So, I am dreaming of becoming a successfull trader. And one day start my own Production company. Sounds pretty easy, doesen't it.
Just start trading, and Just start your company. Alot of people have told me.
Just to clarify. I am still NOT! a successfull trader. This is just the story of my learnig, my experiences and my journey to becoming successfull as an amateur trader.
I have traded Forex. And a bit of Stocks in the past. And its not as easy as it looks. I started out Trading on a forex broker account, with just 1000 usd. Thinking: I'll double this by the end of the week! Silly right.
I had no training, no mentoring, no experience. Just a few articles on the internet and some Youtube videos. The thought of starting out on a demo account, just to learn the platform. Did not even hit me. So as you can imagine. I blew out my account by the end of that week.
It more or less happened like this
I had no clue about leverage. So i thought the higher the better right. 1:500 was the highest leverage my broker offered. So thats what i did. I also had no clue about managing risk. So then what I did was a 1:500 leveraged trade. With a 50% total capital investment.
Entusiasm on top and blind faith. I was litteraly gambling with my money.
Not that i knew that at the time. I thought i was well on my way to becoming rich! I started thinking, why doesent everyone do this!?
And then it started to move UP! I was in trader heaven. I knew what a pip was. And I had read that you shold aim for atleast 100-300 pip profit somewhere. So I set a Target, 300 pips above the price. And logged off. Set and forget they called it. Looking back, I might aswell just have gone to a Casino with my 1000$.
When i came home from work the next day. I was so eager to check out my trade. That 1000$ was all i had to use in investing at the time. And In my mind i was very much looking forward to see what profits i hade made during the time I was sleeping and working.
What shock it was to see the 0$ balance in my account. My money? What the actual f**k just happened to my money?
It took me a while to figure out what had happened. I lost a great deal of motivation that day. "Maybe trading is not for me anyways?" But i got to my senses and decided to learn from my mistakes. It took me a few months to replenish my 1000$ investment. And when i did. I had learned about the Stop Loss function.
Still not much about leverage, risk managment and chart analysis. So i blew out my account again very rapidly. Altough I did do a bit better this time around.
I figured out I had to learn some more about chart patterns. Some trade setups as they called it. Thats when I learned about the Moving Average (MA). One of the most used Indicators among traders I have come to understand. The combination between the 14. and the 200. MA and the golden cross. When the 14MA crosses over the 200MA it is time to buy or sell depending on the "Trend of the market"
A few months later i was armed with another 1000$, determined not to blow out my account again. But i did.
Took me almost a month this time though. At first i made good profit. Having heard about the day trader term I no longer put any set and forget trades. I traded exclusively from 16.00 - 23.00 CET. Thats when i get home from work and when i go to bed. So i had some controll over what happened.
My trading plan was taking shape. Not that I knew I need one at the time.
I traded on a 5 min chart. 1:500 leverage and with 20 to 80 percent of total capital invested in each trade using mainly the EUR/USD chart.
I was doing better, but still far from what I wold call successfull. I won't do that until my trading income surpass my expenses and i can earn enough to live off of it, and earn enough to keep investing. Thats my estimation of trading success for myself.
My account was still losing money at a fast pace. And i cold not for the life of me figure out why. So i decided to change platform. Maybe that wold help. And it sort of did. Because upon creation of that account. They asked me what limit i wold like on my leverage. Leverage? i thought? What is that?! So i Googled it. And that was one of my most helpfull and valuable lessions this far in my trading experience. Understanding what leverage is, is quite essential when trading.
This far I have learned about the golden cross. Stop loss (SL) and take profit (TP) functions. How leverage works and when the different markets open and close. This is very basic knowlege any trader must have.
Following the simple strategy of buying/selling when the 14MA crossed over the 200MA. And sort of hoping for the best. Until i manually was eighter happy with my gains. Or it hit the SL mark. Because i had no idea where to place the targets. This is something i am still working on today. Cut the losers and let the winners run was something i were to learn at a much later date. Using the trailing SL function are also a very usefull thing i picked up in some youtube video.
Along with a lot of different ways of performing a tecnical chart analysis. That is one of the things that make youtube a bit hard to learn from. There are so much information out there. Some good some bad. Very little very good information but a lot of utter cap. Filtering out the usefull information without a mentor takes a lot of trial and error.
And that takes time, and a lot of money. Well, to me alot of money. Everything is relative!. Time to me is the most valuable thing I have. So I dont like to waste it. If you can, get a mentor. Find a friend that trades successfully or what ever, It's huge. Learning on your own is hard, time consuming and expensive. Nothing is more nerve wrecking than seeing your account in Red, just hoping, praying that the market wll recover before your account gets blown out. Just to lose your money for the 5th time learning about Risk Management!
At this point I was getting a bit sick of it. What was i doing wrong? Every time i placed a trade. It seemed like the market tipped the other way and turned against me. I't started to feel personal.
I started to look for the answer In books, on Youtube and I googled successfull traders to see what free content they were offering. I's actually quite a lot. I came across some Webinars offered by some of theese people i Googled. So i started wathing. Hour upon hour with a pen and paper in hand i sat there. Watching, writing and listening to every word. Then something popped. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Don't risk more than 1% of your total capital per trade.
It sort of made sense to me. But it also somehow seemed a bit wierd, when will i ever get rich on a 1% investment?
With my 1000$ that is a 10$ investment. That wont make money right? now that i have leveraged down to 1:5.
Keeping one trade of 10$ with 1:5 leverage won't get you rich. Keeping 20+ of those trades on the other hand might,
over time. If you let your winners run and you cut your losers before they get big.
I havent blown out my account i a while now. And it is growing slowly but steadily every day. One day, it will get big enough to keep me self sustained. And maybe even big enough to get me that Production buisness i dream of. Just gotta keep learning and updating myself.
Practicing trading psycology, not falling for the urge to place trades. Just because its fun. And in general just take it serious. I struggle with that. Not placing trades because its fun. And sticking to my trading plan. Trading is a game of patience sometimes. Patience and self controll.
Stay Possitive! cheers
