For many runners, the desire to do a marathon is about personal challenge. You might want to test your limits or prove that you can go the distance. Perhaps a friend has talked you into it. Maybe you’d like to lose weight, get healthier or raise awareness for a charity.
Whatever your reason, hold on to it and remind yourself of it often during the months that lie ahead. When your legs are tired or the weather is nasty, maintaining your motivation will help you get out the door. The same applies for learning about forex trading. Learn how to trade forex is not a sprint, but also a marathon.
Forex trading skills is part of my EARLY Retirement plan. I hope you read my (EARLY) Retirement Plan blogpost.
Today I am informing you about the progress of our forex trading skills.
Final Results from trading a 400$ Demo Account 3
As explained in the previous blog post, the consistently profitable forex trader is an expert. I explained that for forex trading you must practice your trading strategy. This is the ONLY simple way to become an expert. Simple does not mean easy, because many traders expect to become experts without practice, and sadly they never achieve expertise. Consistently profitable trading is yours if you practice trading and become an expert.
In February I started with a 500$ account and traded that account until 1,4 Million $ at the mid of July 2019. Key objectives of the demo account 1 was to test my strategy and optimize it with every losing trade. Finding out my correct lot size for my account was the biggest challenge in the beginning. Managing risk and identifying the correct quality setup was another challenge. Finding that correct entry and controlling emotions were other topics I had to work on. My biggest issue during the first demo trading was the big losses I sometimes took. I didn’t feel confident that I was ready. Was it luck or did this really work?
Early July I started the account again with 10K and blew it up in ONE week when I tried to trade NEWS event. Next week after that disaster I started again DEMO ACCOUNT 2 with 10K and traded this to 400.000$ in two and half months. (Start of September)
Early September I started again with a 400$ account. I implemented a standard process where I prepared for the week with a charting analysis and weekly news overview. You could read my results in the previous blog post.
The 3000$ Smartphone Challenge : Ready to Drive
The account was at that moment 3,8M and I learned it is possible to make 100K per day…. imagine that ! In those Q4 months I have improved my skills from making 10K a week to 100K a day in the demo account.
With a 3,8M account size, you can trade with lot sizes that risk 20K per trade. You MUST ignore the numbers but only look at the trade setup. Your mental mind can not grasp this but the goal is to become robotic in execution. A trade of 10$, 2000$ or 20K $ is not different in trade setup. That’s why I always say to new novice traders, HIDE that Profit & Loss bar as it messes up your emotions….. things that Citibank, Deutsche Bank and other big international banks do but won’t teach you ! That’s why they have a trained special traders team.
Our goal from our last blog post was to finish the demo account by 1st of November with 4 MILLION ! Where did we end ? Here are the trades and results of December 2019.
We ended the year at the 3rd of January with 15 Million !! We started with 400$ in September. Impossible with real money… ? Who knows ? I have seen traders make 1,8 million in 2019. No kidding…and no demo money !
My 2019 Key Learnings
Key Learning 1 : Learn and master Market Structure
The main key learning within 2019 was understanding the market structure. With this information and analysis, I developed a trading plan around market structure and an execution criteria list
Get it? State the goal, get the execution plan in place, and nail the RESULTS! If you don’t understand what you’re doing, why you’re your doing it, and what the probable outcomes may be, you will trade with fear and lack of confidence.
Key Learning 2 : Focus on the Process
Mid year we learned that we perform better when we have the mundane tasks organized. I’ve put a list below of what we organize..
- Understand fundamental news events and how they impact the currency pairs
- Pick the favorite trading setups for the week and set alerts
- Update trading plan, if necessary
- Review trading ideas of other traders
- Repeat the process
Key Learning 3 : Train the traders mindset
Being a Trader is not just about formulating better strategies and performing more extensive analysis, but is also about developing a winning mindset. According to many studies of traders, what separates a winning trader from a losing one:
- It’s NOT that winning traders formulate better trading strategies
- It’s NOT that winning traders are smarter
- It’s NOT that winning traders do better market analysis
What separates a winning trader from a losing trader is their psychological mindset.
Business man meditating under money rain
Most traders when they first begin trading mistakenly believe that all they need to do is find a great trading strategy. After that, all they’ll need to do is come to the trading market each day, plug in their great trading strategy, and the market will just immediately start pumping money into their account.
Unfortunately, as any of us who have ever traded have learned, it’s not that easy. There are plenty of traders who use intelligent, well-designed trading strategies and systems who still regularly lose money rather than make money.
The few traders who do consistently win the game of trading are those who have developed the appropriate psychological mindset that enables them to be consistent winners. There are certain beliefs, attitudes, and psychological characteristics that are essential to conquering the world of trading.
Our beliefs about ourselves are critical elements of trading psychology. One personal characteristic that almost all winning traders share is that of self-confidence. Winning traders possess a firm, basic belief in their ability to BE winning traders – a belief that is not seriously shaken by a few, or even several, losing trades. That is a belief I did build upon as I executed more winning trades in 2019.
Final Words
So did we achieve the 3.000$ smartphone real money ? The answer is NO. We focused in December on trading indices and getting more experience with trading indices. I concluded that this opens great possibilities for bigger gains. Just take a look at my trade log above if you didn’t believe me. You just need a big account for trading those indices but they offer great opportunities for the future.
I learned SO MUCH in 2019 !! I believe that 2019 was a huge improvement of my investing and trading skills. I started to climb the stairs (blog post picture) and this opens so much potential for the future.
The key is improving continuously our skills, our trading psychology and our risk management. I am always ONE STEP closer to my goal.
Stay tuned how we progress in 2020…it is definitely an exciting journey.
This is the end of this blog post.
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Source : CFI
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