Trading for a living :)

Cambista,

I think USD4k is too expensive. You can use that money to buy books or to trade mini account.

I’d rather start with books, after that I’d seek further knowledge from freebies scattered all over the cyberspace, then open demo account, trade for a while, and after understanding more and more about trading, you can step up to the real trading account.

To find websites which provide free resources, you can use search engines. For books… I’ve read John Murphy’s book when I’m first learning all this. Good for building basic understanding about the market. I read Steve Nison’s book about candlestick charting, too. Then another book about Elliot Wave but I forgot the title and the author. Other books are more about trading psychology, and one book about the story of Jesse Livermore (by Edwin Lefevre).

Books and sites are just small contributors, the biggest share of contributor is the trading experience itself.

Hope this helps.

By the way, most on-line brokers provide mini account trading.

Good luck.

I know it has been a while since you initiated this thread ….. just curious to know how you went finally. Did you attend the MTI course or decide to go it on your own?

I started on a similar path (having attended a 1 hr MTI session). But having read the many responses to your initial question – very tempted to start the journey on a DIY process!!

Would appreciate your response & any pointers … if you still frequent these sessions.

cheers

It’s been close to 4 months now since I started fulltime. This baptism of fire is sure HELL. I’m still trading fulltime without a day job.

I loss money for my clients and decided to drop management late last year. My personal account has gone done 46% and I’ve managed to bring it up. I’m still down 31%.

My participation in forums dropped during the time because of my anxiety. Other traders ideas were also in the way of my own thinking. I believe this is why successful traders drop out of forums. It is not from spilling their secrets but rather to prevent other ideas from creeping back in.

Good luck to all future fulltimers.

I agree with mig928
When you are a novice, you are learning from other people’s methods, tactics, mistakes, … you name it.
But since you are on your own, you better keep your integrity. Other people’s analysis (or “hints”) just distracts me. You usually do not know whether the author’s opinion is blinded by his own open position on the market.You better find errors in your trades or strategy than jump from one “advice” to another, no matter how good is it.
When you are on your own, the best time to study other people’s ideas is on week-end, when the market is closed, and you have fun.
Or after you’ve hit your monthly loss limit and have a lot of free time for detailed analysis and backtesting.

Take care and have fun

Thanks for the insight guys. As you can tell, I’m still trying to find my balance or my trading style (successfully I hope)

Mig928, I came across an earlier post of yours where you stated that you had bought Omnitrader.
Several months have passed since and I wonder if you are still using the program and if you have been profitable using it. In your earlier post you sounded kind of enthusiastic about Omnitrader.

Hi Newbie: You were asking about a plan of 3 pips per day. Assuming you have a system that can get you 3 pips per day and have proven it to work then yes it is possible to make a living on that amount given enough leverage. Don’t be fooled by arguements about borrowing money or using different degrees of leverage. Borrowed money IS leverage regardless of how you work it out. Borrowing 100k with 30x leverage is identical to borrowing 25k and using 120x leverage. It is all leverage. The only difference is that when you borrow with a forex account you just don’t have to pay interest unless you hold overnight which should be unnecessary with a 3 pip goal. So for this type of system it is actually cheaper to use account leverage than it is to use loan leverage because with loan leverage you pay interest whether the money is active or not. There are many dangers with leverage of any kind so be careful and make sure you understand them.

However newbie you were asking for comments about your plan. Someone commented that it didn’t seem feasable. I think most successful traders would tend to think that the feasability of a 3 pip per day plan comes into question because of statistical issues and risk control which I’ll cover for you newbie if you request it. If you already have a proven trading plan that will give you the 3 pips per day then it doesn’t matter whether we give input or not about whether it will work — it only matters that 3 pips a day — if it is achieved — is enough to live on assuming you have enough capital or enough leverage.

I think warning somone who has declared that they are new to trading of the potential downside of any trading approach is a good idea. Anyone new to trading will probably have just as hard a time getting 3 pips per day as 30 for reasons that may not be obvious to them. You have to have a way to deal with volatility without getting stopped out too often to go for such a tiny scalp and retain a statistical edge. A system with negative expectancy cannot win regardless of how good the money management is.

Someone said in an earlier post that it is important to examine a proposed trading plan in light of arithmetic. Perhaps there is some truth to that but I think it should also be examined in the light of probability. Statistically speaking it does not matter how good your money management is — you have to have a winning system first. Perhaps it would have been more prudent to ask you newbie if have a system that they you are confident will provide the 3 pips consistently. Perhaps if you are still reading newbie you could let me know if you have such a plan or if your plan was to develop a system around that idea. That way it will be easier to know whether to advise you of potential pitfalls and provide any assistance you may need.

DB