I don't know what else I can add to what I already said. Trade small and prove that you have something, in the industry known as an "edge". In FX, size scales extremely well, so if you trade .01 lots, then scaling that to 1,000,000 is not that complicated from a standpoint of liquidity in many pairs. The idea of .01 lots is to get all your ducks in a row as cheaply as possible, and to get enough statistics to be able to give a confidence interval on your system. In addition, if things go badly, you will also know when adversity is outside variance and therefore time to stop trading until you understand (if you are lucky) what has gone wrong.
Thank you, how long did you trade 0.01 lots before scaling up? I agree with your point that consistency is most important and scaling isn't important.
I think the real question you are asking is, "I can't make a living trading 0.01 volume. When is it likely that I will be trading 50,000+?" The answer to that is impossible for me to say for you. If I tell you how long it took me, what good would that do you? You don't know what my skills are, whom I have worked for and therefore was I able to learn some of these skills on someone else's dime, how long I have been researching markets, what kind of trading I do, how many friends send me ideas on a weekly basis, etc etc etc. That is why it is absolutely imperative that people don't have delusions that they can give up their day job and do this. How long it takes to let go your job is dependent on many personal historical factors that make up who you are. And then, 90 out of 100 retail traders lose. There used to be a guy that came on ET and said, "Retail traders lose. They just lose"
In other words Thanks, I was indeed asking about that, but couldn't express it well. What would be the major factors of things one has to have? I know consistency and discipline is one that I am lacking. So until I am consistent and disciplined enough to follow my strategy, I'll trade small.
Small account needs a high win rate system which in my experience would require a scale out strategy.
Not having consistency and discipline isn't the disease, it is a symptom of not having a real edge. So when you are trading, you are like a feather in the wind, being tossed around by emotion because you don't trust what you have. Once you do have something that repeatedly works, you will be amazed how disciplined and unemotional you become. That is why there is a whole industry surrounding trading psychology, because the methods that retail traders use are at best statistical (all systems are statistical unless you are a criminal and have inside information that you use, it is a matter of how much - you don't want to bet on the outcome of a roulette wheel unless you get money odds, which no one will give you), and 90% or more of them are of negative expectancy. What does it take? I will give you one piece of advice: 1) stop wasting time on retail trading sites like this one looking for help. 99% of the TRADING advice you will get are charts and nonsense. The people that don't know, talk and talk alot. The people that know don't talk. Go and work at an institutional firm and see how they trade. No one is going to hand you anything in life, unless you were already born on third base. Easier said than done, because it is a self-selecting system of people with huge ego and lots of money and the ability to hire really smart people. That means if you are an army of one, you have to be all those people in one! "You've got the brains, I've got the looks, let's make lots of money..." That's it. Once you understand, then come back and pay back as best you can by helping someone else with what you have learned. If that is not an option, then all that is left is: 2) Trade as small as possible, trading instruments that "hurt when they fall on your feet". Avoid [and I mean like Ebola] any instrument that gets coverage on television around the clock like stocks or stock futures or stock index futures. Concentrate on markets that are absolutely critical to the functioning of the world. For example, oil, or other critical commodities. Gold is NOT one, but Copper is. Possibly Interest Rates, but that is much harder. FOREX is fine, but the hardest of these. Once you pick a market, learn everything there is to know about it. Then you are crawling at least...
From 400$ to 150$? It is nothing really you must be happy you managed to test live account enough, I lost about 4000$ there because of excessive trading (first 500$ were lost for 4 min) and I yet can't cope with it effectively even with trading plan money management and all other "must-do" things, no luck I keep up gambling, though won back around 3K with Hotforex. I can suggest you to go with small lots, stop trading if 2 SL were hit or 2 TP triggered. Take it as a strictest rule.
A good post Nitro and I agree with all you said apart form the chart bashing. I do agree with you though that 99%+ of trading advice in relation to charts is garbage. In the right hands they can be valuable though. I concur about your choice of markets and the 'critical' commodities. Swing Trading commodity calendars or interest rate curves on a seasonal basis would also be up there for a newbie to get into. I concur it is virtually impossible to remain disciplined when you have little/no edge. Method trumps everything imo.