Anyone Trading For A Living?

Hi there.

I'm Jean-Paul from Mauritius and trading for a living since beginning of the year. I am in forex trading since 2009, but since then I lost lots of money because I was a newbie and not experienced. I started trading demo, where my performance was excellent, but when switching to live, my performance was catastrophic. And that's why I decided to learn directly on live trading. And that's where I lost money. But I am okay with it because this made me grow and improve consistently my performance. I personally think that if I'd keep learning from demo trading, I won't be where I am now (my personal opinion) !!

I am an accountant by profession and was working as accountant while trading part time. But in December 2012 I quit and concentrate full time on trading. Definitely, when you are a full time trader you think twice before entering in a trade. You always have the tendency to plan your trading, which is good, compared to when trading part time where we are not really disciplined.

As a result of this, I have been able to improve even more my trading performance and increased drastically my win/loss ratio and overall performance. For the time being, I trade only my own fund, but later on, I may think of managing funds.

I mostly concentrate on EURUSD pair due to my ideal geographical location, where I can easily cover European and US markets at the ease of my house.

Trading is my passion since college and that's why I still move on even if I consistently lost money month after month in the past. And yeah, I see myself trading even when I will be 100 years old, if I live that much haha. Trading is my passion, and take pleasure in it. Definitely I'm gonna trade all my life on. When I meet with some investors this will be even better as I will be managing funds and making thinks even more serious and professional.

Concerning my trading education, I have never attended a paid course. I read a lot, researched a lot, attended free webinars on trading, on technical analysis and on how to use indicators into my trading. I attended the maximum trading webinars that I could, and I still am !!!

Here is a little bit of my trading journey.

Jean-Paul

SHOW ME THE MONEY...!!!! 😎

jpslayer posted:
Hi there.

I'm Jean-Paul from Mauritius and trading for a living since beginning of the year. I am in forex trading since 2009, but since then I lost lots of money because I was a newbie and not experienced. I started trading demo, where my performance was excellent, but when switching to live, my performance was catastrophic. And that's why I decided to learn directly on live trading. And that's where I lost money. But I am okay with it because this made me grow and improve consistently my performance. I personally think that if I'd keep learning from demo trading, I won't be where I am now (my personal opinion) !!

I am an accountant by profession and was working as accountant while trading part time. But in December 2012 I quit and concentrate full time on trading. Definitely, when you are a full time trader you think twice before entering in a trade. You always have the tendency to plan your trading, which is good, compared to when trading part time where we are not really disciplined.

As a result of this, I have been able to improve even more my trading performance and increased drastically my win/loss ratio and overall performance. For the time being, I trade only my own fund, but later on, I may think of managing funds.

I mostly concentrate on EURUSD pair due to my ideal geographical location, where I can easily cover European and US markets at the ease of my house.

Trading is my passion since college and that's why I still move on even if I consistently lost money month after month in the past. And yeah, I see myself trading even when I will be 100 years old, if I live that much haha. Trading is my passion, and take pleasure in it. Definitely I'm gonna trade all my life on. When I meet with some investors this will be even better as I will be managing funds and making thinks even more serious and professional.

Concerning my trading education, I have never attended a paid course. I read a lot, researched a lot, attended free webinars on trading, on technical analysis and on how to use indicators into my trading. I attended the maximum trading webinars that I could, and I still am !!!

Here is a little bit of my trading journey.

Jean-Paul

Hi there.

I'm Jean-Paul from Mauritius and trading for a living since beginning of the year. I am in forex trading since 2009, but since then I lost lots of money because I was a newbie and not experienced. I started trading demo, where my performance was excellent, but when switching to live, my performance was catastrophic. And that's why I decided to learn directly on live trading. And that's where I lost money. But I am okay with it because this made me grow and improve consistently my performance. I personally think that if I'd keep learning from demo trading, I won't be where I am now (my personal opinion) !!

I am an accountant by profession and was working as accountant while trading part time. But in December 2012 I quit and concentrate full time on trading. Definitely, when you are a full time trader you think twice before entering in a trade. You always have the tendency to plan your trading, which is good, compared to when trading part time where we are not really disciplined.

As a result of this, I have been able to improve even more my trading performance and increased drastically my win/loss ratio and overall performance. For the time being, I trade only my own fund, but later on, I may think of managing funds.

I mostly concentrate on EURUSD pair due to my ideal geographical location, where I can easily cover European and US markets at the ease of my house.

Trading is my passion since college and that's why I still move on even if I consistently lost money month after month in the past. And yeah, I see myself trading even when I will be 100 years old, if I live that much haha. Trading is my passion, and take pleasure in it. Definitely I'm gonna trade all my life on. When I meet with some investors this will be even better as I will be managing funds and making thinks even more serious and professional.

Concerning my trading education, I have never attended a paid course. I read a lot, researched a lot, attended free webinars on trading, on technical analysis and on how to use indicators into my trading. I attended the maximum trading webinars that I could, and I still am !!!

Here is a little bit of my trading journey.

Jean-Paul

You can go to my profile and see my trading account 'JP Forex'.

You can clearly see the historical tracking, where it was complete failure day after day, and compare it with my stats and pips gained this year, and particularly this month.

I am not an extraordinary trader, but I am profitable now. I have started covering my past losses and kept the same trading account to remind me my bad trading periods every time a have a look at my trading account from inception till now :-).

FxMasterGuru posted:
SHOW ME THE MONEY...!!!! 😎

jpslayer posted:
Hi there.

I'm Jean-Paul from Mauritius and trading for a living since beginning of the year. I am in forex trading since 2009, but since then I lost lots of money because I was a newbie and not experienced. I started trading demo, where my performance was excellent, but when switching to live, my performance was catastrophic. And that's why I decided to learn directly on live trading. And that's where I lost money. But I am okay with it because this made me grow and improve consistently my performance. I personally think that if I'd keep learning from demo trading, I won't be where I am now (my personal opinion) !!

I am an accountant by profession and was working as accountant while trading part time. But in December 2012 I quit and concentrate full time on trading. Definitely, when you are a full time trader you think twice before entering in a trade. You always have the tendency to plan your trading, which is good, compared to when trading part time where we are not really disciplined.

As a result of this, I have been able to improve even more my trading performance and increased drastically my win/loss ratio and overall performance. For the time being, I trade only my own fund, but later on, I may think of managing funds.

I mostly concentrate on EURUSD pair due to my ideal geographical location, where I can easily cover European and US markets at the ease of my house.

Trading is my passion since college and that's why I still move on even if I consistently lost money month after month in the past. And yeah, I see myself trading even when I will be 100 years old, if I live that much haha. Trading is my passion, and take pleasure in it. Definitely I'm gonna trade all my life on. When I meet with some investors this will be even better as I will be managing funds and making thinks even more serious and professional.

Concerning my trading education, I have never attended a paid course. I read a lot, researched a lot, attended free webinars on trading, on technical analysis and on how to use indicators into my trading. I attended the maximum trading webinars that I could, and I still am !!!

Here is a little bit of my trading journey.

Jean-Paul

I've been trading for over 10 years. I trade everything except bonds. My experience with FX is very good. Until the U.S SEC changed the leverage from 100:1 to 50:1. I haven't been able to make much money like I used to. A word of caution, you see a lot of EA out there, the first thing to look at is their leverage 1000:1, 5000:1, no joke, I can make a killing with that too... a currency can't never go to zero, so if you keep double down then eventually you'll win.

I started FX trading in 2006 with 10K, brought it up to 60K in 2 months. Every morning, I got up - I made between 3K to 5K before I put my pants on... those are good days... Now, with only 50:1, I don't make that much anymore because it required me to put up so much money, used to I moved 1Mil. batch a time, now I scaled down significantly.

The key to success in this business is patience, be honest with youself, have a system... test...test, lots of test... prove to yourself first. I traded paper money with 10K and raised it to 1Mil. in 2 months before I transfered to real cash... by then it was an easy transition, it became your second nature.

Mistake that lots of amature traders always think of is how much money they can make, scale it to some ridiculous amount, then they think in order to make more money, they need more capital. If you don't know what to do, I can give you a mil. today and you'll blow it up tomorrow, but if you know what to do you can raise from 10K to 1Mil. Treat it as going to college with a Million dollar guaranteed salary at the end... how much effort are you going to put in to your study. You don't see a doctor just pick up a book on how to operate people over the weekend then starting to cut up people on Monday do you? It's very rewarding, but if you think it's easy you're kidding yourself... Good luck to all... I promised, it's the best job, the best business model in the world.

James_Bond posted:
I'm wondering how many traders are actually trading for a living? Please do not spam you system here as that is not the point of this topic. What I'm looking to find out is the answers to the following questions, (if you are trading for a living):

- How did you make the move from part time trading to fulltime?
- What starting capital did you require to trade full time?
- Has your performance changed once you did the transition from part to fulltime?
- Are you happy with your decision?
- Do you trade only your own money? Either yes or no, why?
- Do you see yourself still trading fulltime in the long term?

If more questions come to mind, I will be sure to post them as well 😄

I do, though, mostly through stocks, as my day job is at an equity prop firm. I also trade FX on the side, and I started with FX before anything else.

In answering your questions:

- I made the move right after college (though I went to college later than most, since I worked in IT for a few years before going back to school.) Back then, I had gotten the hang of trading FX (and by that I mean I was net profitable over many months and many trades,) but felt that FX might change (being unregulated and decentralized) and it was important I develop my ability to adapt to new markets and constantly changing conditions if I wanted to make a career out of trading.. so I started seeking out equity prop firms.

- Capital requirements vary a lot between people when it comes to full time trading, not only between the specific markets involved but also between trading styles. It's not quite right to say one number and expect it to apply to everyone.

I will say that if you are starting with just $5-10k and need to feed a family in the western world, you're just asking for a lot of pain and frustration. You'd need much, much more.

My firm backed me, so I got issued some buying power (few hundred grand at first) but not until I proved I could manage it. Don't let that fool you, just because I had access to that amount of capital to use doesn't mean I was dumb enough to use it fully unless I was damn sure about a trade.. Or in the FX world, it's like having 400:1 leverage but never using more than 20:1... there's a reason why professional traders (at institutions, people who will be profitable for their 20+ year career, not cowboys who burn out quick) don't leverage themselves up much at all (<10:1); they like keeping their job.

- My performance changed a lot. I was forced to trade differently once I started depending on my performance to pay the bills month in and month out. My equity curve smoothed right out after the first 6 months of full time trading... I started going for strategies that yielded more small winners and smaller losers, and I entirely stopped trying to make 'home run' trades. It was about consistency and repetition, and that's probably the main reason why I've lasted the past few years doing this full time.

- I am happy with my choice. Though, it's not all models and bottles, it's hard work.. I'm just glad I have a job that makes me bored on weekends and excited to get out of bed in the morning. None of my (non-trader) friends are able to say that, they all live for the weekends and hate their day-jobs.

- I trade my firms money, but I only get paid if I make a profit. I also trade my own capital.

- I see myself trading fulltime for the next 5-10 years. At some point, I'd like to branch off and start my own prop firm with a few traders I trust and know well... but I do want the additional 5-10 years of trading experience before taking that step...

I've been trading since the age of ten (on my parents accounts). began trading options and equities mostly. At the beging of this year I turned 18 and opened my own fx account. Has been pretty successful up 51% so far. Even though i'm young I am a senior in university and make enough to cover all my expenses by trading my own and parents accounts. Don't have enough time to get a job and go to school fulltime so trading works wonderfully for me 😄

Hisams posted:
I've been trading since the age of ten (on my parents accounts). began trading options and equities mostly. At the beging of this year I turned 18 and opened my own fx account. Has been pretty successful up 51% so far. Even though i'm young I am a senior in university and make enough to cover all my expenses by trading my own and parents accounts. Don't have enough time to get a job and go to school fulltime so trading works wonderfully for me 😄

you doing well Hisam, my suggestion is to lower your risk per trade u loss 8-11% on 1 trade, that is way too high. try risking 1% per trade. Most professional always stick to that rule.

LKHedgeFund posted:

Hisams posted:
I've been trading since the age of ten (on my parents accounts). began trading options and equities mostly. At the beging of this year I turned 18 and opened my own fx account. Has been pretty successful up 51% so far. Even though i'm young I am a senior in university and make enough to cover all my expenses by trading my own and parents accounts. Don't have enough time to get a job and go to school fulltime so trading works wonderfully for me 😄

you doing well Hisam, my suggestion is to lower your risk per trade u loss 8-11% on 1 trade, that is way too high. try risking 1% per trade. Most professional always stick to that rule.

That's the plan, I'm shifting towards only using 10x leverage, that should lead to more consistent results and lower my standard deviation of return, which in turn should higher my sharpe ratio! At ten time leverage I'm aiming for a max loss of around 10%, ~30 pips, with that hopefully my risk of ruin will decrease significantly from 10 to around 3% or less.

****max loss of 3% lol

I want to start a serious blog/website about long-term profitable traders.

This venture would propably benefit all who participate...and I want to hear more about
your goals as traders.

I don't want any spam on 'good traders trade, good bloggers blog!'..because money is made by trying to make
money again and again, not by talking bs year-in-year out :)

just serious conversation please!

Check my public trackrecords here.
https://www.myfxbook.com/members/mmuller/invest/255170
https://www.myfxbook.com/members/mmuller/invest2/538576

I must not be a population of one (profitable long-term), so please announce yourselves :D

-Mika

ps. reply here or PM to me and I'll tell you what benefits I see for you

I am still trading for a living until today.

Just tested GBPJPY yesterday to my trading portfolio for all of my managed account clients, and made 19 pips on a single trade with small lot! Increasing the lot size a bit now to make a reasonable profit:

Drawdown is still very low, 2.4% for an average profit of 12% per month.

https://www.myfxbook.com/members/scalpingforex/client-1/518945

I am going to trade this for living
https://www.myfxbook.com/members/togr/gold-es-fxsalt/568728
soon...

Hello Everyone!

I am new here and I trade for a living. I have been learning to trade forex since 2004. Now I trade full time for more than a year.
My starting capital was 10000eur. I found that enough because I live in a country where average sallary is 500eur therefore if I make only 5%/month I have average sallary. I've learned to trade for 7 years because I have been searching how to eliminite the risk. After 7 years i have found my way to adopt the trading risk so it is almost zero. (ofcourse there are drawdowns)
I like this topic and all your comments.

PipTeacher posted:
Hello Everyone!

I am new here and I trade for a living. I have been learning to trade forex since 2004. Now I trade full time for more than a year.
My starting capital was 10000eur. I found that enough because I live in a country where average sallary is 500eur therefore if I make only 5%/month I have average sallary. I've learned to trade for 7 years because I have been searching how to eliminite the risk. After 7 years i have found my way to adopt the trading risk so it is almost zero. (ofcourse there are drawdowns)
I like this topic and all your comments.

Im interested on how to eliminate the risk..could u at least share with us?

PipTeacher posted:
Hello Everyone!

I am new here and I trade for a living. I have been learning to trade forex since 2004. Now I trade full time for more than a year.
My starting capital was 10000eur. I found that enough because I live in a country where average sallary is 500eur therefore if I make only 5%/month I have average sallary. I've learned to trade for 7 years because I have been searching how to eliminite the risk. After 7 years i have found my way to adopt the trading risk so it is almost zero. (ofcourse there are drawdowns)
I like this topic and all your comments.

Hello my friend .. Seems that we are in same situation ! Its ideal when we trade in a country with low cost of living. For example, in my case I'm from Mauritius and here the average salary is Eur 350. This is even better :-). And in which country are you living in ?

I trade for a living, hope to establish my own private firm soonest

Everyone here trades for a living, even the guy with no risk and 99.98 DD.
But not me. 500eu is about enough for 1 mth of gas for the car for me. So I do other things like buy real estate.

SwingTrader posted:
Everyone here trades for a living, even the guy with no risk and 99.98 DD.
But not me. 500eu is about enough for 1 mth of gas for the car for me. So I do other things like buy real estate.

:) You are right Pip teacher does not have zero risk but he has zero profit:)
https://www.myfxbook.com/members/PipTeacher/pip-teacher/467357