Truly a man of the world– today’s featured member is rich with experience, both within and outside the field of forex trading. Having travelled to over 40 countries and overcoming numerous health challenges, Steve369 possesses exceptional fervor for life that even the pandemic cannot dampen!
In fact, Steve began his forex trading journey 2 years ago at the height of the pandemic. Lockdowns, restrictions, and even contracting the virus himself did not stop him from fully immersing in the world of forex. He made the most out of his recovery in isolation and spent most of his time learning and trading forex. He has gained extensive knowledge since then.
Today, you would often see him in the forums welcoming new members, answering trading questions, and sharing his interesting Ichimoku Cloud trading strategy! Surely, he has so much wisdom to share with the community, and through this interview, we’ll find out more about him.
So, without further ado, let’s welcome @steve369!
1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? What are your hobbies, interests, favorites?
My father called me lucky. I guess because I survived the end of WW2 in Great Ormond St hospital recovering from a stomach blockage operation while Hitler was bombing London.
2. How long have you been trading and how did you get into forex trading?
Move on several decades and apart from breaking a leg bone and a ruptured achilles tendon on the sports field, and suffering deep vein thrombosis, my life settled down until I had an operation for an inguinal hernia just before Covid Alpha/Beta hit me hard.
I will spare you from the torment caused - no vaxxes then - but slowly recovered, and I decided to pass the time of day in isolation by trading FX. It was April 2020 when I opened an account with IC markets.
My career background is Accountant, and Oxfam auditor. After visiting over 40 countries I was prepared for the challenging Forex markets - a piece of cake isn’t it? Like hell, it is.
Fortunately my work ethic, having written several crime books held me in good stead when I began my FOREX VORTEX DIARY from day one to present. Currently, 37578 words.
3. Tell us more about the current strategy you’re implementing? How did this strategy come about?
I selected the Ichimoku Cloud because it has been tried and tested for decades, and by including my finetuning of MACD, PSAR, RSI and ATR, it should have worked a treat.
I traded eight months on a demo account, made every mistake under the sun and moon, even had thirteen consecutive different losing trades on one day, blew a few hundred dollars, before going live in January 2021 confident my revised strategy was going to work.
Have I ever told you, trading live is a whole new ballgame for me, because I am emotionally protective towards losing money. And no, it didn’t work. Lost a prop firm challenge and blew another account.
Back to the drawing book.
Which entailed much research and learning what went wrong and what went right. As an aside, there are only five outcomes to a trade:
- A nosedive into the S/L position:
- A slow losing path to the S/L:
- A not going anywhere lazy trade:
- A minimal winning position that would buy a beer
- A holy grail never look back superhero winning trade.
4. Can you give 3 trading habits that have helped you the most in your trading career?
So from that I devised my approach as follows:
- I cut losing trades quickly because although I hate losing, I hate losing big more so.
- I learnt to manage a $65 account with 0.01 lot size on a 100:1 leverage for several months without blowing it. Patience and Discipline.
- My emotional control over winning trades is questionable.Therefore, to compensate, I follow EXACTLY the same strategy selection process every day, by sending out manual robots on the 4hr chart after setting the S/L & TP and closing the charts until the next day. Daily max open risk, 5%.
5. What do you think is the most overrated trading advice? Why?
Trading advice - I ignore overrated ones - what can I do to make even more profit from a winning trade?
6. If someone tells you they’re thinking of giving up on trading, what would you tell them? Will you have questions to ask or advice to give?
Perseverance is the road to success, especially as the challenge is like climbing Everest alone at times.
My pro friend who manages the eighteenth largest hedge fund on IC markets (which is the world’s largest broker firm) gives me good advice like ‘just think of percentages, not dollars while trading’ - and with a big smile, as he used to trade cars - ‘a Lamborghini will be waiting’.
7. Non-forex related question: What is your favorite movie and why?
As for my relaxing evening time I follow American TV shows on YouTube while drinking a scotch whisky.
That’s a challenge in itself - and yes, I am lucky, now having four consecutive green months.
thank you 
