Why are you trading?

Reading through some of the posts makes me wonder why some of us are trading at all.
What motivated us to join Forex?
Personally the satisfaction of being able to analyse the markets and get that ' aha' feeling in the beginning still sits true today. I set my personal goal to eat sleep and dream Forex for the first 6 months until I found a system that I had tested and felt worked for my type of personality.
No more stress, trading is just something I do full time, no great excitement anymore which is why I feel I am a better trader than when I started. Although I must admit I love trading and am fortunate my partner also is a trader full time - we can but heads about each others strategies. Personally my system is for scalping short term anything from a 10 minute trade to a 3 hour trade. Being able to trade when I want (because there will always be movement in the market) suits me fine. It leaves me time to still live a life.
The most brilliant decision I ever made.
I would love to hear about your feelings on the subject 😉

I was motivated to join Forex after discovering that I could make more profits in less time and with less money than trading on the stock market. I remember the first time I traded on demo I made $5,000 in about 10 minutes. 'Wow this is easy!' I thought. lol

But then I began trading live-- I did have a system to follow but my emotions crept in all the time, and I didn't really have a money management strategy. I would constantly trade at maximum leverage, making great profits but worse losses. I would then have to resort to trading Oanda's 'price box options' (essentially a gamble) to recoup my losses. After about 3 months my account was totally wiped out, I was frustrated, and aside from having a large loss to add to the tax return, my life was miserable.

I stopped trading for several months, and in the meantime I basically eat lived and breath Forex EDUCATION. I spent more than 12 hours per day watching tutorials and videos and reading other materials. I slowly got into trading demo again, and used a much smaller account. Now I am back to trading live and though I am currently down 8%, as I pointed out in another thread I recouped losses of 25% (which occurred by a poor position sizing and SL mistake). This week I did better than I have ever done before, I finally 'get it' and realize that the key to success is mechanical trading and conservative money management strategy.

I love trading also and especially love weeks when I have more winners than losers (like this week). The satisfaction of knowing you're doing something 'right' instills confidence to keep going. I think that as long as I can keep out as many emotions as possible (well that and not sleep during the big moves! lol) then I can succeed.

It is now my goal to double my account every month-- tough yes, but not impossible with a set weekly goal. I'm starting out with $1500 so in order to double that in a months time I need to profit $300-$400 per week, roughly $75 per day. In reality, had I not been sleeping during this huge recent EUR/USD drop in the last 2 days I would've met my goal already. But steady wins the race!

My hat is off to you for maintaining a scalping system. I've tried it but for me it is simply too stressful and less predictable than longer frame systems. In fact, I did some scalping this morning on EUR/USD and instead of stopping while I was ahead, I ended up losing about 2/3 of my profits for the day. lol

P.S. I have a risk calculator and trade log Excel sheet to share if anyone is interested. Basically you put in your account balance, desired risk %, stop loss in pips, and choose the currency-- voilà, it tells you the position size to use. And the trade log is great for keeping track of all the trades (profits, losses, true leverage, etc) outside of your trading session.

Fantastic story, I agree with the 'get it' feeling and yes the key to success is mechanical and conservative money management. I personally only risk 2% per trade (but of course it is all dependent on your capital if you can sustain a lifestyle from this)
We personally emptied a 10k account in 6 months when we first started, no better way to get you serious...............
I also have a fantastic position size calculator and a Capital gain and loss sheet. so if you have a loss you know how much is needed to bring you back to break even again.
Scalping is my love.... my husband does the longer term trading and is very good at it. Personally I am a fast twitch person and need the quick fix so to speak. Although if there is no setups I go off and make a cuppa and have a break. I never break my neck over a trade - there will always be another one. Once I have hit my goal for the day I stop. After all we have a life and grandchildren to play with.
Very nice to hear you are more settled with your trading and your style - trade what you see not what you feel!
😉

Why don't you guys show your accounts (real) here at myfxbook? Well, maybe not every detail, but at least your %gain?

Is it because that if you give up your privacy you'll become nervous and your performance will suffer?

I would gladly show my accounts % or otherwise to anyone who wanted to see them. Warts and all! is what I call it. if you are afraid to show your trades you are hiding something.
I am not sure what others can see of my accounts in this myfxbook yet as I have not been using it that long.
I feel it makes you more aware of your trading rather than making you nervous, if anything it makes your performance better because you know others can see what you are doing. This rings true more so for non automated systems as you have to tick all the boxes before you take a trade anyway.

thanks for your feedback - I really appreciate having other traders around

Dear Beverley,

I see an 'FX something' logo in your avatar now - do you have a website maybe?

You mention full time trading - is it the same as 'sole income from trading'? Many people think they could make a living off a 1k account without a solid source of income outside the markets - what do you think about this?

Speaking of percents, what average %%%s do you think would be reasonable and sustainable? 1, 10, 100 % a month on average?

TIA

Yes my husband and I earn our ' sole income' from trading. You cannot make an income from a 1k account, this would be a silly idea and you would need to over leverage yourself considerably. You can however build a 1k account (very slowly mind you) up to a substantial amount and then earn a living from it.
Personally I suggest using a live 1k account to learn the philosophy of trading real money for about 6 to 8 weeks and making consistent gains before putting a bulk amount into an account.
There is so much difference to a sim account and then going live that too many new traders get caught in the trap of thinking they won't notice a difference changing over 'how wrong they are' there is a huge difference. Just check your pulse the first time you do it.
On the % side of things, it is quite easy to make 5-10% per week from trading if you have the right system to use. My personal goal is around 5-10% per week, some of our members goals are a lot less some are more - this is up to the individual.

Hope this is helpful.
Looking forward to a profitable week ahead with the news releases being full on

Thanks for the good advice. You are right, there are some differences between sim and real accounts. Learning the philosophy, yeah, that's important.

To your original question, I guess I'm trading to kill some time - good that I can do it anywhere, mobile - yeah, mobile fun, without a fixed daily or weekly goal. It's a lot more fun when there's no fixed goal - where it falls, there will it lie 😄

You sound like a nice person with a happy disposition, great to know you.
Quote ' live your life as you would dance like you do when you think nobody is watching' 😁

Beverley posted:
Quote ' live your life as you would dance like you do when you think nobody is watching' 😁

Awesome quote Beverley !!! So true... who cares about what others think huh ? Just be happy doing what you do the way you do it minus all the pretense and facades and put a smile on someone else's face along the way ! 😎

Oops... I just said 'minus the facades'... let me take those shades off ! 😄

Beverley posted:
 After all we have a life and grandchildren to play with.
😉

Wow !!!!! Grandchildren ??!!!! I think I'm pretty certain you're the first grandmum here ! But from the sounds of it I won't be surprised if you're a 'young' grandmum !! That's so cool !!!! A grandmum cum full-time forex trader !! How cool is that ?? Real nice to have you here. 😄

Yahoo, finally figured out where the url is... https://www.myfxbook.com/members/Beverley/new-scalp/108091
hope this works if you want to check out the new system. Just began a new account so you can follow if you wish.😕

Thank you ranesh good to be here amongst y'all. yes I am a young granny - I tell our friends I started breeding at 10yrs old hahaha.

Beverley posted:
    Thank you ranesh good to be here amongst y'all. yes I am a young granny - I tell our friends I started breeding at 10yrs old hahaha.

Really ?? I don't think I even knew about the birds and the bees when I was 10 ! You're an early starter indeed !! Lol !! 😄

Beverley, you appear to me to be a part-time trader and a part-time trading educator? What makes you choose to have this second 'job'? I am a mentorless trader, and have a skeptical view on this forex education business. If you make a good trader out of someone who then quits his normal job, and live his life (just his life), would you consider that as mission accomplished? What I'm saying is, trading activites don't benefit much to the traders' community (other than the traders themselves and the brokers maybe), so the community loses every time a full-time trader is born.

Having said that, I feel like a full-time trader myself, but I am always trying to justify myself not working a normal job. What do you do other than make money for yourself (and teach people to make money for themselves, in your case)? That's a question I keep asking myself..

Btw, the label says this account (and your other account too) is a demo. It is possible that it could have been mislabelled, I know.

Beverley posted:
    Yahoo, finally figured out where the url is... https://www.myfxbook.com/members/Beverley/new-scalp/108091
hope this works if you want to check out the new system. Just began a new account so you can follow if you wish.😕

Cheers!

Yes this new account is a demo, in fact all except one is a demo which we use in our mentoring otherwise all can see what we draw as income from our own personal accounts, we take exactly the same trades (different position sizes of course) but every trade we take, we take in our live room in front of our members. it is then up to them if they copy or not - entirely their decision. We just became very good at trading and learning the fundamentals and were asked to share our education with others so that is what we do.
Both my husband and I trade for an income and that is how we make our living. We did not start mentoring to earn money at all and do not advertise ourself - we just ask that those who get good results pass the good word to those who want to learn to trade successfully. It all started by accident helping others and grew from there.
We love the feeling when one of our trading friends finally ' gets it' and can think on their own and does not need so much hand holding - it is a great feeling like raising children and watching them grow and move on.
I am sick and tired of these would be organisations that push the marketing crap down your throat just to get $$ then you get no help or support, it stinks and there are heaps of new traders who need help - so we hope in our journey to meet a few and give them a hand to hold just for a little while.
As I get the hang of this site I will be putting all our accounts on it, but as you know it only registers as one is open on your pc so at the present we have 4 showing on 4 pc's.... I am sure I will get to grips with it all.

Beverley posted:
We just became very good at trading and were asked to share our education with others so that is what we do.

Both my husband and I trade for an income and that is how we make our living.

We did not start mentoring to earn money at all...

It all started by accident helping others and grew from there.

We love the feeling when one of our trading friends finally ' gets it' and can think on their own and does not need so much hand holding - it is a great feeling like raising children and watching them grow and move on.

I am sick and tired of these would be organisations that push the marketing crap down your throat just to get $$ then you get no help or support, it stinks and there are heaps of new traders who need help - so we hope in our journey to meet a few and give them a hand to hold just for a little while.

I am sure I will get to grips with it all.

beverly, dear, i would like to be the first to say thank you.

😎

if i am right about this, which considering the fact that i have already been wrong about a trillion times, so the odds are really good that i aint right, one more time, but if i am right, this is a law of nature that i have found.

bring on some of that old style mentoring.

z/.