Thanks I can imagine it’s all very subjective and not so easily predictable.
Something I wanted to clarify actually is that I don’t have only 1000usd to invest - that’s what I would like to invest every month in forex to increase the principal but I’m not sure incrementing the account with monthly payments is something deceiving for the first months?
I’ve been trading FX for well over 2 decades–maybe 3–having absolutely no gift for it only lately consistently profitable . I’m still able to trade because I’ve only ever traded money I could afford to lose, replenished one way or an other from other low to zero risk income (at this point I’m retired-no debt, own my own home, travel between pandemics and political upheaval).
I trade because I enjoy learning about myself and the markets, not to get rich since I know myself well enough to know that money is not going to make me happy. let alone my kids.
Bottom line, life is short, you can’t take it with you and you probably don’t want to leave it to your kids
One of my favorite quotes is, “Trading is 80% technical, 20% art, and the 20% is all that matters”.
If you like being your own boss, have income you can rely on and can translate your love of art into a gift for trading, go for it.
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Welcome to Babypips. I’m curious. Have you considered creating and posting videos on youtube teaching people how to do what you currently do for a living? The animation stuff? Just wondering. I’d love to learn modelling but only the type where you take a 2d house plan and turn it into 3d 
Hey man. I feel compelled to answer this as I don’t feel anyone else has really addressed it properly.
So let’s cut the crap and get down to the basics.
It is possible to earn a lot of money in trading. However, you need a relatively large capital to do this. Some of the best traders make 20% return a year. This is people that have studied this and practiced for years. It is possible to earn more but that’s going to require intraday trading and that means a lot of screen time. One of your wants is to be able to scale back your hours.
As mentioned in previous posts, this isn’t like anything else. Some people have tried for 10 years and more and still fail. This business is the simplest in the world and yet the hardest.
So, to try and answer your questions briefly:
Yes you can make good money
You must have a large amount of capital
You need to compound your winnings
You need to educate yourself and you need screen time infront of the charts and trading.
My top advice for you is to do what anyone would do who wants to succeed at anything. Find someone GENUINE who is a pro, and learn from them. The problem therein lies that this game is full of ■■■■■■■■ artists and con men. Please do your research and find what’s best for you.
Don’t put significant money on the line until you can demo (or live trade with a small account) trade 6 months or more.
Good luck
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It took me 3 years full time self funded study and practice to become profitable at Forex, and one thing I have learned is that to trade with bigger money as you go along increases the stress, and over all Trading is stressful… I would suggest ‘investing’ instead.
The broker etoro (which I wish I had discovered 3 years ago) is amazing as it has a Social/Copy Trading feature… it’s the market #1 in that area… Basically, you choose other traders to ‘copy’ … add funds, sit back and when they trade the system auto trades the same for you.
It’s a totally 100% transparent system, as the main feature of etoro is that you can see a traders performance figures very very clearly.
I have just started trading there myself in January, but I also ‘Copy’ other top traders in order to diversify my portfolio, I spread my Copy Funds across 4 different traders.
You should definitely consider this rather than rely on spending 3 years self funded training to then most probably discover that you can’t be profitable… apologies, but that’s just the truth of it.
Learn whilst your money is being traded for you from the get go… Learn trading here for Free on Babypips, but choose 4 or 5 traders on etoro to trade for you… you can expect to gain 50-100% per year if you choose the traders carefully.
Check out etoro, and find yourself some good traders to follow/copy… but for the sake of proof you can directly see my trading profile on there here…
Good luck, any questions let me know. 
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I guess putting the $$$ away every month is good, even if you become profitable, you Will need a larger account size to trade and live off it… but once you become profitable you can also acquire large account from funding companies like FTMO…
Hey thanks all guys for replying!
A couple more clarifications so this thread remains focused:
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I already have passive stock investments, ETF and a percentage of speculation going on. I’m good on this side!
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I’m not miserable, I don’t hate my life and I’m not desperate - in fact as mentioned I have a full time remote work (which pays well!) + a decent income from my art on youtube (somebody asked if I considered teaching there, is part of what I do) and my wife earns as much as I do. We also live by the beach in Southern Italy. Actually many people ask the same questions to us on how to enter the 3D profession and live like we do so… consider this before chiming in if possible. The different twist is: I don’t need to trade!
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So please don’t see this as a “I want to get rich quick” post otherwise I’m afraid it could derail the thread.
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This may sound a bit harsh but it’s the same when learning 3D: if you have no positive experience from trading and you never managed to succeed even superficially I would encourage not to share your experiences on how you did that on this thread.
Hey thanks for the welcome! Yes teaching is part of my “side” business. It is evolving in something bigger, a sort of platform (I won’t share too much here of course as it’s all a WIP).
“The part where you take a 2d house and turn it into 3d” is usually called Arch viz or 3d Architectural Visualization and it’s my wife’s job.
If you google learn archviz you’ll be literally flooded with good content to learn from and get started!
Hi Paul,
Thanks for providing the link and the info about eToro. I used to follow those copytraders before eToro bought out the business. I was fascinated with their performance. I never did follow any of them - I may look at opening an eToro account with small change just to see if the copy trading is a viable pursuit.
choose 4 or 5 traders on etoro to trade for you… you can expect to gain 50-100% per year if you choose the traders carefully
I have an account on Etoro and I’ve been considering copying some traders. I’m just not sure who to copy. They could have a bad day and lose me lots of money. How do you choose the good ones?
@M4xson There’s many youtube videos on how to choose etoro traders to copy, the good thing about their system is you can literally see each traders stats monthly. It will be very clear which traders trade too wildly, you will see big swings up and down in their monthly stats… also check a traders Portfolio, make sure they have a numerous selection of stocks they are trading which will ensure diversity and lower risk… if a trader for example only has 3 stock, and even say those 3 are all Cryptos, then they are too risky… but a trader with say 15-30 stocks open means you can’t ‘lose lots of money’ quickly (unless the whole stock market crashes)… but good traders actively manage their portfolio and get out of trades if they appear to be losing and transfer funds to a better stock… that’s part of my strategy. You can always copy a trader with Virtual Funds for a while so you can see their results for yourself in your own virtual account… in fact, definitely do that, there’s nothing to lose… Once you feel confident with a traders performance then you can switch to a small amount of real money and step that up as you go along as confidence grows… you can search for my profile on etoro with FxCooperative and demo copy me if that would help … Good Luck !
I always suggest copying in etoro with a virtual account demo money so you can see for yourself a traders performance as you go along… in fact, definitely do that, there’s nothing to lose… Once you feel confident with a traders performance then you can switch to a small amount of real money and step that up as you go along as confidence grows… you can search for my profile on etoro with FxCooperative and demo copy me if that would help … Good Luck !
I’ll have a look thanks but with caution. I’ve learned useful things from youtube but also things that lost me money.
Trading requires a lot of time, not sure if you will be able to manage everything, combine with your main job etc. I would rather suggest passive investment the magic of compound income will do the rest.
who does not like extra money? but yes it will need efforts and hardwork.
Hey guys - I see somebody suggested copytrading on eToro. That is something I’ve already been doing, it’s part of my “speculative” basket but it’s not really fitting this thread and the reason is very simple: the bottom line of why I’m attempting to learn the skill and profession of trading is to gain full responsibility of my financial “destiny” (whether good or bad), ending the dependancy on a boss or monthly paycheck for the success of my livelihood and eventually ending the need to trade time for money (aka being employed, albeit very happily and well compensated).
The other route to that is entrepreneurship which is a very organic journey I’m living but it’s a totally different story.
So while copytrading on eToro is part of what I do already and could check some of the boxes I’m still delegating the understanding of trading to somebody else. I would miss what attracts me in trading: freedom and control.
I guess my attempt with this thread was to collect in one place stories and snippets of people who went through a similar journey and succeeded… some call it survivorship bias I like to see them as motivating stories .
Stories have an incredible transformative power so if you’re reading and you have good stuff to share please do!
Hi, i dont know if this helps.
I have a small construction business and it makes good money. Its pretty demanding for my body because its hard labor.
Im also depended off bigger construction companys so if the economy goes bad im in a bad posistion.
I want to move to a diffrent country so i need a income source from my pc.
People around me say things like; i have good life here. I make good money for what i do. So on so on.
And yes i have nothing to complain about just like you. You have a life some people dream about. But that does not mean you can make it even better in your eyes.
I have heard alot of good and bad storys about trading. I think it all comes down to yourself.
My plan is this; just educate myself and demo for the next 6 months. Demand myself to make a habbit out of trading. If im still demoing and educating myself like the first 7 days. Its probably something i like to do.
And i thinks thats the most important thing.
If you just want freedom; you can start every online business not just forex.
Selling a 3d modeling course online.
Starting a webshop
Affiliate marketing
And so on.
If you put 2 years of your life into it. Just
Like forex you can make everything a succes. But if you want to put 2 years into something you better like what you do!
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Hey I agree with what you say!
Little off topic…
Ive been thinking and maybe a 3d modeling course online wouldnt be such a bad idea 
€74 for a small 4 hour introduction course al written
€274 for a 15 hour written course with 2 instructional videos and after 2 weeks a 30 minute skype call for questions.
€774 for the same 15 hour course with 4 30minute skypecalls
€3350 for a 25 hour workbook and written course with 4 instructional videos. And 8 skypecalls over the course of 2 months.
Start a instagram with educational content and make a email list by free ebook ads. And your off!
Little off topic…
Ive been thinking and maybe a 3d modeling course online wouldnt be such a bad idea
€74 for a small 4 hour introduction course al written
€274 for a 15 hour written course with 2 instructional videos and after 2 weeks a 30 minute skype call for questions.
€774 for the same 15 hour course with 4 30minute skypecalls
€3350 for a 25 hour workbook and written course with 4 instructional videos. And 8 skypecalls over the course of 2 months.
Start a instagram with educational content and make a email list by free ebook ads. And your off!
I’ve been building a platform and 3d learning business for about 1-2 years now and I’m grateful to say the impact is having is well beyond what I could imagine.
I will repeat this as i think the message is not being absorbed: we have a double income from 2 careers in 3d and design, multiple baskets of passive and more speculative investments + my own 3d “enterprise” or muse creating additional revenue streams.
I’m not desperately looking for a way to pay my bills and I’m not short of skills thanks God!
So as mentioned earlier: I’m really grateful to hear so many business inputs other ideas than trading but I’d really love to hear stories about trading on a trading forum 