Im going to be supportive here unlike most of the other posters. Good for you man! You want to go out and stake your claim in a business of pure capitalism where anybody can blow out their account or make a million! I respect that. However, sadly there is no free lunch in this game and it is literally you against the trading community. You have to eat, breath and sleep this stuff in order to beat the others. You are competing against the most competitive people on this planet. People that don't know who you are and could care less about you, they just want your money. Study study study the markets day and night. Look at charts and see what patterns you find in them. Watch the orderbook whenever the markets are open and see what patterns you can find in it. If you seriously put every waking moment into watching the orderbook and looking at charts you will be successful. YT
Supportive is one thing. But you have absolutely no way of saying this is true. The fact is more likely that, even after thousands of hours of this, the far more likely outcome is, he will still be unsuccessful. There are a lot few successful traders than people on like to believe. I would say the number of successful longterm, lucrative traders here on ET is a tenth of what is claimed. Saying that putting in the time guarantees success is a naive belief.
before you start trading first you must accept that you have a mentally unstable personality. why? because trading is non-productive activity that from which the only reward is money. You accept risk ffor reward, only people who like risk start trading. And people who like risk above security are mentally unstable. then you have to accept the truth, only 1 out of a million make money. This means by starting trading you have 1 out of amillion chance to get something out of the experience. 999,999 people will lose capital and time. Time you will never get back. when you're 40, lost all your money, lost 10 years of your life chasing a dream that ony 1 out of 1 million reach, you will understand. then you must realize that the financial markets are zero-sum, it is a vehicle to redistribute money. That is the only reason. redistribute money from the dumb mentally impaired to the smart mentally impaired After you have crossed these things of your checklist you are ready to start your nightmare. Good luck trading!
1-become a MASTER of only ONE trading vehicle (a certain stock, certain option, certain forex cross rate, certain futures contract) 2-do not overtrade 3-do not revenge trade "I'll get that $$$ back" 4-do not be decieved by 'demo trade results'..only real cash $$$ on the line can test you...
If you are serious and not wanting to waste your time or money. Learn how to swing trade and leave it like that. Much , much easier, less stress, less comimission, higher profit per trade. You can enter trades and have a life,, probably even keep a fulltime if you want to, I have gone from 1min time frame to 30-60 min time frame.. wish i had all those 1 min -3min time frame years back. Making more now than ever and I havent come close to having an anyuresum( sp) in months,, Unless you are at some Hedgie or some real good prop shop, sitting next some super-scalper. Stick to 30min and larger time frames...... I can guarantee you, with out a shadow of doubt, 125% sure, you will thank me in 3 years... good luck bud,, dont listen to these other negative fuckls tyoing out of mommas spare room. EF
First of all, get rid of that feeling that you need to trade NOW, because that is exactly what is going to cause you to lose money. It happens to all traders in the beginning - we get involved in this game because we love the idea of it, we don't want to listen to all the advice that says that it's hard, and we think that we're the 1 in a million that is going to make it right away without losing anything first. I can tell that you are probably not going to listen to all the advice telling you to study and wait for a long time before initiating your first live trade - the fact that you said you want it so bad is proof enough of that. Incidentally, there is nothing wrong with that - this is normal. My advice is, AFTER you lose some money, make sure that you stop and don't lose the rest of it. Don't start out making large bets - you will regret it. You are going to need to study a lot longer and harder than you thought to make it - I know I did, and almost everyone else does too. After you lose some money, that is when the real test comes - how badly do you still want it after you have been hurt and it's not as easy as you thought? There are one of three possibilities here: you can quit, you can get mad and keep doing the same mistakes (and lose more money, maybe everything), or you can step back, and start to just practice, practice, practice on the simulator until you get it. You will know that you have "got it" when you feel absolutely no need to ask questions of people on these forums any more. When you wake up in the morning and are 100% sure that you will trade your plan properly and make money that day/week/month/(whatever your time frame is). The truth is that none of this advice is going to help you much anyways. Your success as a trader is going to come not from your intelligence or from advice that people give you, but from your ability to learn from your mistakes, and figure out the root causes of why you are making them. Everyone is different, and only you can fix your own problems that arise. I am not going to discourage you from trading - most of the best traders in the world started out by losing, many of them by blowing out their accounts. It's what they did afterwards that mattered, and that's what set them apart from the rest. Remember that line from The Matrix when Neo tried to jump over the building and fell: "It doesn't mean anything - everyone falls the first time." That's a good description of trading, and it doesn't mean anything if you lose at first. It would be a miracle if you didn't, so don't let your initial losing discourage you if and when it happens - just stop trading with real money until you figure it out.