Hello wtpWTP, Please make obtaining your college degree and career job, your first priority. This will pay the bills and allow you to save money. Continue watching the markets seeking a proven profitable trading edge(s). Stay in demo until you do this. I am still in demo and I will stay here until I find something with the odds of winning. And I have my career job as well to pay bills and money stuff.
Forex as being the largest currency market in the world can be a difficult area of trading for the novice traders. So it is not a rare fact that you are feeling low and being somehow afraid of losing money I guess. But forex is a zero sum game. And thereby there is a chance of lose and profit and loss are the two aspects of each trade. But demo trading accounts can serve you learning process so that you can gain confidence and learn about the basics of forex trading.
Mandatory complete your degree and learn to program well as one day you will want to automate and continue making systems. Trading is Gawd-awful lonesome, you will spend years staring at charts trying to learn to read the silly lines, you can get tidbits of very good advice, but only if you are at the stage of receiving them, they might still be too complex to sink in, keep journals for tidbits so you can either prove/disprove them, don't believe everything you read but keep open mind, most of what you read might be true, but authors seems to have a chapter missing. What is too far up, can go much further for years, always use protective stops no matter if even if the likes of me seldom use them, I have 40 years experience over you. You should go with the trend for like first seven years after you profitable, many fail cause they want to learn how hard it is to pick/top/bottoms, it is actually easy to find and score some profits, took me over ten years of profitable trading and study to make setups, only took me 39 years to make a decent day trading system as I am mainly a scalper and very long term commodity/stock trader, I can't stand to have losses when I scalp or day trade. And it took me 39 years to form a partnership with best friend. You stay in this business long enough, you develop trust issues or maybe they are only my issues, but I develop systems and he programs them for automation and working out very fine. You have to get use to be being by yourself, you will discover horrible parts about your personality if you get into deep losses. Expect to watch screen 10,000 to 20,000 to get very good trading to making a living or make future living in your 401k. Friends will laugh at you, GFs stare at you when you try to explain what you do, it is best to never tell people if you are profitable, and when they ask, look down at their feet, take a deep breath and say "things could be better", cause these same friends find out you doing well, they ask for loans or finance their losing businesses, never ever loan money to people, there are banks for that. Most young traders unaware that you need to make 100-150% return to breakeven just for fees and the real big money is make long term or spreading. You can buy an ETF that defines your idea of trend and then sell calls to make a bit more, learn how to trade options. When you think you are ready, triple your demo account three separate times. Good luck.
Most new traders don’t understand that trading is a real business. When you have a proven plan, you understand that market success isn’t an overnight event like most people dream of.
Hello, thanks everyone for taking the time out of your days to reply and provide feedback. Yes, I'm currently a student, but also due to many lonely days during college, was able to create my own personal income to be more financially independent. In short, since I had tried to make friends at college, reachout, etc. but failed due to social circles already being formed... I ended up saying, screw it, I'll just try to make money since making friends wasn't exactly working out. So basically I created another income stream in which I can almost quit school full-time to start trading... the only reason I haven't dropped out of school already is because I earned a full-ride to college, but depression and social anxiety have been huge against me. Just to re-iterate I don't NEED to be around people, in fact, I enjoy it for the most part, being able to have a more flexible schedule is great. But, like I said I'd tried talking about it, and friends sort of grimacing, giving the odd-eye was definitely not great. Many people consider "trading" gambling, and my current friends I've talked to about it have a more of a negative bias against it. In addition, I'd found out the hard way to never disclose how much I make. Arguably since I had a hard time making friends, I didn't really have anything else to do except scheme on how to make more money and drink whiskey. I had this problem before, I ended up barely passing my algorithms midterm(one of the hardest classes in Computer Science), and a friend was concerned about me along the lines of saying, "Oh yeah man, you don't want to retake algorithms and have to spend all the money at this university for tuition". I replied something along the lines that I have my own income stream as well as a full ride to college, and disclosed how much I'd made, and since then the relationship changed. Thank you kindly for your feedback. Yes... my current strategy is more focused on analyzing the trend and entering at a profitable point, not necessarily a scalping strategy nor method. Hi Esha, thank you for leaving your comments, but I have been demo-ing and learning about the markets on my off-time studying since 2015(albeit, on and off). I understand that market success isn't an overnight plan. I'm not afraid of losing money, as I'm currently demo-ing, and when I go live I plan to use as much capital as I won't really feel the pain when I do actually go live. In addition to using expendable capital that is very small in contrast to my actual monthly/annual income - my risk management is currently 1.5% and the current position sizes I am taking I feel very comfortable with the profit as well as the unfortunate stops that knock me out. Hi Simple, thanks for taking the time to leave your feedback! Right, well so far during college, I tried very hard making friends my freshman and sophmore years, but as that was pretty tough - I decided to pursue side income streams, one which is passive to pay my bills. I've been studying the markets on and off around 2015, and earned my way to free ride in school, but honestly, the backstabbing and cut-throat, and university climate I am in, has me searching greener pastures. I had other options as far as programs, but was wrong in my judgement for this program at my university. I'm (reluctantly) staying in the program simply because I did get a full-ride to college, and understand the great opportunity that actually is. Also I'm so close to graduation, I basically would be wasting the years I had worked into Computer Science, I just really find a lot of difficulty actually getting the motivation to code and study anymore. So far I have been finding some success with my P/L ratio, and am mentally and physically trying to establish good habits and workflow, for when I do actually go live.
Possibly many here on ET empathize with you. Chin up, battle on. Everyone needs friends in life, my suggestion is, put your head down into studying and as you gain in knowledge and experience your self esteem will rise. People are drawn toward self confident people, success in your endeavours will hasten that. Now is the time to become proficient in the dreams which you have your eye and mind on, friendships will come naturally, becoming good at trading doesn't come naturally. Anyhow, for you there should be no stigma if people think you gamble on the markets, because we do gamble - calculated and planned gambling. The fact of the matter is, secretly most people wished they could trade, just like secretly people wished they were super rich or of the upper class. I think people look at traders incredulously, like, next week they will be bankrupt and sleeping on the street. Trading is hard work, but the longer the time spent at it, the easier it gets. We may lose some money here or there, but we also make money here and there but more frequently and larger quantities, once you get some mileage under your belt.
Stop -already- with all the talk about whether your friends approve or understand and so on. JUST WALK OVER TO THE WALL, BANG YOUR HEAD AGAINST IT SEVERAL TIMES, AND STOP DOING THAT FROM THAT POINT FORWARD. Nature, DNA, or the Great Spirit has given you one of the greatest frigging gifts known to mankind, which is to want to do somethings based on an inner drive - that you may not even understand- just accept it and be thankful. Your friends put eight hours a day on to Facebook and another eight hours tomorrow- so they are busy watching cat videos. You have things to read, things to do, and things to think about that are your business- stop casting pearls before swine and trying to get their approval or understanding. Just stop it. And good gawd, telling them about what you make or do not make. Again, take a deep breath, and say "yesterday I was an idiot and did that, but today I am not" and just walk out of it. I see your post that mentions that you created an income stream while in college, and that you got a "full-ride at college." All signs of life and right direction. How much did those friends help you with that? No, it came from you, not them. Just do more of that. Expecting big things from you.