What makes one a Professional Trader?

@FxMasterGuru

I'm talking about people like this:

https://malcolmmorley.com.au

https://fxtrade.oanda.ca/learn/stories/malcolm-morley

He is just one example. I've been at this 14 years now. I've made friends over the years on various forums which ultimately translated into real world friendships. I travel a lot. And I mean a lot as in a couple of maxi passports later, and as I went I made a point of looking up my online fx friends.

Malcolm lives in Thailand now and we used to have fairly regular mountain bike / beer sessions till he moved to another village. So this is not just a guess. I know the man and I know is he is a long term successful trader. I'm sure he won't mind if I post a link to his website. You can look at his track record for yourself. He's been making a living full auto from fx for the last 15 years or so now. Successful traders are not as rare as people think and some of them even like to blog.

Sure you could invite me over to Merrica for a drink, but (a) I won't come because I won't let a random stranger play with my balls in the airport and (b) I'd be able to tell within 3 minutes or so if you knew what you were doing. Very easy for me to spot a system or a thought process that won't survive now days. I've tried them all, after so many failures I can spot failure at a glance. You can kind of say I'm an expert at failure. I know exactly what it looks like.

@theHand

Thanks!

#1: I found a lot of stuff on the websites, except for the mentioned track record... 😕

#2: I accept the fact that this guy wants ALL the goodies just for himself, that is why he is so reclusive not showing a track record, but by not offering it to interested parties (for a monthly fee or a perfornance fee) as an additional income, he is either fake, or he does not care about all the orphanages in Thailand he could support by the additional income.

It's on his old site. Open your eyes, he says so in the first few lines and the old site has a break down by years.

And why should he show people or earn the extra income? He's got nothing to prove. He can sit for the rest of his life sipping beer looking at his water buffalo without having to bother with other peoples bullshit. Like what you're doing here. Must be fake or he's not greedy or kind enough, something must be wrong with the old git. Anything...

People (read clients) quite frankly are a pain in the arse. Everyone think they are so important that the guys who can trade must share their secret, because 'you' are special and its for the good of the world.

Stuff it. Tranquility wins...(sound of munching buffalo)...

And by the way he is offering mentoring I see. I didn't know that.

theHand posted:
It's on his old site. Open your eyes, he says so in the first few lines and the old site has a break down by years.

And why should he show people or earn the extra income? He's got nothing to prove. He can sit for the rest of his life sipping beer looking at his water buffalo without having to bother with other peoples bullshit. Like what you're doing here. Must be fake or he's not greedy or kind enough, something must be wrong with the old git. Anything...

People (read clients) quite frankly are a pain in the arse. Everyone think they are so important that the guys who can trade must share their secret, because 'you' are special and its for the good of the world.

Stuff it. Tranquility wins...(sound of munching buffalo)...

Yeah. Money isn't everything, just worthless pieces of paper. Kind of pointless dedicating your life to collecting as much as possible, fools errand.

Time is everything. Not money.

theHand posted:
@CaptainVita

If you want to meet dependable Thai's it would help if you stop hanging around places like Pattaya, the bars and girls that come with them. For **** sake, what do you expect if you hang around areas dedicated to sex tourism ?

Youre an fool dude. I never even mentioned any places ive been. I just told you ive been in a lot of places in Asia.

You should try to not to take everything so serious!

Well, I live in Thailand more than I live anywhere else I suppose. And the generalisation you make is quite offending, and I'm not even Thai.

Fact is, it's more a reflection of your values, than it is of Thai values.

theHand posted:
Yeah. Money isn't everything, just worthless pieces of paper. Kind of pointless dedicating your life to collecting as much as possible, fools errand.

Time is everything. Not money.

@theHand

'...just worthless pieces of paper...'

Tell it to hungry, the homeless, the sick and the orphans... PLEASE, tell it directly to their faces...! Walk the talk!

What if YOU or YOUR CHILDREN were hungry and sick, and YOU could not buy food and medicine. Or even drinking water...??

I guess, you have just realized how foolish your statement was...

Yes, money does not have inherent value, its REAL value depends on what it is used for...

Once all suffering are gone, THEN - and only then - the value of TIME surpasses the value of well-spent money, i.e. spent on alleviating SUFFERING...

P.S. I am a medical doctor, I see suffering all day long, almost every day, so I really know what I am talking about...

theHand posted:
Well, I live in Thailand more than I live anywhere else I suppose. And the generalisation you make is quite offending, and I'm not even Thai.

Fact is, it's more a reflection of your values, than it is of Thai values.

I never mentioned any cities in Thailand or said something against Thais or offended them.

When you really lived most of your live in Thailand like you supposed (whats btw really funny, because who else should know it exactly when not you) then you probably know that Thailand has a lot of different races and ethnic groups and not just Thais and even there are differences.

@FxMasterGuru

You have a lot to learn mate. You and most of the rest of the world are about to find out exactly how worthless money really is. Ask your average Zimbabwean, Venezuelan and at the opposite end of the scale a Cyprean or Greek. Spent their whole lives chasing the money, protecting it, saving it, believing in it and now what ?

And the real problems haven't even begun. Wait till the US defaults, see how that goes...

No mate. Some hard old lessons are about to be re-learned in a terrible way, better get ready for a tsunami of that misery, billions of starving people. And why ? Because of the FIAT money you value so much, which they can print at will in the back there and then make you sign into slavery for shiny things.

@CaptainVita

CaptainVita posted:
And anyway, as a person who traveled alot around Asia and lives currently in Malaysia i can tell you dont believe anyone who tells you anything in Thailand! Dont even when a girl tells you shes a real girl! :D

I haven't been in Thailand that long, few years at most. Not even there right now. I'm in the middle east for a few months. But I have been there long enough to know they're good people well worth trust. Unless of course you hang around the bars. Then you'll have trust issues for sure.
 

GOOD FRIEND OF MINE TURNED PROFESSIONAL AS MONEY MANAGER. THEN THE GROUP GOT GREEDY AND LED TO DEMISE. DO NOT KNOW WHERE HE IS NOW :(

Endless hours spend at a trading desk/trading floor and a mountain load of coffee!

You don't have to work hard to trade. 1 Hour a day MAX...

I learnt from guy that traded for a bank. He trades 30min a day or so.
Places limit orders and leaves them...

Now let us address what makes a professional trader from this angle. What makes a professional doctor, is it just the love of saving lives? Of course no, upon that you need professional training to understand the rudiments of the medical practition: how it works. This is the same for the forex trader, becoming a professional forex trader requires training. Both in technical trading; forming a good strategy and trading with the expert advisor, forex signal or indicator. Or the emotional maturity of handling well the emotional burden of an open position.

Craden20 posted:
.... forming a good strategy and trading with the expert advisor, forex signal or indicator. Or the emotional maturity of handling well the emotional burden of an open position.

Not 'OR'... BOTH! And the latter - i.e. handling emotional burden - weighs in by 80%...

So once a trader is groomed in the technical part of trading, THEN comes the REAL challenge, the 80%... The Psychology of Trading... Just check on Amazon how many books have been written about this topic...

And unlike the technical aspect of trading, it is much more difficult to learn handling emotions of large open positions. If possible at all... In my opinion it is not possible... Either one has the right mindset, or has not. And a trader can know if 'for sure' only when trading with large real LIVE lot sizes...

It is totally impossible to decipher a trading system SEEING A TRACK RECORD, if someone is going to manage your money, not only must show their track must send you the 'pass investor', so you can check yourself.
There is only one way to manage accounts seriously, with poa, the rest is just business, but is not trading.

To be a professional trader, you need to live on trading.
Assuming someone a good trader, you must have sufficient amount of capital, personal money, or money from investors.
I see many people here, which are intended to call 'investment', a 'bet' with 1000 dollars or even less than that.
It is impossible, for an investment of this capital, a profit that justifies the long hours of dedication, that trading needs.
For this reason, they invented the business followed and followers. so that someone with very little capital can have significant gains.
That would be fine if the trader was really good, and the follower has more or less the same capital, but unfortunately, anyone can invest $ 1000 in 10 different accounts with $ 100 each, and sell that is winning and attractive.
Trading is not so simple, takes risks, the investor wants to win, the trader wants to win, and you have to carefully balance the interests of all participants.
In this forum, I do not think you have investors here, here only have dreamers who want, feel that they are traders.
They are the same kind of people who will see Formula 1, just to see who destroys the car, not to see who wins the race ...
And a serious investor, he just wants the best driver.
I repeat, if you have 5k, buy a TV, do not try to invest.

My opinion is that one can call yourself a successful trader if you can constantly make money and withdraw it.

fxinvesta posted:
To be a professional trader, you need to live on trading.
if you have 5k, buy a TV, do not try to invest.

fxinvesta, you are absolutely right on that one.

during the last two years I have lost about -130k on forex, chasing the dream of making money with just 10k accounts. meanwhile I have built a very profitable, sort of stop strategy, which works one and only with accounts larger than 300k. I would even recommend a min of 1 mil. Then, I realized I do not have that kind of money, to trade it. I was very very disappointed and still is, a little. That is how forex works. One needs a shitload of money to trade with little to no anxiety.

Then, few weeks before, I figured out that the DD that was causing my losses (due to margin calls mostly), can be used in my benefit, instead. To make the story short, I am now building a guardian strategy, that guards the major trend strategy, by reducing the DD of the major strategy with over 80% sometimes. And not only that. It gives me the opportunity to cash in the saved 80% DD as an unexpected profit, on the top of the profit of the major strategy.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you... learn.