Triple B - Newbie on the block

Community Introduce Yourself
#1

Hello Everyone,

I live in Thailand now after moving 10months ago from Australia with my family. We have come over to build a resort and activity centre. Having just finished building our house we are going to begin construction of the resort. We currently have invested some money in Forex through a broker company and are getting good returns but not actually doing the trading ourselves. They offer training to become trader but the language barrier makes this difficult. I want to do myself. I want to learn and therefore I have started the babypips school.

The idea is that trading will produce some income while building the resort and provide some back up income during construction. It is important that trading only takes up 2-3 days per week so I have time to look after construction.

As a newbie I would love some feedback this. Are the hours realistic? How long does it take master the basics. Demo trading is important I understand how and when to start? Any tips you think might help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Triple B

#2

Hi Alistair,

Welcome to the forums. It sounds like you already have a solid grasp of your financials already. Let me give you some advice, only my personal opinions of course.

The Babypips School is a wonderful place to start and build a foundation for trading Forex. With that said, it will not be enough to make you a consistently profitable trader. The BP School offers a great overview, but more studying, resources and practise will be required to advance to a level that will yield a return. Becoming a profitable trader requires a lot of sweat equity and commitment. Just like most businesses it can take up to a year, or even a few years, before you are breakeven. For some individuals, they may never see a profit even after hundreds, if not thousands, of hours invested (not to mention the investment capital).

If you need a new dining table set, would you learn carpentry yourself and build it from scratch (unless you are already a master carpenter, then this was probably a bad example :P)? Probably not. The logical route would be to go to a furniture store and purchase it. What I’m trying to say here is that you already seem to have a flourishing business, and it may not be the wisest decision to spread yourself too thin. Don’t believe the marketing hype, as much I’d love to say you can generate a modest trading just a few hours a week, the journey to get there is steep.

I have been studying and trading for almost 8 years now and I can say with great confidence that my first few years resulted in a return of 0. Your mileage may vary, I’m not a genius by any means, that’s just based on my own experiences and talking to my peers.

To wrap things up, I would say stick to what you’re good at and what has been working for you. And if your investment with the Forex firm you mentioned is panning out well, why change it?

Whatever you decide to do in the end, best of luck in your endeavors. I would be interested to hear what you end up doing.

Clark

#3

Then you can earn the profit or not?

#4

Thanks Clark for your thoughts.

My question is that my current investments with a forex investor are growing 3 fold a year. Shortly the capital will be returned in the next 6 weeks and after that it will all be profit. Friends of ours have already got great profits. The company is returning this profit to their investors and obviously they must be making money using our money for themselves. If so how are they making more than 300% per year? Is this rare?

They also offer for you to follow their traders for an additional fee which will still be better than my current investment with them. This would seen to be a good option to learn what they are doing? Could start off small amount to lower risk but follow their investments?

I like to have more control of my money and not wholly rely on others to make money for me. Not all my eggs in one basket so to speak. It just really intrigues me that it seems so easy for my broker to make money. Reading the forums the consistent advice is that its difficult to do so.

Certainly will continue with Babypips school to understand the basics.

Again your thoughts would be appreciated.

Triple B

#5

I would stay put. Its highly unlikely you’ll achieve a better return than 300%.

#6

Hi Alistair,

Depending on the amount you invested, 300% a year is very difficult to make every year, it is extremely rare and I would be a bit skeptical. If you were just testing the waters out with a few hundred or thousand dollars, then that might be reasonable in the short run (a bit of luck involved, and lots of leverage). In the long run, it would be very difficult to make 300% every year, given most hedge funds have difficulties returning more than 30%/a (liquidity and margin are major bottlenecks for them). You would think that if a fund did make 300% a year consistently, then everybody would be begging them to accept their money.

I would say try to get your investment and profit withdrawal request processed as soon as possible, and maybe if you want to try your luck, re-invest some of the profits you’ve made and see what happens. In the event that the company loses your second investment, you will at least still have your initial capital.

Even as a fund manager myself, I definitely support the idea of having more control over your own money. Regardless of what others might tell you, you will always have the best interests for your own money. If you believe that you have the time and resources to learn, then by all means, I would highly encourage it. But as I said in my first post, it’s not easy and will take time before you see steady growth, if at all. Learning to trading FX does become a full time job (if not part time at the very least) and will divert your focus away from your current projects. If you understand that and are willing to make the sacrifice, then there’s no harm in trying it out.

All the best,

Clark