I’ve been trading for a few years now with limited capital. A lot of times I have downtime between my trading runs. During the time I have traded I have had great returns which I have completely lost. In the month of Sept 2014 I had turn $3000 into over $25,000 in 3 weeks and proceeded to lose it all.Now that I look back I did make extra deposits but this is in the entire time I’ve own the account. As you can see I still made well over 100% of gross profit. This is not over years time this is within a year. The time frame was May 2014 to jan 2015 is what you see. I took a long break and started again Between Feb-Mar of 2015. I took $1,200 and turned it into over $25,000 and proceeded to lose it all again. In both cases I made more deposits but not until after I had done this with my initial deposits. In the pictures the gross profit of $55,626 was my first run and the profit of $32,795 was my second.
What I don’t understand is how can people say this is nothing but gambling or there is no holy grail. This is live proof from my live accounts. That you can make a living off of Forex. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter if I lost all I deposited. Did I make 100% in less then a years time Yes in months time. I don’t see how people can get discourage about loses. I took a gross deposit of $16,690 and made a gross profit of $88,421 of real money. Am I sad I lost it all? Sure whatever. Its only $16,690. Theirs people out there who have my gross profit as there gross lost. I’ll make the money again. Its all about the ride which I always enjoy win or lose. Any questions or advice?
[QUOTE=“RiskYourProfit;725373”]This is live proof from my live accounts. That you can make a living off of Forex. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter if I lost all I deposited.[/QUOTE]
Well I disagree. Yes you made a tidy sum of money but you proceeded to lose it all again so that’s hardly “making a living”.
Rules #1, #2 & #3 of trading: protect your capital at all times.
I’m assuming that to makes those gains that you were trading large position sizes & therefore had a large risk, this is not sustainable. That equity drop in the second chart is atrocious; is that just one big messed-up loss or is that a string of loses?
I see what your saying. But its really all on the system isnt it? It somethings that can work really good for a couple of weeks and blow it all if not on a good run.
But the key phrase is it possible to make a living? Thats why most traders are here to figure out right?Everyone wants to do this full time eventually. Its string of losses its not like my system were you just leave huge positions open. Its literally me opening up positions and getting stop out because of low equity. Just to have them go my way after they get stop out. It seems like somethings the dealer was going against me. If I had my own dealing desk I would take notice on clients who make 300%+ in a couple weeks. I say make a living because in both instances I made more then my yearly salary in gross profits in both instances at those moments in time. I could have literally took the year off. Does that constitute success if I were to pull everything out? What is success is being consistent over long periods of time.
Yes, because the market is constantly moving (let’s say between -100 to +100).
If you trade at the edges you can do it with high leverage and get your 100%
If you trade in the middle you get constantly stop out even with 5% risk.
And for the market to get at the edge is not easy. It takes days to build up that kind of pressure.
This is what I like to hear. Your are correct when you say that market is always moving. Also it does take days to build up the pressure. What that being said your system will have to also change. But with a mixture of trading news, trend and breakouts. The small varibles I changed cause drastically different results. But its because my trading psychology change along the way also.
As you can see from the picture I made one trade (demo account). At one point this trade have profit of $1,000 if I closed it. My deposit was 2,000 profit of 1,000 in one day on one trade in a trending market. I find it hard to believe that that these hedge funds only make 3% or so in one year. I believe they make way more but after everyone gets paid its 3%. In a trending market I believe its really hard not to profit. But this is the mentality I have. It works or it doesn’t .
I had a link bookmarked for Gold, and I thought to share it here. Your strategy is something you will make it perfect with the time.
Hedge funds have huge balances and trade low risk. I would guess they do not set stop losses like us, but let positions deep in negative.
You can take profit before them but not from them. That means they will eventually take their profit after you.
I don’t normally trade gold myself. But that doesn’t mean I don’t practice it in demo. In time I hope that I can really improve upon my strategy. Because when it really comes down to it if you place one trade a year and you make 50% of your deposit. On that trade by using probability in a trending market and a little common sense you know you will gain some profit. If you do this once a year for 3 years. That would mean you average annual return is 50% but then are you actually trading? That not what I define as trading? That’s pretty much “hey I place one trade got 50% of what I put in im done for the year.” That’s not the trader I believe most people set out to be.
They aren’t risking 50%+ of their accounts on a single trade. That’s fine to do if you sincerely are alright with the fact that you lost $16,000. But for a multi-million dollar account, if that gets blown, the manager will be fired and sent to prison (or at least they should be). These hedge fund managers are likely risking <.01% of the account per trade. A 3% yield is MASSIVE when you’re managing that much money.
Im not by the least bit bothered about losing that much money. One thing I learn about forex is that if you are afraid of losing you really do making nothing. Which happens after I make a lot of profit I get afraid of losing it. Start over levering, margin calls etc. When I have a 1,000 or a 2,000 balance, I think its only x amount of money. Im still in my early 20’s so a lot of the money I’ve wasted to this point I have nothing to show for (Besides a car) because I’ve wasted it on partying etc. ( Due to the nature of my career housing, utilities and food is provided) At least if i use the money with Forex I gain experience and I like trading. I dont know anyone in real life that even cares about forex, stocks, or futures. Especially at my age. All guys cares about are girls. partying, drugs, drinking, and video games. I’ve only met one person in my line of work who happen to have a degree in Economics. I even tried to have my wife go through the forex school on the site just to have a person to physically consult about trades. Also win or Lose you learn something, most importantly about yourself. I wouldn’t be as patient with people if I haven’t had to be patient in the market. This is why im a very passive person. So is my trade style but it just carries a lot of risk. I see your point and you are right about 3% being massive yield on large accounts.
From your last screenshot of that trade, you have a $2,000 account & you’re trading 2 standard lots - to say that you are over leveraged is an understatement.
Get rich slowly or get broke quickly.
You need to work on money management, big time! Even if you take one thing away from it all, let it be that when you win big, take your initial deposit out. Or as you’re winning, bank 50% of every win & let the rest role forward. Plus when you’re on a losing streak, decrease your risk as your losing streak continues.
How do you even determine you position size when you trade?
I determine my lot size by risk appetite. If I know its going to go a certain direction. I give my lot size base on the three factors on MA’s, News, and ADX. With these 3 indicators for triggering positions, my trade style includes the three types of market analysis. (Technical, Fundamental and Sentiment) I also notice all my gains are typically made for day trading.
At the time of writing I would have a current Unrealized Profit of 1,000 on my last trade if I would have stuck with it. This would have put me at 3 trades for 100% return in 1 day. Now you can understand how I can turn 1,200 or 3000 into 25,000 in less then a few weeks and how I lose it in less then a month. I just gave a play by play on how I 'would" have made 100% return in a day. Its not like I’m trading some high end robot. This is literally me doing my own trading and not just blindly placing trades without no analysis and getting lucky. When you trade in forex long enough you just know when something is going to trend. We’re all trying to figure out how long will it takes us to be right. How much are you willing to lose to be right…
It is $16,690 not a small money atleast for some one like me in the developing country. Its great that you could scale up your gains but its also very much important that you withdraw a portion of profit made. Only to make and lose it all is not a characteristic of a good forex trader.
Trading is not only how to make a lot of profits but how to minimize the risk too so you won’t lose more than you could afford to take in single transaction. It will be useless to gain a lot of profits if the profit could be drained with the loss which can happen in single transaction. Good traders can prepare theirself with good and bad condition of market so they can gain maximum profit when they got profit and suffer the minimize loss when they lost.
In each of our trades we have the risks and we need to know about them. If we want to minimize them then the only way of doing that is by having some control when we are doing our trades.
Also we need to learn about our past mistakes so that we would be able to utilize that knowledge easily
A good money and risk management are our best weapons dealing with the risk of forex trading. And so, evaluate your progress is a good part of learning (not just in forex trading, but in any kind of business).
