Hi Throw,
I understand your frustrations about the lack of "profitable" traders coming forward and being honest about what they make. Lots has been said about this being personal so on and so forth, but even so it doesnt readily explain why KNOWONE ever comes forward and goes hands up to making a given figure out of the markets in a given time frame. What may better explain it perhaps is that all successful traders have learnt enough humility to realise that tomorrows another day, so even if youve been making good money for a decade, tomorrow could cause you real problems.
If your a beginner like us, its tough sometimes to remain faithful to the idea that its possible to make money in the market, its even tougher if you have a lot of synical voices around you at home as well (Like I have).
But I think if theirs one thing all knewcomers to FX trading know in thier gut, is that the market is not the same as a casino. It may attract similar characters, but that doesnt mean that knowone who trades (or gambles for that matter) wins (its statistically provable though that in a casino in the long term only the casino wins, but thiers still a winner!). If you spend enough time studying theories such as probability, and/or have looked at how a casino makes its money, then you begin to realise that the market actually represents an opportunity for you to become the casino owner. Now ask yourself, do casinos and bookies make money?
Its for this reason alone that I personally believe their are a number of people making fortunes out of the market. As one of the other contributors mentioned, the more capital you have the more power you will ultimately have to allow you to turn a profit, but the flip side of this is that the less capital you have the better chance you have of being forced to develop the deciplines of becoming a profitable trader, and ulitmately making a lot more money %wise than perhaps some of the bigger players. The big players can simply ride out almost any storm, us little guys just have to keep our stake sizes low and stick to our strategies, and simply look at the percentages we are making or losing and over what time frames. Ive traded profitably for the last 3 months over maybe 30 trades and made about £300 a month. In the last year as a whole I have lost about £3000, but most of that loss was on one silly rash mistake. So the way i figure is that when I stop making mistakes Ill start making money! But what constitutes a mistake when trading the markets can really only be learnt by making that mistake for real not in a
demo account, or any other way, simply by losing the money!
Ruf