Turning a new leaf from a life of failure to success.
Hoggums
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Reading this is like watching watching a toddler climb a wall, you know eventually they are going to fall off and get hurt, it's just a matter of when not if.
I have only one question for you Prestige - can you afford to lose the money in you trading account? If the answer is no then take it out now. By all means trade it if you CAN afford to lose it. But if you trade with the intention of getting enough money to splash on females every week you will put undue pressure on yourself and trade badly.
You need a clear head to trade and you mustn't put expectations or profit targets on yourself.
I'm sure trading sounds like the ideal young mans job, it really is the dream job for the lazy - click a few mouse buttons and hey presto - profit. Doesn't work like that and boldly stating you've learned your lesson now is laughable. There's plenty more mistakes to come and you'll make the same one more than once. Trading with real money from the start means those mistakes will be expensive.
Oh and my advice is steer clear of the women who require money. They may be pretty, but they are usually spoilt, moody and demanding bitches, far more concerned with their own happiness than yours. They will be a constant drain on your bank account and make your life hell while you're trying to please them. Find someone more considerate who will appreciate you and not your possessions and you will be far happier in life.
I have only one question for you Prestige - can you afford to lose the money in you trading account? If the answer is no then take it out now. By all means trade it if you CAN afford to lose it. But if you trade with the intention of getting enough money to splash on females every week you will put undue pressure on yourself and trade badly.
You need a clear head to trade and you mustn't put expectations or profit targets on yourself.
I'm sure trading sounds like the ideal young mans job, it really is the dream job for the lazy - click a few mouse buttons and hey presto - profit. Doesn't work like that and boldly stating you've learned your lesson now is laughable. There's plenty more mistakes to come and you'll make the same one more than once. Trading with real money from the start means those mistakes will be expensive.
Oh and my advice is steer clear of the women who require money. They may be pretty, but they are usually spoilt, moody and demanding bitches, far more concerned with their own happiness than yours. They will be a constant drain on your bank account and make your life hell while you're trying to please them. Find someone more considerate who will appreciate you and not your possessions and you will be far happier in life.
Yamato
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Yes, the point many have made here and that I agree with is that the market is very good at creating delusions in the trader. It seems like the more you lose the more you learn, and that the more you lose the better a trader you become, but let me tell you from my experience that it's just an illusion. I lost money with discretionary trading for 14 years in a row, blowing out my account month after month.
There's no escape. No one is profitable from the start (unless you're buying stocks and holding them for months), and most people quit before becoming profitable. Let's even be clearer. No day traders are profitable from the start (unless of course you're the daughter of Larry Williams or if someone profitable is teaching you his secrets), and most people quit after being wiped out several times. How many times have you been wiped out? Just once or twice? It's going to happen again.
So, if you're learning this by yourself, you better start with paper trading, and keep doing it until you've found a way to be profitable. But I would suggest an even better approach. Do not get started at all with discretionary trading, and go straight into developing totally automated trading systems. Those will make money, provided, once again, that you're not betting everything on the next trade.
There's no escape. No one is profitable from the start (unless you're buying stocks and holding them for months), and most people quit before becoming profitable. Let's even be clearer. No day traders are profitable from the start (unless of course you're the daughter of Larry Williams or if someone profitable is teaching you his secrets), and most people quit after being wiped out several times. How many times have you been wiped out? Just once or twice? It's going to happen again.
So, if you're learning this by yourself, you better start with paper trading, and keep doing it until you've found a way to be profitable. But I would suggest an even better approach. Do not get started at all with discretionary trading, and go straight into developing totally automated trading systems. Those will make money, provided, once again, that you're not betting everything on the next trade.
advfntrader
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safvan
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Taking losses you cannot afford to lose is important. A big shock is necessary to learn humility in the market.
If you waste 99% of your time managing and keeping losses less instead of being wrong or right in the market, you would be better than many traders all around. There is learning time that is needed and everyone goes through that.
I have not heard of a single trader or investor who has made millions just starting out. Dan Zanger, Larry Williams all have had their own share of bad luck.
Just stick with it and manage losses and become less greedy. If you just tell yourself that you would need to give yourself atleast 5 years before you make your first million dollars trading the markets, I bet that would solve atleast 90% of those urges to get rich quick and take big risks.
Increase risks as you learn more and increase your account and decrease risk as you lose more and decrease your account balance.
Here is a good starting video series for you
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUESPxb2ulY&feature=related
If you waste 99% of your time managing and keeping losses less instead of being wrong or right in the market, you would be better than many traders all around. There is learning time that is needed and everyone goes through that.
I have not heard of a single trader or investor who has made millions just starting out. Dan Zanger, Larry Williams all have had their own share of bad luck.
Just stick with it and manage losses and become less greedy. If you just tell yourself that you would need to give yourself atleast 5 years before you make your first million dollars trading the markets, I bet that would solve atleast 90% of those urges to get rich quick and take big risks.
Increase risks as you learn more and increase your account and decrease risk as you lose more and decrease your account balance.
Here is a good starting video series for you
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUESPxb2ulY&feature=related
safvan
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and also try to keep away from public forums and such stuff while you are working on building your trading career. The less noise you have around you initially the better it would be for you. New ideas and brain storming is negative for your account balance. Simplicity and patience is the key.
Doomberg
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Prestige... you seem like a good guy and i understand your motives, but you are going to make many more mistakes, i'm not going to slate you or tell you "don't bother trading" but what i will say is that from an outsider i'd say that you'll probably blow your account, end up getting more money and then blow it again and being in a £ucked up situation.. i've been there and done it and learned from it.
You have already learned a valuable mistake by losing 6k in one trade or whatever it was, from that you need to brand in to your head "money management" it really is the biggest factor when wanting to survive in the trading world, apart from the obvious of being a good trader. I'd say that you are going the right way risking about $45 per trade as that is exactly 3% of $1500... of course if you are on a winning trade let it run past $45 profit if all is looking good but still set targets to take profits because its upsetting to be 60 points up and then when you next check you notice that you have been stopped out.
Good luck with this, i'll be watching this journal as it seems interesting
I hope it works out well, and don't neglect your Uni work for trading
You have already learned a valuable mistake by losing 6k in one trade or whatever it was, from that you need to brand in to your head "money management" it really is the biggest factor when wanting to survive in the trading world, apart from the obvious of being a good trader. I'd say that you are going the right way risking about $45 per trade as that is exactly 3% of $1500... of course if you are on a winning trade let it run past $45 profit if all is looking good but still set targets to take profits because its upsetting to be 60 points up and then when you next check you notice that you have been stopped out.
Good luck with this, i'll be watching this journal as it seems interesting
I hope it works out well, and don't neglect your Uni work for trading
This is the best piece of advice on the thread.
The markets were here years before your college course and will conitinue to be here years after too.
Prestige
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Thanks guys,
Your advice and feedback is great 🙂 I am only trading for significant lengths of the following 3 weeks as it is the break between the two semesters of University. As always University will be my top priority as Doomberg suggested 👍 For those of you interested I aced my stats 108 exam on Friday morning and hit the clubs that night with my fellow students for an epic pub crawl to celebrate the end of exams! I can't remember much of it but I heard good things.
However its the next morning and along it the hangover you discover you phone with a few extra contacts that you scratch you head wondering who exactly they are. Ah well I have built a bridge and moved on, my bridge even has a tram line 🙂
Anyway to business, So to recap I added another $1000 to my account this morning totaling its worth to being $ 2,505.00. This is because I figured it was enough to get some good safe leverage with decent returns. I calculated that trading a lot size of 30,000 would risk around 5% per trade at 30% SL which I am willing to risk and prepared to loose.
Looking up the same pairs I was following in the past week which are the euro/usd, gbp/usd and the usd/chf. Based on the charts I decided that the euro was still vulnerable to bad news on the debt crisis and could see a possible bullish RSI forming. Therefore I went for it at an entry of 1.4240 and put a SL of -35 pips and TP of 40. Next I traded the gbp/usd buying it at 1.6160 setting a SL of -50 which hitting that level of 1.6100 I believe would have caused it to further decline. The TP at 70. The usd/chf I decided to leave out as at the time it was not volatile enough and I also did not wan't to increase my margin any further. Here are the results below,
6/20/2011 Buy EUR/USD 30,000.00 1.4245
6/21/2011 Sell EUR/USD -30,000.00 1.4285
So this ended in a 40 pip profit after a rough start where the SL was only a few pips away from being triggered.
6/20/2011 Buy GBP/USD 30,000.00 1.6160
6/21/2011 Sell GBP/USD -30,000.00 1.6190
As you can see I only made a 30 pip profit as I sold it prematurely due to my target of 30 pips total for the day being clearly met and looking at the chart was a little doubtful on it hitting that overextended 70 pips.
So altogether making 70 pips overall I brought in $260 bringing my total account's value toward a pleasurable $2760
However as I have won the last 3 trades I assume a loss will be soon to follow.
p.s The usd/jpy ended up increasing in value like I thought last Thursday night my time.[/I]
Your advice and feedback is great 🙂 I am only trading for significant lengths of the following 3 weeks as it is the break between the two semesters of University. As always University will be my top priority as Doomberg suggested 👍 For those of you interested I aced my stats 108 exam on Friday morning and hit the clubs that night with my fellow students for an epic pub crawl to celebrate the end of exams! I can't remember much of it but I heard good things.
However its the next morning and along it the hangover you discover you phone with a few extra contacts that you scratch you head wondering who exactly they are. Ah well I have built a bridge and moved on, my bridge even has a tram line 🙂
Anyway to business, So to recap I added another $1000 to my account this morning totaling its worth to being $ 2,505.00. This is because I figured it was enough to get some good safe leverage with decent returns. I calculated that trading a lot size of 30,000 would risk around 5% per trade at 30% SL which I am willing to risk and prepared to loose.
Looking up the same pairs I was following in the past week which are the euro/usd, gbp/usd and the usd/chf. Based on the charts I decided that the euro was still vulnerable to bad news on the debt crisis and could see a possible bullish RSI forming. Therefore I went for it at an entry of 1.4240 and put a SL of -35 pips and TP of 40. Next I traded the gbp/usd buying it at 1.6160 setting a SL of -50 which hitting that level of 1.6100 I believe would have caused it to further decline. The TP at 70. The usd/chf I decided to leave out as at the time it was not volatile enough and I also did not wan't to increase my margin any further. Here are the results below,
6/20/2011 Buy EUR/USD 30,000.00 1.4245
6/21/2011 Sell EUR/USD -30,000.00 1.4285
So this ended in a 40 pip profit after a rough start where the SL was only a few pips away from being triggered.
6/20/2011 Buy GBP/USD 30,000.00 1.6160
6/21/2011 Sell GBP/USD -30,000.00 1.6190
As you can see I only made a 30 pip profit as I sold it prematurely due to my target of 30 pips total for the day being clearly met and looking at the chart was a little doubtful on it hitting that overextended 70 pips.
So altogether making 70 pips overall I brought in $260 bringing my total account's value toward a pleasurable $2760
However as I have won the last 3 trades I assume a loss will be soon to follow.
p.s The usd/jpy ended up increasing in value like I thought last Thursday night my time.[/I]
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Great first post Prestige. I suppose that your journay so far has taught you not much yet about trading but a huge amount about yourself. The advice earlier about trading only what money you can afford to lose is very good right now, as you are at the most vulnerable and dangerous of stages in development. Stop trading or cut right down to risking only a tiny %age of your account. Then read Mark Douglas's Trading In The Zone to really understand yourself as a trader. You can't know everything the market will do tomorrow but you have to absolutely know today what you will do if you're in a trade tomorrow.
Masquerade
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BeginnerJoe
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I am amazed by how much pleasure you get out of this considering the total amount of money you put in was in the region of $10k. I see a considerable risk you will be pawning the shirt on your back to add more pleasure to your account.
Scotty2Cues
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Masquerade
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That's easy when you've got a bit of a cash to chuck around. 😎 They've got a sixth sense for it, then they're gone once they've spent it all. A well known quote in the gambling circles.
Man to gf: "would you still love me if I had no money?"
gf: "darling i'll always love you, and i'll miss you terribly"
Certainly if a person has the intelligence and character to become a successful independent trader then university is irrelevant. But this is true by default/circularity because becoming an independent trader doesn't require a university degree. Meh, maybe I'm being pedantic. However, if you want to be a trader working for a bank, then I think having a degree is one of the most important things you need.
BeginnerJoe
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No, trading needs no intelligence. It needs the emotional numbness of a mollusc.
Shikamaroo
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Having a degree and a job is your hedge against the initial failings as a trader.
@ BeginnerJoe Everything in the world of man is learned behaviour; the trader must have intelligence.
@ BeginnerJoe Everything in the world of man is learned behaviour; the trader must have intelligence.
Prestige
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Hey everyone 🙂
So today's trading didn't go as planed but that's okay.
I traded the euro/usd and the gbp/usd and trading 30,000 lots made a loss of -40 pips on the euro and -30 pips on the gbp.
This was a loss of $260 bringing my account back down to $2500 where it was before yesterdays profit.
I will see you all tomorrow night and hopefully with some better news haha.
Good luck on your own trades today!
So today's trading didn't go as planed but that's okay.
I traded the euro/usd and the gbp/usd and trading 30,000 lots made a loss of -40 pips on the euro and -30 pips on the gbp.
This was a loss of $260 bringing my account back down to $2500 where it was before yesterdays profit.
I will see you all tomorrow night and hopefully with some better news haha.
Good luck on your own trades today!
