Can you really make a living from trading?

Thanks for the song, I enjoyed it. It does push me to work harder.


I have another motto:

"Where there`s a will, there`s a way"


Of course, my goal is to make money, consistently, working this tradings as a business. And my first target is to learn a lot, to know what I am doing.

Although I have lost some money (about 1/4), I am still not broke, and as far as I have tried this business, I really enjoy trading.

So I`ll keep trying.

Two years full time I'd say would be the rough rule of thumb.

2 years full time?
Gosh, that`s a lot.
I hope you mean 2 years to be consistent, and no 2 years to be profitable.
At least I have survived 5 months.

I know is not a good idea to have all the eggs in the same basket, so I have shares in USA and shares in UK, through CMC, plus 1 or 2 commodities a month, which have all been quite profitable. That`s good, that`s why I am not broke.

But I want to live from this, so I decided to learn Forex to trade from 7am till I am tired, normally around 8pm. I want to do this for a couple of years, to earn more money and increase my capital, so after 2 years being able to work just with daily charts.

But Forex ain`t easy, the announcements... you know.

Would it be easier Indices? I had a look at Dow Jones graph last week, I saw a trend, buy in the bottoms, sell at the tops, I did about 80 pips out of a range of 40. Very good indeed! I went back the next day, ready for action, but couldn`t determine the right channel, and lost many pips.

It took me 18 months of trying out various systems, devising tweaks etc before the "eureka moment" and I started making money. I lost initially and then after learning money management treaded water for about a year, doing well for a while only to give it all back in a short time.

Part of my learning experience was as much learning how to properly test strategies as well as coming up with them, initially I thought I had profitable setups (i.e. pip positive) only to learn later when I'd refined my backtesting that they in fact were £-ve.

Don't give up, but don't expect miracles, you probably won't make much (if any) money this year. The more time goes on - the more you learn. All goes wonderfully for a while and You start to think that there's nothing more to learn - then the market suprises you and you come out the other end wiser (if a little bruised).

Some advice on the forum is to create my own system and do not trust Services (Based on systems created by other traders). I think this is contradictory, if I design my own system, why would it be better than a system design by a trader with years of experience?
Then my conclusion is that it is better to subscribe to a Trading Advice that give me experience trading, while learning and paper trading my own systems.
Even if I lose money with the Service, well, maybe I would have lost even more doing it by myself.
Just thoughts.

I am still in red, May seems to be the end of some big trends in GBP and in EUR that I was trying to follow. Shares are going down today, and I still don`t get it.

2 years was the rule of thumb (early '90's) on the old LIFFE market; by which was meant "if you're still around after 2 years, you should be making decent money"

To be honest I don't go in for buying them off the shelf. I honestly believe that a trading system is only 45% of what is going to get you to the finishing line. The other 50% comes from the man pushing the buttons and of course 5% to that lady called luck.

If you asked 100 people on here what their systems were, I am pretty sure they would all be different in some form or another, yet they all work. I know what I am looking for with the system I use, the more I use it the more comfortable I become. I have tried Stochastics, Williams % etc etc. They didn't work for me. That is not to say they don't work.

I guess what I am trying to say is that if you create your own system, it is set for you (the 50% of a successful trade...you know the guy who hits the buttons) if you are using someone else's fine tuned system it is set up for them not you. I guess everyone is different, and their setup maybe higher risk than you want, takes more trades than you are comfortable doing etc etc...

I don't believe there is a short cut, and the amount your knowledge increases by developing your own ideas and systems really can't be underestimated.

I have only been doing this for about a year, so am not thinking of going full time yet..but I like to think that my own persistence and hard work will get me there, rather than someone else's

Interesting Post, thanks Ceydababy.


From the point of view of risk, I am diversified, since I have shares in US picked from one system, then I have shares in UK picked with a different system, then I am trying to trade Forex in a Intraday basis, and I am looking now into Indices Intraday.

I like shares since they are very reliable (well, at least this system is working). But I am normally nervious with the possibility of a crash. It has happened before, and nobody can predict them. Right now in Asia we have a big big risk of having a crash any day, or hopefully, a down trend after a Consolidation period. If we do have a crash, then I will lose almost a third of my equity, and maybe more depending of how CMC work out the stops after a gap down in the open.

Anyway, that`s why I am looking into Intraday Trading. I wake, work some hours, then close my positions, and have profits. With that logic I think is safer.

On the other hand, if my system is working on a daily basis, it should work in a 1Hour timeframe as well. If so, instead of waiting 40 days in average for profits (that`s my system`s statistics), I should only wait 40 hours in average, meaning that my money is better compounded.

Well, just thoughts

I will keep trying different systems and papertrading, because I have notice that my system didn`t work, but there`s people out there who makes profits everyday.

Keno