than most possess and that might be limitation number 2 to achieving earning a living from the markets.
“years” is usually never an easy road…But it might be a worthwhile one, though. The only problem being you will only find out if it is worth it, many years from now…when it will be too late to change things…Isn’t life a bitch?
The issue with new traders is pretty well shown in this threat.
New trader comes and asks “can i make a living out of this?” And there is a bunch of guys who say “yes, all other people are dumb but if you do this and that then you will make it”
So the answers people give are:
1st. Faith
2nd. Hope
3rd. Rumor
4th. Dedication
My answare was statistics which show how little of a chance you have.
You can bet your next years of life and your capital on hopes, faith, rumors and dedication or you can do what every intelligent trader would do = bet on the higher odds.
The higher odds are that you wont make it.
This in itself proves that trading is not for traders as the basic principle for a trader is to go with the higher odds.
Why is this important you ask?
You can pour your capital into trading or something else.
You only have 1 shot. You have 1 capital (saving) and you must risk it to succeed.
You can risk it on trading where your chance of succes is 0,1 to (best) 3% to make a living out of it (making living out of it does not mean RICH)
or you can risk it on a real business. 85% of businesses fail. Thats still better odds than in trading (at least 5 times better) - but if you are skilled in the field in which you open a business (a chef opening his own restaurant for example) your chances of sucess rise to 75% (!!!)
And a good restaurant can make a very good living.
Car retailer.
Real estate broker.
Whatever you already have knowledge in.
A old guy told me after i graduated my master in a conversation:
He: and what u gonna do now?
Me: i dont know, ill try something new and interesting i guess.
He: why? For a new field you need years of learning it enough to make a competitive edge over your peers. Whats the point of doing this if you already did 25 years of school, of which 6 was a master specialization in a business that generates money? In this business familiar to you YOU ALREADY HAVE A COMPETITIVE EDGE so whats the point of wasting years to learn some new stuff?
Me: hmmmm… yes thats very logical
So i stayed in my field and made/make much more than a living.
So? Whats the point of starting in a new field where you are at a big disadvantage, then learn years just to be average and in the end spend 15 years to be above average and maybe or maybe not make money while in those 15 years you needed an income to supply your trading activities?
I understand where you are coming from and it is wise therefore I am not exactly disagreeing with you but trading hasn’t ever been as bleak as the stats in my personal experience. (I am just one person though and one person isn’t anything to base any study results or stats on!)
Maybe I have just been lucky and my luck is about to wear out.
I never risked my one and only capital. Only what I could afford to lose and I worked at the same time.
I don’t wish to spread baseless hope or faith.
I think the best advice to the OP is:
Keep your day job.
If you are interested in trading learn about it. You can always swing trade longer term trades. Think daily chart and you will only need an hour or so a day to check your trades.
Do this in demo first, if you find you are profitable for 6 months to a year then
Use real money but only what you can truly afford to lose.
IF you continue to be profitable you may then choose to
Go in search for “funding.”
But ultimately keep your day job and advance whatever current career you have.
The best option is always to wait for the right set up. Another way is to have multiple working strategy and a very large capital to hold off trades. Always wait for the right moments, no rush, just sit and wait. It will all the work it in the end. .
Very insightful thread, confusing though. Newbie here as well and also wondering if its worth my time studying trading. I am planning to do full time study on techniques and all,but haven’t found my strategy yet. Though with what I read here and there, I still hope to get my spirit up to continue with this.
Forex is a zero sum market which makes it very hard to be profitable. You can make money but it takes some serious commitment and a good strategy with positive expectancy.
Don’t expect to have any sort of stellar results for a few years, if at all. That’s just the hard truth of it.
Its futile telling new traders or would-be traders not to trade. They’re going to do it anyway. Does anyone here seriously think that posting a message that says “Don’t trade, you won’t make money” will do the trick?
If you want to succeed at anything where there’s a possibility of failure you must move the odds of success as far in your favour as possible. That applies even if the possibility of failure is way more than 50:50.
Same for trading as for opening a restaurant. If all you bring to your new restaurant is a knowledge of how to heat food in a pan, lots of spare time in the evenings and a voracious greed for profit, you will fail. But that doesn’t mean opening restaurants is a bad business idea; it just means that new owners should not behave like idiots.
to be experience about Fx trading is a long time process and for that we the traders who are particularly newcomers lost interest in here after passing sometimes . patience is first of all needed to be an experienced.
True. But my words were more towards: do what you are good in. Trading must be learned and you dont know if youre good at it untill you made money or wasted your savings.
The point is, +99% waste their money and time.
Now with really profitable business do you see millions of adds saying “get rich by opening your business”? Is there an entire industry that is marketing a specifuc field in which you can make money? Ill safe you the search: no there is not.
You wont see forums of business owners telling noobs how to run a business. Why? If it works theyll keep their secrits.
But you see millions of websites, adds on tv, youtube etc etc which tell you how to be a trader.
Its an industry which sells you a dream which you cant achive. The “selling machine” employs 100 tikes more people then the “profit machine” of trading.
I see it here on the forums. Every day new meat comes into the grinder.
And i tell you that from the perspective of someone who is making money in the markets.
The basic line of my speech is: dont get fooled, you have better chances to make a living in the real industry. No matter what you are good at, people pay for excellence. If youre not an excellent trader you wont get paid.
There are 3 sources which generate money:
Knowledge
Connections
Physical work
You know something others dont, charge for it and you get a living
You know people which can make an edge, use tge connections to get a living.
You are good with your hands, use them to make a living.
Anyone coming online asking for “how to make money in the markets” has nothing of the 3 basics mentioned above which generate money.
Yes,its useless to tell people that they have minimum chances of sucess, they will try anyways. But its more use to tell them the truth than to give motivation speeches and how easy things are. At least from warnings he/she wil be more cautious and more serious than when he/she hears reinforcing standard sentences and how easy things are if your just not too “dumb”.
No, its not enough to be “not too dumb”.
Isaac Newton, nobel prize winner: i figured out the nature but i never managed to figure out the nature of stock markets.
Those were his words after he lost all his money on the stock exchanges (without leverage back in his times).
So. Is it enough to be intelligent? Nope. Ask nobel prize winners how much intelligence helps in this business.
Is it enough to be dedicated? Hell no,not if you have the wrong sources.
Is it enough to have a lot of money? Nope, loses are loses, leveraged or not plays no role.
Is it enough when you like trading? Nope, thats actually very counterproductive. If you like trading then you are gambling.
I do post something sometimes. I just dont ramm my knowledge into the throats of others. And by the huge ammounts of useless posts it goes under unnoticed.
What i wrote above in the statements is knowledge. It doesnt fit into the perception of people. Just because it doesnt fit it gets down unnoticed.
Just like when i post (a dozen times so far) that online knowldge is useless, it goes down unnoticed as it doesnt fit into the “easy money”-approach people have on trading.
Nothing worth something comes for free.
So far i have found not even one source online which can prepare you for trading. But thats another storry.
The point of my posts in this thread is: 99% people fail in making a living out of trading.
Yes, 99% of new traders will fail to make a living from it. But do you really think you will stop them trying by telling them not to try?
I like to think I can at the very least help keep some traders afloat so that they either do succeed in making a living or they see the equity curve and pull out before they’re broke.
I don’t think you will succeed. I know I already am.
