Day Trading & Forex Forum

Sharky

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firewalker99

The process can take several months, but most will admit that becoming a consistently profitable trader took them considerably more time (more like 4 to 5 years). If you think you can do it in 6 months, most likely you'll screw up and blow your account. Patience is a key factor on the road to success. Hard work and thousands of hours studying the market trying to learn the behaviour of its participants will increase your odds of success greatly. It's not a guarantuee that you'll make it in the end, but without it you most definitely won't.

tableturn

Agreed. It takes alot of hard work and commitment. View it as learning another language completely, within which you must remain disciplined and not get greedy! Trade with your head and not with your heart, and be prepared to lose alot of money in the process.

FXSCALPER2

What is the point of going into business to lose money?

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tableturn

So people who trade are guaranteed not to lose money? In my experience, people get too jaded into thinking that trading is easy, but then get a smack in the face from reality when they make a loss.

black bear

Agree


Seems the same as learning anything really, well thats been my experience anyway. Once you get to a certain level at trading you can make money, or carry out a learned job with a reasonable degree of competence, does not mean you will last or end up a consistant full time trader but you will be good enough to give it a go and it should not cost you the earth.

Apart from actually doing it, how would you find out if your good enough (intra day day trading)

Why carry on if your actually losing whats the point your results say you should be back to demo / papertrading ...don"t they or am I missing something

I would say if your a pretty stable person to begin with you should be able to find out if its a viable option for the cost of your living expences for the trial period............. say minimum 3 months.

I used to use some of my vacation time to dip my toe in water.......... if you can"t do it one week why try 3 months

Why would you consider going full time unless your to the point where your already profitable, reasonably consistant over a number of months part time and your 90% sure its not a risk if you can re-create what you have all ready done.

I would say its a good idea to wait till you have experienced some serious drawdown or a mistake or two and had your method and you tested some to make sure your not liable to blow up at the 1st adverse trading run etc and your pretty sure in your own mind you will cope or will no when its not working and its time to call it a day.

Think the 5 - 7 year period is probably correct to be considered consistant / profitable trader, lots of jobs and skills take that long to learn

I will tell you if I last that long, I will tell you if I don"t :-)


Latter

FXSCALPER2

If you know you are going to lose, it is stupid to get involved.

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MrGecko

Unless you're managing OPM, you'll never get a stable income from trading - the best you can hope for is your ups + money management are enough to cover your downs.