Im a bit of n00b around here but I would like to ask these people what it is like being a forex trader.
What sort of place do you live? How much money are you making? How many hours do you spend studying charts etc? Is it possible to get a mortgage with your income from forex trading (bar the recent sub prime mortgage crunches recently)?
Thanks for your help. I’ve been using the PSAR method in a demo account for the last month or so and it’s been really successful… I started with $10K and now its up to about $17K.
Well done for starting with a demo. When you are ready you need to move to a live account before you start dreaming of the big house and fancy car. Most of the time fx is like any other profession, routine and often tedious. Depends on your method how much time you spend in front of the screen (my wife says too much). Do not worry about what others are making concentrate on yourself. Sounds like you have made a great start so keep at it and I wish you well
Thank you for answering my questions. I know, it is gonna be quite a long time before the fancy car and house etc. Anyway when I shoot at it for real I’m going to just use the daily PSAR system. It’s a low maintenence system so it only takes about 20 mins every day or so to use. It’s giving me great results!
Currently being a trader hasn’t effected my life too much. First of course I got obsessed with it spending all my time with it and learned a lot. Then of course I got burned out and didn’t have anything to deal with it for a few months. Then when I finally got back into the game I felt comfortable with my knowledge and my skill level that I went to a more longer term trading style. So I look at charts before london opening every day for maybe half hour to an hour depending on how interested I am that day. The life style that I want to lead with forex is not having to work by the age 25, six years to go baby!
So in six years ill find this post and tell you then
I even bookmark it!
Go read ICT’s thread front to back, and watch all of the videos. I have not had a losing week in almost 3 months following him (demo). Obviously there are some bad beats here and there, but on the whole I feel a whole lot more prepared. Just in the process of having my paperwork accepted through my broker and will hopefully be live within the next couple of days:).
I’m not trading for a living yet, but if I continue to stay as disciplined as I have with my demo, I will probably start by working 1 day a week less to start out with. I plan to slowly ween myself off of my Monday to Friday 9-5 one day a week at a time until it’s unnecessary for survival (family business, so I have the luxury of being able to do this).
It has been a long road here. Every month I feel like I know even more than my last. I’ve been demo trading for about a year solid now. I thought I was ready to go live 6 months ago and I’m glad that I didn’t. I have a far better grasp now than I did. You can never learn too much. Stick with it until you feel comfortable and then have at it!
What I find concerning PSAR is that it really does lag horribly. That doesn’t mean any system based off it is horrible. Just my experience of psar is awesome in trending markets, terrible in ranging.
Yep. It’s been 6 yrs now. I’m also interested in how it went. Still in the forex? Not working anymore?
I would love to hear from those former newbies now.
Yeah, and since it’s been revived at this point and people will read it, just want to be a bit of a Devil’s advocate here :P. Not trying to be doom and gloom, but want to slap down some realism.
If you stick around long enough, you’ll realize that it’s not all candy and unicorns and rainbows. Full-time traders have to already have a substantial capital base to live off of returns alone. Acquiring that level of capital is probably a bigger roadblock than trading successfully, and trading successfully over time is really damn hard. Then, your monthly income depends purely and solely on your performance and you’re performing in an environment that is inherently dynamic.
It’s almost like being at a job where the tasks you perform are changing month-to-month (which actually would help keep from getting terribly bored of repetitive work), BUT you’re also paid only on your performance of this brand new task that you’re still not certain about and need to adjust to. Oh, and if you make some mistakes - which you are very likely to - you actually have to pay your job for them and therefore lose money.
You’ll also start to really over-appreciate the capital that you have because it’s not only a large sum in and of itself, but is also your source for continuing to generate income. So you start to become a very frugal person (if you aren’t already) and everything you do will start to be balanced by how much of your precious capital you have to chip away at to do it. There’s no comfort of a certain monthly income that allows you to relax and do things that cost money more enjoyably - and note that most things cost money in some way or another
And to top this all off, your emotional stability is one of the most important elements to remaining consistently profitable, yet once choosing to go full-time, you’ll find that your emotional stability is tested to its highest of upper limits for all of the reasons mentioned above.
+1 and let me add. Trading is like a commission sales job and owning your your own small business. Emotionally if you have never done either one, you’re in for a very rough ride. Commission sales people know what it’s like to do everything right for the month and not make any money and then keep on going month after month until it turns around. It’s almost impossible for someone with a guaranteed pay check to understand. It’s easy to say sometimes you will make money, sometimes you won’t, so what, next; keep on doing the right thing and in the long run you’ll get through it.
Same as owning your own small business. You can do everything right and still lose. Easy to say keep doing what you’re suppose to do and business will turn around. But living it and trying to understand why your lemonade stand is not making money on a hot day at the beach when you’re the only stand is quite another storey.
Over the years I’ve found full time poker and memories are very similar. Everyone wants to be a full time poker player after they watched a couple of shows on the tv, or went to a casino on their vacation or play in a home game once a week; and and then after jumping in they find living it full time is nothing like the: tv, casino on vacation or the home game.
Same with memories: friends I would run into outside of the gambling world would say, must be nice, sleep until you feel like getting up, nice home, new Mercedes. . .then I would have to remind them; everyone remembers the current life style . . . nobody remembers ford tempo with hardly any floor boards, the endless days of hustling day in and day out, in smoke filled dumps, so I could pay the rent, the sleeping in chairs, benches so not to miss anything. Just like trading takes a lot of work over a long time with no gurantees
I am making normal income it is not much that I am going to be a millionaire through forex. I am making sufficient amount fo r my living with forex trading. Forex is not my main job , It supports me for living . I am doing it as part time. My lifestyke is common , I am happy with my life style.
Successful traders life is very comfortable because they are having proper knowledge and experience and has ability of generating the consistent profit from the market. We can also change our living style if we develop our skills.
I’ll only trade full time when I have 6 months of income set aside. I have a plan for my earnings. For now, I will spend 20% of my earnings, rollover the rest. "The pursuit of Happyness’ is an awesome movie for getting where you want to go when you have a burning desire for success. Don’t forget to set goals and have a ‘written plan’ near you. It’s a multi-trillion dollar industry, I will be taking my ‘sliver’ of the pie. In addition, I challenge each and every one of you to do the same. There’s not a better place to start. If you’ve already gone through the pip’s school, you need to do it again. And always remember, your trading is right on track when your efforts become mind-numbingly borrrrrrrring.
greetings to all and happy trading.
Reno
As a forex trader I had a normal life style I do not want to do trading all the time which influence my family life . I do a job as a part time I am doing forex for 2 to 3 hours daily . I am not extremist to do greedy trading in making money. I think a trader should spend a regular life.
