I didn't have money once, i had to go through so much to the point of walking to work and back home. Hell sometimes i would even get rained on during the long rains in April and the short rains in November and December trying to get home from my casual job in industrial area. I got tired of that and after a few years when i was working as a a security officer i remembered that once a friend of mine had mentioned to me about forex trading and how lucrative it was but had told me only the well off and the high end professionals did it for a living because of their financial stability. But after a research on my ideos internet enabled phone i found that opportunities were open for retail traders. The news literally made me smile as if my problems would end the next minute knowing having read that i can start with as little as $5 and grow my account to a $1Million.
Throughout my trading career i have realised that is the hardest way to get easy money! But it's not that hard or complicated when you are determined to enhance your knowledge and when you are ready to be consistently disciplined. It only gets hard when you complicate it.
But don't get cheated that this might me an overnight millionaire get rich quick scheme. I have learned to be profitable over the years and it took me time and patience to learn because i was tired of burning my fingers and wiping my account dry and i had to avoid mistakes driven by greed, impatience and piped dreams that are just a misperception of how forex trading works. Many times i wiped an account because of inexperience and as soon as i got out of a trade because price went against me, price reversed and went in my direction and i would get back in thinking it would now head where i initially thought it would go only to quickly reverse against me and this time for good making me incur two losses at ago because of lack of good decision, momentum, skill and strength. I was a pig chasing a losing trade to try and get what i lost and hopefully a markup on top of it in revenge. I was driven by greed and emotions and couldn't take a loss and i never understood that standing aside is also taking a position because the market was going nowhere and the lack of understanding that a few days or hours in future the market would present other opportunities and this created many problems for me because of lack of patience and this lead to overtrading that resulted in more and more losses. I had had enough and i had to learn the hard way, to sit and wait for the right time just like a sniper does in order to hit the target with precision.
I have learned that as a trader it's never a guarantee that you will not make a loss or losses. You will encounter losses but it's what you do next that will determine whether you will fail or prosper in this solitude profession where you try to ask people in trading page of what you should be doing or what you are doing wrong but you never get an answer to enlighten the knowledge that you seek. Despite that you should never give up.You will meet people that know how to trade but they will not be willing to help you out, people have different personalities and i don't blame them, go to the internet and the answers are all there. The wrong places will always lead you to the good places because you will know who to avoid and where to look for answers and i guarantee you,something that i can personally vouch for is that you will find the answers if you sacrifice and don't give up.You won't have to spend money on knowledge that you can obtain for free and that's what i did for 7 good years.
Money management is the key and it's the most critical and most powerful tool that you will ever have. Most of you that will prosper in this profession will call it your best friend. You are making losses because you don't have proper money management. That's where money management comes in because it's what prevents you from losing much more than you would have and at the same time it's a tool that will enable you to grow your account slowly but steadily because your main goal as trader is not to avoid making any losses but to ensure that in the event you happen to make losses, they are much less than the profits you make. The best part about using proper money management is that you will gain more experience because you will get to learn from the mistakes you make and avoid doing them all over again.
I also came to learn that both technicals and fundamentals are key to look at before opening a position and it's critical to do so otherwise the broker is waiting for the his commision when you lose depending on the type. But sometimes you have to know when to avoid using fundamentals. Yes, i know it's confusing but as time goes by you will find that, and depending with how sharp you are, that fundamentals and price tend to behave completely the opposite of what you expect and it will be upto you to be swift enough to make a quick decision on which you want to lay emphasis on when opening a position.
I also came to learn that the strength of a pair plays a crucial role in making a decision and the best part about it is that i personally can tell the strongest pair to the weakest by just a mare glimpse of the charts.
Price action is the best technique that you will ever use and it will make you take an objective decision without relying on any indicators.
I came to learn that every trader is unique and however hard you try to trade like another person it will never work out. You will find that you will come up with a unique way of trading that only works for you and that's what's the norm. I tried to perfect what i had already found to have worked but doing so only distorted my strategy and made me make more losses and i came to the realisation that what i had found to work shouldn't be perfected because it was uniquely simple and worked perfectly well without any fancy add-ons.
I also developed my own rules as my entry and exit criteria and chose to stick to this rules. The more i continued to follow these rules the more i made money.
It has been a long journey and i have come to appreciate that there is no easy way out. All that is good comes with some effort. It took me seven good years of my time and money that i used in research to be the best that i have become in trading.
The final rule that i gave myself as a professional trader is that i will always read this every morning before i trade to remind me how far i have come from and how my trading journey has been like. Remembering this will always keep me on check and it will always make me remember to appreciate the hardships that life brings and the good thing that life also brings, those life lessons.
I wish you well in your trading.