Have you ever met a newbie who...

...you simply knew would not make it as a trader? What gave the newbie away?

Just asking out of curiosity as a few of my friends and I had this discussion over lunch yesterday :)

Well at least for me I haven't met anyone who even like trading Forex apart from my girlfriend:D She is playing Forex actually not trading xD. She does it on demo and with intuition :))). Oh wait I did meet couple people, but they were just curious of what was forex, they were never really interested into it, even though I provided some materials for them to study.

My opinion what would make a guy fail in Forex is giving up early... I have been trading for live a little over 6 month now before that I was demoing 1 year and still on the losing side:D. What's funny that in Demo I was winning great, but once going on Live its totally different=). I have pretty good self control to not move SL and so on, but still there is still mistakes I do...However I keep trying until one day i will become 1 successful trader.

Everyday I am learning something new while trading and then after trading day i go through all my trades done and see where should I have entered and why and so on and learn from those and don't make mistakes anymore. Recently I found that Price action is everything. Before that I was searching for holy grail...which does not exist in my opinion. That holy grail searching could be another way to determine if the trader will succeed or not. Another one would be laziness and not willing to learn but want to have 'free lunch'... What I mean is buying those EA's which 90% of them don't work and let it do the job for you...

Oh and last thing I want to say is you have to be genuinely interested into Forex, not just thinking about money...Find a way to make those pips constantly, then after that money will come to you. I can say I really love Forex, its weird but sometimes all i can think of is Forex - 'what should I have done on that one trade' and so on=) Heck I even dream about forex...I feel that is weird.
But I guess I need more experience on live to make myself more successful.

BR. Duy

Thanks for your response. I agree that giving up early is a huge mistake as it takes time to learn how to trade. I have been doing it for over a decade, but it was hard when I started. You learn by losing.

Demo and Live Trading is totally different as you found out the hard way. Laziness decreases both health as well as wealth and I think lazy people get what they deserve.

I have met plenty of newbies who simple were not met to trade. I do enjoy to listen to their stupidity and unwillingness to take in new information which may be beneficial to them.

Oh well, let those failures open trading accounts with banks and enjoy the ride down :).

Well, it would be hard to determine.

You can tell if one is a newbie, however how can you know how much is he/she going to invest in it in terms of learning and trading until successful? Or how much time would it require as it is different for everyone?

Yeah its easy to pick them off a mile away seeing as there is an unprecedented amount of people who blow up and lose their money as opposed to those who consistently retain there gains.... (the commonly thrown around statistic of 95% people failure... sure we`ve all heard this figure once or twice before)

What gives this person away is there lack of knowledge and more importantly their complete ignorance to retain what` written all over the internet in terms of prudent steps to take in `breaking` themselves into trading.

Instead the person who carries an ignorant approach and carries the persona of 'right I know what im doing lets throw some money at it' will more than likely go through 1 of 2 steps:

(most common one)

1) Because that specific individual has no reservation or anticipation on their longevity of prospective trading they sub-consciously accept their lack of intelligence and due diligence that is otherwise a necessity, and instead feel freely obliged to place trades incompetently (through the nature of pure gambling speculation) and ACTUALLY at this stage accept losses and wins (because they dont know how to use R:R, Probabilities, what to look for, what to expect etc.) - but what i`ve experienced many do is actually start out with consecutive wins because their trading style is fairly straight forward and in-complex (pretty much what you need) and also carry a level of fearlessness (which is otherwise required when classified as a professional - along with other emotionally grounded techniques)

Then what happens is they all of a sudden take a fairly big loss due to over leveraged on a position, wide stop, no stops, whip saw, something that scared the living shit out of them and put them in their place. Before that one shocker of a trade popped out, all euphoria was present in there minds and felt like they could seriously make a living out of it and actually contemplate quitting their jobs because they`re almost in disbelief (but what they don't know is how far they`re from being in control is the scary thing - hence the shock of the loss) - Its this stage in which you can simultaneously identify (which can be as quick as a fucking day with these people) whether or not they want to identify for the RIGHT reasons, constructive and logical ways of recovering from there errors and acknowledging that they carried the most laughable mentality from the get go...

2) They get spanked instantly, shit their pants and didn't enjoy the experience and forever carry the attitude that it cannot be done unless you`re top financial analyst with a PHD from Cambridge and then they feel the need to troll forums telling everyone else that they`re not cut out for it but wants to confide in sub-consciously being proven wrong by someone either uploading a statement of track performance or teaching them for nothing because they feel like they deserved it because they got stung so badly by their moronic approach to thinking they have any idea what the fuck they`re doing.



I personally think success is PURELY in the composure of the characteristical traits the individual carries which becomes apparent i`d say as soon as the end of the first week full time trading with their own assets...

That`s how you can spot someone who is going to make it or break it like so many other arrogant wanna`be traders....


(anyone who has read 'trading in the zone' then you`ll only acknowledge how i`ve paraphrased his teachings)

I personally think success is PURELY in the composure of the characteristical traits the individual carries which becomes apparent i`d say as soon as the end of the first week full time trading with their own assets...

That`s how you can spot someone who is going to make it or break it like so many other arrogant wanna`be traders....


(anyone who has read 'trading in the zone' then you`ll only acknowledge how i`ve paraphrased his teachings)

I agree. Although I don't think it would give you a definite answer as to if one is going to succeed but more of a lead to which way it goes. Nevertheless, I'm sure there are those who succeed going the standard way - as you said 'retain what` written all over the internet in terms of prudent steps to take in `breaking` themselves into trading.'