I am interested in trading full-time on my own, and not work for some company. I hope some of you can share your experiences with my concerns or questions in this thread.

Do you use MT4 to trade live or just for demoing? I know some use MT4 for the signals, but then trade on their real platform. I had tried that, it does not work too well since I must always keep an eye on the charts especially if using an EA to control one's position, that is, multi-take profit levels.

I presume that your livelihood [your bread and butter] is the profits you make from your forex trading account, do you ever have any issues withdrawing from your account? With all these news I hear of people having issues getting their money, it makes me wary with whom I should have a full-time trading account with. If you do not mind, may I know who your broker is? Do you use more than one to trade forex?

Does the broker you use hunt for stops or do you not put it in? I got burned many times using SL, price will just move back to trigger the STOPs, and then move on its merry way to the intended direction.

Although I am a fairly new Forex trader. I have been trading for a little over 6 months. I am also thinking about leaving my day job and trying to do Forex Full time, or at least 8am-12am EST.

When I first started, I was a naive and lost a lot of money. When I lost all that my money in a matter of a couple of weeks, I was devastated. So I put even more money it trying to get it back as fast as I lost it. Well I lost that money too. I felt like there had to be a secret that I just do not know about. Why did all the trades go against me. Some where profitable but not for too long. They would all reverse against me.

Then I remembered a quote from a book I was read "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill. In which he talked about the "secret". In the book ..."he started that first you most know what you want before you can find the secret to achieve it. Well all I wanted was my money back. I wanted all my money back. That’s all I wanted. My money!

I realized that a quick return of my money was not going to happen. What I wanted was steady growth with out losing much of money left over. So I did the math. I had lost 30k in total so this is what I would do. I developed a stable trading plan that involved not only MM, but profit management. This might sound weird. But I would limit my possible profits or pips as well.

I wanted to make my money back in at least a year. So...
$30,000 in a year = 52 week
$30,000/52 weeks = $576 a week.
Only I decided I only would trade for 5 days a week.
$576/5 = $155 dollars a day
$155= average a little more than just 16 pips a day
Using only 1 standard lot

And that is what I did. I put my technical tools in play, read up on fundamentals everyday. And waited and looked, for the perfect setup each day. All I needed was one trade a day for at least 16 pips. I concentrated, did my homework and it worked.

Keep strictly to only perfect setups and controlling my greed. I didnt just trade to trade. I was actually able to recoup all of my money I lost in a period of only 3 months and then some. After much practice I was able to see other perfect divergence setups that brought my game up. Well with of course increasing my lots on which I believed were very probable trades.

I learned alot about myself, and I hope this would help you. If you have an idea of how much you really need, the minimum that you need to survive in trading. And divide it up by how many days you will be trading. It will help you with steady growth. Well at least it did for me.

And since, trading Forex as a replacement for a steady income. I believe this is the key as a successful Full Time Forex Trader. A steady stable income.

I am currently in Iraq, deployed as a Civilian Contractor. And hopefully when I return back to the states, I will never have to work for another person or company again for the rest of my life. I wish you the best of luck in your trading.

You find the forex key.

NOT GREEDY. That's all.


For Etphonehome :

2 years i trade for myself, and that's great. LIBERTY LIBERTY

If you want to live from your forex and withdraw happily, time to think to left metatrader brokers.

You can look for dukascopy and interactivebrokers.

Happy hunting !

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Picasso is the best !

you can beat the market if you find the secret behind , but the secret itself not lies on everyone else but on your self ...that's right the secret is you, as long as you can recognize the pattern that shows when it up or down , remember history repeat it self, the last important think is money management ....

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Forex Indicators Collection

I think that a lot of traders hide their inabilities behind the "bad broker" excuse.
I have accounts with Money Garden, GFT , MB, Oanda, FXDD, Tradency, Ameritrade. I put and withdraw money from these accounts and never had any troubles. Sure they hesitate and want to convince you when you want to close an account, but thats only human.
Concerning the "bad MT4" phantom: I use for the moment FXDD. They execute my orders correct. When the price moves when I send an order they send me a requote. I find that only normal. For me that's not a problem. I am not a scalper. If you have traded stocks before than you better understand that Forex is not a video game and that your broker is responsible for the counterpart of your trade. I have charts open from Oanda, WHC, Alpari UK and FXDD at the same time, on 3 wide screens. Prices are very similar. If your trading success depends on 1 pip difference, YOU have a problem. I am in contact with traders in other parts of the world and we compare prices. I can only tell you that thinking that a broker will change his price to hunt your stop (unless you are his only client trading with 100 lots ) is such a bull shit. And yes it can go wrong. Than you have to discuss with the broker. The auto trading introducing broker Tradency had a technical problem at a certain time. They accepted responsibility and paied me back. It was only 110 USD but they showed that they are a correct company.
Brokers are sure not all angels. Like we are not . But it is definitively not in their interest to fxxx the clients. If a broker has a bad reputation like FXCM for me has. We can always ignore them.

I always read of many using S/L in their trades, but since getting burned so many times using it, I am discouraged in using it. I know for a fact that my broker, MigFX, does hunt for stops since I have stared at the screens too long to see it happen right before my eyes. A broker may not hunt for it if its too far away, but my SL had ranged from 30 to 50 PIPs away, it could be retracement, but it does not seem like it. I would see price slowly crawl up to my SL to close the position, and then suddenly turn back around. Now would that seem like a coincidence? It would hit it exactly everytime, not a PIP over....

Does for me, and has been for a whole bunch of years.

You can trade well from 8AM - 12 NOON, and then place a "set it and forget it" trade to handle the NOON reversal while you leave your office and head down to the Maserati dealer to pick the color of your leather !

you can flip and scalp even better from the Euro open till that NOON time, understanding that you will have TWO REVERSALS to play with --- the first one coming off the EURO market when the US market opens, and the second being that nice NOON reversal, which actually starts taking place at 11:30 AM, EST. Be aware there is also a 12 MIDNITE reversal, during the Asian market and heading towards the Euro open, allowing you to set yet another trade, BUT ONE SHOULD BE VERY AWARE OF WHAT NEWS IS UPCOMING, for while that trade may get swept away by news, it will invariably return to trend also, but youll be sitting with a large drawdown for what could easily be a week or more, so BE AWARE OF UPCOMING NEWS IF YOU ENTER A MIDNITE TRADE !

ONE HINT --- do not search for a large reversal if the currency is in a FIRST DAY BREAKOUT MODE --- if you want to play a reversal on those days, stick with a 15 - 23 Fib move, and no more and even at that, its often far better to simply hold your original position !

Now i NEVER use a sl, especially overnite, as brokers WILL hunt them BUT more because Im a trend trader and if my long reverses for the normal intraday reversal, I know that a few hours down the road, its gonna reverse back to the long side, but meanwhile NOTHING is left dangling so that I have a loss. So many newbs lose money, SIMPLY because their sl got hit, they got dumped at a loss, and the currency went up to make new highs, leaving them beating their heads against the ground !

As an over 30 year vet of the equities markets, when I found forex I thought I had died and gotten a job as CEO of the NYSE ---- never had i seen ANY trading vehicle as relatively predictable, stable and easy to trade as the currency pairs, although that "ahaa" moment took a few years to arrive.

You want to trade at home, drive the Maserati, walk with the trophy wife, try to decide which of your 5 houses you shall go to this week in the company jet so you can relaxe for a few days because the easiest job in the world is getting boring ?

LEARN what forex is about, how it behaves, how it moves up and down in channels, how news can knock it off course, but it ALWAYS returns to trend ---- the information is SO SIMPLE and SO EASY TO FIND ---- JUST WATCH YOUR CHARTS AND SEE WHAT CURRENCIES DO and one day, the lightbulb will go on over your head, you will have that "ahaa" moment, and it will all be happiness and laughter from that point on !

Forex is HUGE --- there is a niche for every kind and style of trading, and none of them are wrong unless they lose money constantly --- so many "systems" and so many are just fine, for the most part although some return more pips than others. I personally use support and resistance as my "method", trading ALL timeframes at once, and constantly prove i can nail the tp point (before "they" reverse the direction) time after time because forex is nothing more than a SUPPORT AND RESISTANCE DRIVEN ANIMAL ! Learn how to identify these areas and forex becomes (unfortunately) boring !

THE MARKET will tell you whats happening --- just watch and listen and learn ! Its as close to "Zen" as you can get when you "know" where its going and are waiting there with your tp already set while the fair maiden comes closer and closer and closer and finally drops right into your bedroom !

enjoy and trade well

mp

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Within the great hall at Elfinore stands a wondrous coffer, precisely four cubits square and securely latched against the outside world. Inside that repository, shut away from impertinent eyes, abides many an intriquing trading secret garnered from around the world and over the ages !

As a child, i used to watch from the darkness as the secrets were debated and annotated by the elders. No one there held a single thought of my presence -- BUT I KNOW WHERE THEY HID THE KEY !!

Why oh why did I ever tell MP about Forex? LOL!!

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HOW STUPID IS IT TO BAN SOMEONE FROM A TRADING FORUM FOR POSTING A CHART? POST THE FORUM RULES AND APPLY THEM FAIRLY! I post code here: http://www.kreslik.com

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actually you told me about it years ago and i looked at it and decided it was much too much like watching paint dry.

later on, a sweet young blonde thing of the opposite sex mentioned my methods would work very well with forex, and over some pillow talk i began to think about it again.

so while YOU may have brought the words to my attention, WHAT got me to actually do forex was something YOU certainly couldnt supply (u aint blonde, for one !) and the rest is history !

LOL

enjoy

mp

__________________
Within the great hall at Elfinore stands a wondrous coffer, precisely four cubits square and securely latched against the outside world. Inside that repository, shut away from impertinent eyes, abides many an intriquing trading secret garnered from around the world and over the ages !

As a child, i used to watch from the darkness as the secrets were debated and annotated by the elders. No one there held a single thought of my presence -- BUT I KNOW WHERE THEY HID THE KEY !!

I wouldn’t suggest anyone start to think about trading full time until they have at least six figures that can be used solely for trading. Living expenses must come from other income or saved funds.