LOSING traders - How much money and time have you lost?

A

Airwaves

Question is in the title.

Id like to know how long you have been trying to make money though daytrading, and how much money you've spent on coaching/seminars/software/BLOWN ACCOUNTS etc.....

I've been trying to trade for about 4 years.
I lived off savings so that i could dedicate about 14 hours per weekday (and some at teh weekends) to reading / studying / demo trading and live trading.
I've blownup everytime.
Initially the blowups were due to not using stops. Id put about £1000 into an account, turn it into about £5000 and then lose it all when a market moved relentlessly against me.

I then began using stops, although that has been even worse really, because the account never really gets off the ground. Just slowly bleeds money.

I blew a small account yesterday when the GBP/USD just kept crashing.

Its amazing. Everytime I've blown an account, THAT marks the low of that market for a very good run. I got stopped on a long at 1.4800 on GBPUSD. As a result it has moved up 70 pips since and will surely go another 500 or so. It always happens like this.

Its like the market can tell at what point my account will blow and aims for it and then reverses! lol. Am I the unluckiest person in the world or does this happen to all losing traders (particularly your blowout point marking a swing low/high)
Its happened everytime! Lets see if 1.4800 or so marks a decent low.

Obviously I should give up. It just seems such a shame considering the years ive put in.
Im not even entirerly sure that its possible to make money consistently. With such a high failure rate (95%) thoses few winning traders could just be lucky? You might expect similar odds from the roulette wheel?

I do believe that people can make money trading if they either work for a firm and are privvy to certain information, or if you are already absolutely LOADED and can just keep avergaing down in things like index futures that tend to go up over time.

So, other losing traders:
How much money (accounts/seminars etc) spent? Ive probably spent about £8000 all on blown accounts. Never paid for a seminar etc
Time??? About 4 years here
(oh...and watch gbpusd fly up over the coming weeks!!)

thanks
 
No losing traders here??
This must be the place where the 5% of winners all hang out! cool.

p.s - My stopout is still the exact low so far. The 5min bar i was stopped has remained the swing low. Been up over 100 pips since. They must be watching me.
 
Quote from Airwaves:

No losing traders here??
This must be the place where the 5% of winners all hang out! cool.

p.s - My stopout is still the exact low so far. The 5min bar i was stopped has remained the swing low. Been up over 100 pips since. They must be watching me.
More...


Forex is a scam, you need to sign up with IB and trade equities or futures and start over again.
 
Quote from swiftmike99:

Forex is a scam, you need to sign up with IB and trade equities or futures and start over again.
More...

f you man

F you man

Who the hell are you.......you prick

Swift Scam Mike, go suck a lemon and report back

You are the authority on what is a scam and what isn't

Go F yourself with your empty wallet
 
I lost $212 in my time with trading so far, however thanks to that I've figured out how to stop losing money and I should be well on my way to making it back and maybe even more if I stick to my system.
 
Quote from Airwaves:


Its amazing. Everytime I've blown an account, THAT marks the low of that market for a very good run. I got stopped on a long at 1.4800 on GBPUSD. As a result it has moved up 70 pips since and will surely go another 500 or so. It always happens like this.

Its like the market can tell at what point my account will blow and aims for it and then reverses! lol. Am I the unluckiest person in the world or does this happen to all losing traders (particularly your blowout point marking a swing low/high)
Its happened everytime! Lets see if 1.4800 or so marks a decent low.
More...

You have the perfect strategy. Trade a small account your usual way, then when it blows up, take 25% of your life savings and buy front month out-the-money options betting on a reversal of the move.

If you are the worst trader in the world then by definition you have the strategy to be a good trader just by fading yourself.
 
Quote from Ghost of Cutten:

You have the perfect strategy. Trade a small account your usual way, then when it blows up, take 25% of your life savings and buy front month out-the-money options betting on a reversal of the move.

If you are the worst trader in the world then by definition you have the strategy to be a good trader just by fading yourself.
More...

worst advice ever.
 
The answers you seek have been posted here many times. If you really spent all those hours trying to perfect your trading, you'll spend a weekend here relentlessly searching out old threads with titles similar to this one. Search out threads about successful traders here. You'll get way better information searching than you will in this thread, simply because 5 years ago there would have been a lot more quality responses than you'll get today.

You're not the first to think the market is watching your $5K account and running your stops. It's not. There's a good reason for what you're seeing.

Lastly, through which broker are you trading forex? Is your broker the source of your quotes? If so, you've probably been taken for a ride.

You said you suspect winning traders are just lucky. That's a bad sign.
 
Quote from traderNik:

The answers you seek have been posted here many times. If you really spent all those hours trying to perfect your trading, you'll spend a weekend here relentlessly searching out old threads with titles similar to this one. Search out threads about successful traders here. You'll get way better information searching than you will in this thread, simply because 5 years ago there would have been a lot more quality responses than you'll get today.

You're not the first to think the market is watching your $5K account and running your stops. It's not. There's a good reason for what you're seeing.

Lastly, through which broker are you trading forex? Is your broker the source of your quotes? If so, you've probably been taken for a ride.

You said you suspect winning traders are just lucky. That's a bad sign.
More...

Hello.
I've traded forex through a number of different people, like IGindex, Oanda, CMC etc.
Yes, the broker is the source of my quotes, although i fail to see how ive been take for a ride, as their quotes move pip for pip with the currency futures in my experience. If i get stopped out with my bucketshop broker, o would also have been stopped out trading the 6B futures contract.

As for winning traders being just lucky. I dont want to come across as bitter, but the fact that so few make it does seem strange. It can only go up or down. It was more about how the ones that make it in my opinion are working for firms and are privvy to special information giving them a huge edge.

There are people that claim to be successful trading from home for themselves reading charts. However, sometimes it tures out that these people are lying.

I come from trade2win and there was a very respected poster there who totally convinced everyone that he was a successful home trader (i guess the equivilent of 'lescor here?)
It tured out he was just lying for the 5 years he posted there, and he recently started a 'fund' where he blew up all of the investors money through poor trading. Just makes me wonder if there really are any consistently profitable traders, and maybe the people claiming to do so are just working for brokers and are told to post such things to encourage losers to keep trying and burning their money on something that cant be done.

Its kind of like faith at this point. We need to believe that its possible, although there is really not alot of proof. A bit like the existance of God!
 
Quote from Airwaves:

Question is in the title.

Id like to know how long you have been trying to make money though daytrading, and how much money you've spent on coaching/seminars/software/BLOWN ACCOUNTS etc.....

I've been trying to trade for about 4 years.
I lived off savings so that i could dedicate about 14 hours per weekday (and some at teh weekends) to reading / studying / demo trading and live trading.
I've blownup everytime.
Initially the blowups were due to not using stops. Id put about £1000 into an account, turn it into about £5000 and then lose it all when a market moved relentlessly against me.

I then began using stops, although that has been even worse really, because the account never really gets off the ground. Just slowly bleeds money.

I blew a small account yesterday when the GBP/USD just kept crashing.

Its amazing. Everytime I've blown an account, THAT marks the low of that market for a very good run. I got stopped on a long at 1.4800 on GBPUSD. As a result it has moved up 70 pips since and will surely go another 500 or so. It always happens like this.

Its like the market can tell at what point my account will blow and aims for it and then reverses! lol. Am I the unluckiest person in the world or does this happen to all losing traders (particularly your blowout point marking a swing low/high)
Its happened everytime! Lets see if 1.4800 or so marks a decent low.

Obviously I should give up. It just seems such a shame considering the years ive put in.
Im not even entirerly sure that its possible to make money consistently. With such a high failure rate (95%) thoses few winning traders could just be lucky? You might expect similar odds from the roulette wheel?

I do believe that people can make money trading if they either work for a firm and are privvy to certain information, or if you are already absolutely LOADED and can just keep avergaing down in things like index futures that tend to go up over time.

So, other losing traders:
How much money (accounts/seminars etc) spent? Ive probably spent about £8000 all on blown accounts. Never paid for a seminar etc
Time??? About 4 years here
(oh...and watch gbpusd fly up over the coming weeks!!)

thanks
More...


EVERY successful trader starts off like you just described above. If they claim otherwise then they are lying!!! I must have blown out at least $100,000 in the beginning due to several reasons.

1. I was new to the business.
The learning curb is STEEEEEEP!! It will take at least 10 years or 10,000 hours to become an expert. Anything less you can hang it up.

2. Lack of understanding.
Being new to wall street i was not allowed to trade on my own. The firm did not allow rookies to trade their own methodologies at first so you had to take the firms reco's.

3. under-capitalization
This is a $60,000 word. It means that for whatever strategy you are trading there must be enough capital in the account to survive the worst draw-down the historical model indicates x's 2. So in other words if your back-test shows a max draw-down of $5,000 you better prepare for $10,000. Also, point 2 above should include lack of understanding leverage and liquidity.

4. lack of robust system.
I will need to elaborate further on this one. The definition of a robust system requires a system that is efficient in ALL market types and situations including the adaptability to changing market conditions. In other words the system should be able to adapt quickly to changing market conditions as they occur on weekly and daily charts. Moving averages are lagging indicators. If simply referring do changing conditions on weekly and daily charts and NOT intraday. Since the markets are extremely efficient ie controlled and manipulated by the govt by way of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan better known as the PPT you must be able to discern true order flow from jive artificial liquidity. Tape reading is a must. You have to be able to read the bid ask and volume to be able to be nimble. Day trading is a losing game but a necessary requirement at becoming a master of the markets. I repeat ............day trading is a MUST! If you will hope to become a pro you will have to be able to complete the daytrading Bachelors program before advancing to the Masters program of Swing trading off daily and weekly bars. By daytrading you will learn discipline and chart types and formations. You will learn to read the tape. you will learn to build a system along with rules so that you can become more efficient in the long run.

This will be a long long long painful stressful mind numbing energy draining fulfilling experience. You will either come away from this a better person or you will simply quite give up and walk away. NOTE: many successful traders walk away at some point in the begining. However the greats always come back for more and learn from their mistakes. The market WILL humble you. It does not matter on your pedigre, education, background or training. You can be a doctor, lawyer, accountant, have an MBA from harvard, Yale , Princeston etc. You can be a laser physicist from NASA or a Brain surgeon or an engineer it doesnt matter YOU WILL GET YOUR FACE COMPLETELY RIPPED OFF. The market punishes those she loves. The pros eat the rookies every day. The market doesnt care about you or your family or your bank account. she is an equal opportunity bully that will take your money at a moments notice. More could be said but i think you get my point.

5. Success is NOT guaranteed.
You might fail and come to the conclusion that trading is not for you. Most traders never complete the above process because they dont have the mental or emotional aptitude for this business. simply put not everyone is cut out for this. You must come to this conclusion quickly or you will suffer total financial and emotional destruction.

However, if you are cut out for this then there are no easy shortcuts to becoming a successful trader. It will take 10 years ie 10,000 hours before you master your craft. I'm only speaking from experience and having blown up several accounts along the way.

I'm glad that I stuck in there and my love and passion for the markets is as strong as ever.

Be encouraged.

:cool:
 
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