I WANT to sit here all day (seriously)

Hi,

3 months trading on Tradefair: lost £531 (which I'd made on soccer arbs over 2 seasons), £219 remains.

I have made every mistake I've read about (several times), my discipline has improved dramatically, but the safer I get the more often I'm stopped out. I've traded FTSE and a bit on cable.

Paper trading didn't work for me, the psychology was simply missing; I knew if it was real money I'd make different decisions.

I wanted to use my £750 to prove to myself that I should risk the £10K I could put in. I don't want to get rich quick, I don't even want to get rich, but I would like to make a modest living from the market.

Can I get there on £10K ? - "there" being averaging £750 a week.

I will continue to put the time in, but I feel like I'm going backwards, the first few weeks I held at no loss, but as I try to develop a plan, I can see myself getting "out"

So, my question is if I commit 6 months learning 5 days a week, 8 hours a day; should I learn enough to earn enough to stay in - still giving it 8 hours a day.

I guess the profile of a "full timer" is different, and should determine where I focus my research, and I assume it should be forex.

There's so much advice and counter advice and offers to train its difficult to know where to point my efforts.

I know my first task is to protect my last £200. I don't care if I only show 0.5 % a week at the moment.

I won't be giving up.

Now I assume someone will shout at me about naivety

The problem is there's no guarantee that putting in all that work will yield results - in fact the odds are against you. How would you feel if after 6 months of hard study you were no closer to making a living, 6 months you could have spent getting a safety net (i.e. a job) and a career.

My (serious) advice would be to set your sights on an achievable career and set aside a certain amount of your salary to learn the markets. If you master it - great - you'll have more than £10K to live off - if not - you have a career to fall back on.

£750 per week from 10K is 7.5% per week or 3300% per year. Simply not achievable without significant risk of ruin.

The reason there is so much advice and counter advise is because nobody follows the same trading plans exactly.
One trader could be giving you advise based on a breakout system on 1 min charts and the other could be giving advice for a pullback system on 4 hr charts.
Everybody has their own learning curve and something that might take someone 15 minutes to master will take others a lifetime (think rubics cube).

I've noticed in my own personal trading something that you may be suffering from as well, information overload.
There are a gazillion strategy's that work but the trick is finding one that will work for YOU and I found that going back to basics when you feel overwhelmed is a huge step foreward.
There is an old saying, KISS it stands for Keep It Simple Stupid! What I mean by that is take the time to figure out what timeframe you want to trade and find your basic set of indicators (i use 2 MA's and the A/d line) and just follow them for a while. Try to understand the relationship between the price and indicators and how they interact with eachother.
Don't get discouraged and throw out your system if you have a string of bad trades, just keep track of it in a log book and tweak your system if you see something that could be done a bit better.
The goal in trading is to win over the long run, not every trade will be a winner.

I'f you're really interested in forex I highly recommend BabyPips.com as a learning tool.
Just go through their "trading school" and you should have a better grasp on things.

I can't comment on making 750 a month based on a 10k account just because I don't set monitary goals, I just try to turn a consistant profit.

have been down to £200 lythyd and traded off the back of it to £1000's over the course of a month (going back a while now though lol !)

keep going

lythyd said:

Hi,
I've traded FTSE and a bit on cable.
Can I get there on £10K ? - "there" being averaging £750 a week.
So, my question is if I commit 6 months learning 5 days a week, 8 hours a day; should I learn enough to earn enough to stay in - still giving it 8 hours a day.
I guess the profile of a "full timer" is different, and should determine where I focus my research, and I assume it should be forex.
There's so much advice and counter advice and offers to train its difficult to know where to point my efforts.

Click to expand...

Just a couple of things the that the other 2 excellent posts didnt touch on.

Ftse and cable are probably 2 of the most "difficult" things to learn on - being that there is a lot of "noise".

Your small account size will feel the noise somewhat more than a larger account and it makes it harder on you. For example, a 250 tick move is no big deal for some traders but for you, if you are $1 a tick long, a 250 tick move is make or break. Something to bear in mind there.

Ftse is similar - a lot of noise that might squeeze you out of trades when you might actually have the "right" trade.

Also, regarding forex - there is generally an obsession with forex....... try not to get sucked in if you can. There are many other things out there to trade. Forex is just sold very well by the spreadbetting firms....... i wonder why..........

And finally, - concentrate on one thing or style, trying to trade everything, everyway will destroy you.

Hope that helps.

lythyd said:

Hi,

3 months trading on Tradefair: lost £531 (which I'd made on soccer arbs over 2 seasons), £219 remains.

I have made every mistake I've read about (several times), my discipline has improved dramatically, but the safer I get the more often I'm stopped out. I've traded FTSE and a bit on cable.

Paper trading didn't work for me, the psychology was simply missing; I knew if it was real money I'd make different decisions.

I wanted to use my £750 to prove to myself that I should risk the £10K I could put in. I don't want to get rich quick, I don't even want to get rich, but I would like to make a modest living from the market.

Can I get there on £10K ? - "there" being averaging £750 a week.

I will continue to put the time in, but I feel like I'm going backwards, the first few weeks I held at no loss, but as I try to develop a plan, I can see myself getting "out"

So, my question is if I commit 6 months learning 5 days a week, 8 hours a day; should I learn enough to earn enough to stay in - still giving it 8 hours a day.

I guess the profile of a "full timer" is different, and should determine where I focus my research, and I assume it should be forex.

There's so much advice and counter advice and offers to train its difficult to know where to point my efforts.

I know my first task is to protect my last £200. I don't care if I only show 0.5 % a week at the moment.

I won't be giving up.

Now I assume someone will shout at me about naivety

Click to expand...

Well, it's your lucky week.
I will now show you how to turn your 200 quid into 300 quid
Only takes 5 mins and a 24 hr wait.
Open an ETX S B account where they credit you with 100 quid margin free gratis where you can bet say gold at 10p a point.


As for learning trading and expecting to make 750 quid a week....it's going to take a long time and there are NO guarantees of success. However, if you are prepared to keep positions small and take what the markets give, you may stand a chance. Greed and over leverage are the biggest account busters. Look what happened to the banks.

lythyd said:

Can I get there on £10K ? - "there" being averaging £750 a week.

Click to expand...

Yes.

no matter what anyone says tight stops are not safe

TAjammy said:

no matter what anyone says tight stops are not safe

Click to expand...

um... not safe because they'll get gapped

or

not safe because an operator will steal them

....?

what is it anyone might have said that I haven't heard yet. I've lost 60% so my conspiracy radar attaches to any targets

Short stops are fine - provided you are happy to keep trying a trade multiple times and will let it run when it goes your way. Otherwise a slightly wider stop is better and only give each trade one go - leaving a decent break before re-entering a market.

£200 will only be built up be sheer luck. Far too small an amount to get anywhere. If you are serious - stick the £10k in the account - but trade the same amount per point as if you only had the £200. If you can do that then you have some dicipline. If you can do that you can take a £100 loss and not worry. If you can't do that and you find yourself down £500 on one trade - take your money, walk away and don't look back.

Now - 6 months is not long enough - you will need 2 years. If you can build that £10k up in your spare time over that period then you can think about it, until then concentrate on small steps.

lythyd said:

um... not safe because they'll get gapped

or

not safe because an operator will steal them

....?

what is it anyone might have said that I haven't heard yet. I've lost 60% so my conspiracy radar attaches to any targets

Click to expand...

neither

because you have to let volatility work a bit and give your trade room. or maybe you filter markets with a low ATR so that stops are close as the ATR is small? anyway, i don't know why, bar order book scalpers , people use 1 tick stop losses...

episteme said:

£200 will only be built up be sheer luck. Far too small an amount to get anywhere. If you are serious - stick the £10k in the account - but trade the same amount per point as if you only had the £200. If you can do that then you have some dicipline. If you can do that you can take a £100 loss and not worry. If you can't do that and you find yourself down £500 on one trade - take your money, walk away and don't look back.

Click to expand...

In my opinion I would stear clear of funding that 10k.. If you start getting cocky and experience positive variance you could be tempted to up your stake.

Personally I would stick that 200 in a micro lot forex account and scale positions.. risk 1-3% and learn from the market.. pick a style thats inline with your strengths and learn everything u can about it.. Write a trading plan with goals and stick with it

If you've got 6 months spare, have you considered applying for a professional training program? By this I mean mentoring from ex-fund managers, trading desks etc..

thanks,

Applying where? Mentoring sounds like £400 day rate, is it?

This is my personal opinion.. please don't take this as gold;
Professional education is expensive,
The way I look at it is the "Start up" cost of your own business.

You can find most of the information you'd learn for free on the web, its just the application & compilation that is time consuming.. You could spend years deciphering the good from the ugly in the online world and loose the same amount of capital it would have cost to get professional instruction.

Anyways if you plan to go down this route just make sure you do your research... theres a lot of bull**** out there

Also make sure your goals and expectations are realistic, I would say 30% a month is very optimistic for a beginner

thanks to everyone who replied to this for me, its been really helpful. I've already got a sense of the style of support on this forum and its very encouraging for me.

I concur that paper trading does little to condition you emotionally, which may be the most important conditioning you will need. However, it is not the only one. First of all, you need to create, or acquire, a trading plan that you 'make yours' by consistently generating results, even though they are on paper. You need at the very least three months' worth of paper trading to truly venture that you 'trust' the system live. Skipping paper trading has apparently done you no favors, so I would suggest you go back to it. After logging in the requisite time, you will be much better off with your live trading.

At the risk of my reply getting long in the tooth, I share my experience. I paper-traded for a couple of months on and off, got cocky and funded a decent-size account. I nearly lost a third of my capital within a handful of trading sessions. I went back to paper for months after that, and reconditioned myself. I talk about this on a blog I have on the subject, you may look up my profile should you want. (About third time I pimp my blog today, sorry! I have absolutely no commercial interest in it. I am just a sucker for paying forward all the mentoring I continue to receive from other traders).