How old would you feel?
Random thoughts for Friday.
Time.
What if you didn’t know your age..
Or there was no age or time concept.
How old would you feel? How old do you think you would be?
It’s the end of May
June.. we’re in June already..
Time as usual is racing by.
It’s the end of May (No pun intended!).
I haven’t had as much time to post. I was debating whether to post trades, however for now, I’ll put that off. And I definitely don’t want to be one of those buggers selling crap and marketing out crappy trading systems. So what the *bleep* do I do with this thing?
I’ve been pretty busy. Surprisingly I am in the UK again, and it happened to coincide with the UK Elections. Interesting times ahead, where is Bond when you need him!
As for myself, trading away. Hope everyone is taking profitable trades!
Until next time,
Robin
The Coveted Forex Holy Grail System
There is a term in forex trading, coined the holy grail system. If you haven’t heard of it before, you are lucky and steer clear from anyone who says they have the ‘holy grail system’. It’s what the majority of forex traders are looking for, the holy grail trading system, that produces no losses and only winners. A trading system with a 100% win rate (or close to that) with zero draw downs. The ultimate of the ultimate trading systems. In essence a license to print money at will. Wouldn’t that be the life? 😉
It’s a really big secret in forex (hush hush now) and no one wants to tell you what it is. Everyone is looking on the outside for the answer to their trading woes, and that’s where it’s all wrong. The answer lies within. I’ve seen traders take a perfectly profitable system and turn it in to a losing one. And on the flip side, I’ve seen traders take a profitable system and turn it into an even more profitable one. What’s the deal?
Let me tell you the real secret. You are the coveted holy grail of your trading. *ttaaddaahhh!*
Everyone views the market differently. My edge isn’t your edge. And vice versa – your edge isn’t my edge.
It is possible to make it in this game. (Can you live off forex trading? – a definite yes!)
So focus on yourself. Keep learning, pushing your knowledge. Keep questioning. Find people who have been there and done that, genuine mentors who can nudge you in the right direction. Be aware of your limitations and strengths. Be able to remove your ego and accept that your trading results are a direct results of your choices, no one else’s. You’ll know when you’re on to something good and when you’ve found the right trading system.
You’ll need the foundations to increase the chance of success, such as the; Goal(s) + Self Discipline + Feedback Loop.
To success,
Robin
Goal(s) + Self Discipline + Feedback Loop
Hello my people!
Apologies for the radio silence, it’s been about a month since my last post.
Displacement would be the word for the past month. I have traveled for work & leisure to Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Portugal, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and Vietnam. At the time of posting, I am currently in Italy.
Today, I wanted to talk about achievement, momentum and reaching your goals. I see many people float around, talk about their dreams/ambitions and waste a great deal of time by keeping themselves ‘busy’ with useless time filling tasks which (at times) they deem important. Most of this wasted time are on things that make them feel ‘important’ or busy. Being busy or feeling important, doesn’t equate to achieving goals or success.
Time is our greatest asset (or for us forex traders, time is our greatest currency). Spend it wisely it. We’ll never get the past minute, hour, day, week, month or year – no matter how much money we have.
Goal(s) + Self Discipline + Feedback Loop = Achievement Momentum
Goals: What do you want to achieve in life?
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Self Discipline: I know this is word is thrown around a lot, especially in self help books. But, it is required to achieve anything of value.
Self discipline for me, is the ability to get up and focus your actions on getting closer to your goals. Even on days when you don’t ‘feel’ like it or are not as motivated.
Just imagine, you worked on your goal every day for one (1) year, that’s 365 days. The chances are you’d achieve a feat of value to yourself or in the process learnt something of value. Most people can’t even do this for a month. You could be focus on anything, eating no desserts, exercising, reading, learning a new skill, back testing your trading system, the list is endless.
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Feedback Loop: What is this loop you speak of? Well, it’s rather simple. You need a form of feedback (loop) when you are working and actioning towards your goal. If not you may be repeating the same actions over and over again, and getting the same results but not closer to your goal. (There is a huge difference to persistence and stupidity.) Hence the feedback loop, you need to know that your actions of discipline are getting you closer or are actually beneficial to your goal. This is where self awareness comes to play, being aware and measuring the effectiveness of the actions. Plus or potentially even better a friend or a mentor who can guide you from pitfalls, time wasting ideas, provide motivation, or just some general advice.
Goal(s) + Self Discipline + Feedback Loop = Achievement Momentum
Momentum is key to achieving anything in life. You don’t have to be ‘busy’ all the time, you have to be effective.
To our success,
Robin
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
The Eight (8) Rules of Carney – Ugly Americans Book
For those of your who don’t know of the book, Ugly Americans (link here), by Ben Mezrich, I suggest you give it a read. I stumbled on his writings when a friend in London passed me his book called “Rigged”, I was instantly hooked. The Eight (8) Rules of Carney, are from this book and ring deep to the markets (some gems in rules)! Ugly Americans is based on the true story of ‘John Malcolm’ and his road to success.
This isn’t a book on trading systems/advice, nor is it technical. It an easy read that does get your mind flowing to the endless possibilities we have in our life.
The Eight (8) Rules of Carney:
(Who the F is Carney? He was the hedge fund cowboy who partly trained ‘John Malcolm’.)
- Never get into something you can’t get out by the closing bell. Every trade you make, you’re looking for the exit point. Always keep your eye on the exit point.
- Don’t ever take anything at face value. Because face value is the biggest lie of any market. Nothing is ever priced at its true worth. The key is to figure out the real, intrinsic value — and get it for much, much less.
- One minute, you have your feet on the ground and you’re moving forward. The next minute, the ground is gone and you’re falling. The key is to never land. Keep it in the air as long as you fucking can.
- You walk into a room with a grenade, and your best-case scenario is walking back out still holding that grenade. Your worst-case scenario is that the grenade explodes, blowing you into little bloody pieces. The moral of the story: don’t make bets with no upside.
- Don’t overthink. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck — it’s a duck.
- Fear is the greatest motivator. Motivation is what it takes to find profit.
- The first place to look for a solution is within the problem itself.
- The ends justify the means, but there’s only one end that really matters. Ending up on a beach with a bottle of champagne.
I love number 2, 4, 5 and 8. At the end of it all, it’s all about the final result.
To success!
Robin
Easy Order MT4 Script
OMG! I am in love with this Easy Order MT4 Script. And even better, it’s all free! I stumbled upon it on whilst searching for a decent MT4 Indicator to calculate the lot sizes for the trades I take. I normally use the Position Size Calculator on MyFxBook (Link here), and manually calculate how many lots to enter based on my risk per trade, then input my trades in MetaTrader. It’s all a rather tedious process (and open to human error) BUT NO MORE! 🙂
So what does it do?
- Automatically calculates your lot size for the risk % you enter per trade based on your Stop Loss level.
- Select your Stop Loss based on dragging the horizontal SL Line
- Select your Take Profit based on dragging the horizontal TP Line
- Select your Entry Point based on dragging the horizontal Entry Line
- You can take market entry trades, buy stops, sell stops, sell limits and buy limits.
The latest version can be downloaded from this post on ForexFactory (link here).
For the installation details and version details please go to this post on FF (link here).
I did encounter this error message (This version is under testing..), at first I freaked out, thinking that my version of MT4 was incompatible with the Easy Order Script. However, there is a very easy and quick fix on the post on FF (link here).
A very big thank you to Sangmane on ForexFactory for coding this Easy Order Mt4 Script and making it freely available for everyone. It’s an absolute time saver!
I hope it works for you and helps with your trading.
To success!
Robin
Can you live off forex trading?
Can I get a hell yeah! The answer is a one hundred percent resounding yes! In the words of Jerry Maguire – SHOW ME THE MONEY! Or, I mean, SHOW ME THE FOREX MONEY! 😉
I myself do so, and I know of many other traders who trade for a living. They trade instruments ranging from options, futures, stocks, currencies, commodities etc. The world is your oyster (assuming you like oysters!). As long as you have a good foundation, you can trade any instrument. Of course you’ll find that you have a preference towards specific financial instruments and that’s fine too. Do not pigeonhole yourself in thinking that it just has to be one type, there are so many options.
Please note, I do not count selling signals, or copier services or marketing how to trade as making a living from forex trading. There are more marketers, forex ‘gurus’ and people making money from selling trading ‘services’ compared to actually making money from real trading (I could ramble on this subject but that’s for another post altogether.).
Real life traders FTW.
It takes dedicated focus and consistent effort, it is achievable. By no feat is it an easy path or straightforward one. It’s a roller coaster ride with highs and lows, twists and turns, just like life. You have to find the right guidance, tools and concepts that will give you an edge.
You should read these related posts as well:
How much money do you need to start forex trading?
$100,000 USD in Trading Capital
To success!
Robin
$100,000 USD in Trading Capital
In my post on how much money do you need to start forex trading, I said that a straightforward answer is a minimum of 6 figures up, $100,000 USD in trading capital. Most will tell you different and yes you can indeed start trading with less than $100 dollars. It also depends on the trader’s individual circumstances itself. In an ideal world we’d start off with $100, turn that into $1 million and keep the good times rolling, a possible feat albeit s a very rare story.
I say $100,000 because you want to give yourself as much edge as possible when you trade. You want to remove as much pressure as possible of making money in the markets. This is a tough game already, and you want to stack the odds in your favour.
Answer the following questions:
How much do you want from the markets? $10,000, $20,000, $50,000, $100,000?
What percent return do you think is possible?
How much money do you need for the lifestyle you desire?
Let’s do a quick calculation on percent returns and value returned based on a trading account of $100,000 USD vs at $10,000 USD.
- $100,000 with 10% return = $10,000 USD
- $100,000 with 20% return = $20,000 USD
- $100,000 with 50% return = $50,000 USD
- $100,000 with 100% return = $100,000 USD
Even if you do 1% on your trading capital of $100,000, that’s $1,000.
If you started with $10,000 with those returns:
- $10,000 with 10% return = $1,000 USD
- $10,000 with 20% return = $2,000 USD
- $10,000 with 50% return = $5,000 USD
- $10,000 with 100% return = $10,000 USD
Which of the trading capitals do you think would be more pleasant to live on? And which results are more consistently feasible to achieve?
There are traders out there who make bank day in day out and they trade with at least 6 figures up. You want to be in that category. Your goal should be to build up to be on that level.
I would also like to add that you don’t want to trade with ‘scared’ money. Your trading capital should have less emotional ties as possible. The goal is to make money and you don’t want to have added pressure that the trading capital is all the money you have left and you have bills, a mortgage and a family to feed or knowing that the trading capital is from a bank loan or from a friend.
Here’s to successful trading,
Robin
A.I., Automation and the Economic Workforce
Times are changing, and they are changing fast. The jobs our generation have known may become obsolete much faster than we think. Automation, A.I. (Artificial Intelligence), and the rate of expenditure on human & technological advancement and betterment is going at warp speed.
I was having coffee the other day with a fellow trader friend, and he was telling me on how JP Morgan has automated it’s financial contracts which used to take 360,000 hours for it’s legal team but now takes seconds with it’s new software (link here). Who would have thought that would be possible? Cutting the lawyers out of contractual work (I mean, we all love lawyers – really *cough*).
Other companies are following suite as well, Goldman embraces automation with it’s own trading. Having a trader force of 600 in the 2000s, now being streamlined with automated trading programs and 200 computer engineers (link here).
Last year a banker was asking if I was interested in a startup that was aiming to remove lawyers and make contracts automated combined with block chain technology. In all honesty, I thought it was feat that would take a very long time to come to life. That’s hindsight for you 😉
There are many companies adopting automation. Don’t think this is just limited to certain industries. Even the pizza business has an automated pizza robot (link here). Think about it, robots are less error prone, they can work 24/7 (they don’t need breaks), no unions, pensions, health care, the list can go on. All of this can be applied to all the industries we are working in.
It has been known that job security is a thing of the past with our new economy. But what will the jobs of the future be? And what will the future workforce look like? And more importantly how will you keep your edge?
I know this is off on a tangent from full forex trading but it’s really food for thought and will have a huge impact on our lives.
How much money do you need to start forex trading?
This is a one of the most common questions I get asked. So how much money (trading capital) do you need to start forex trading? There are many variables to the answer, and it falls down to the the situation of the trader. If you want a simplistic answer, then the minimum I would say is 6 figures upwards (starting at $100,000 USD). I’ll explain my reasoning later in another post.
First let’s start off with a question:
What do you want to get out of Forex Trading? A side income? To live off Forex trading? As that will change the amount of trading capital you will require.
If you want to live off forex trading as income, then I would say you really do need a minimum of 6 figures to start out, 5 figures ($10,000 USD upwards) is possible but the emotional pressure may impact your trading and trading results.
As a side income, then how much are you expecting. What are you happy with? 10% a month? 10% a year? To beat the banks and their low interest rates? The answers will impact your dedication to trading.
After answering that question: What trading results do you expect out of your Forex Trading?
When I ask traders this I normally get blank faces and a story from what they read online about a forex trader that and turned $1,000 USD into $1,000,000 USD and became an instant millionaire.
There are very very rare cases like this. That’s the case of expectations vs reality, as the majority of traders lose their money but marketing in this industry has ‘get rich’ written all over it. I remember signing a risk disclosure form with a professional brokerage firm and they were very clear that more of their traders lose than win.
Let’s break down the trading results, for examples sake, let’s say you wanted to get $1,000 USD a month (or a year if you wish) from your trading.
If you started with trading capital of:
- $100. You would need a return of 1,000%.
- $500. You would need a return of 200%.
- $1,000. You would need a return of 100%.
- $5,000. You would need a return of 20%.
- $10,000. You would need a return of 10%.
- $100,000. You would need a return of 1%.
Re-read that. You can play with the numbers, increasing the trading goal to $3,000, $10,000 etc. Really think about which one of those returns is consistently sustainable? Then let me know your answer. If you can grasp this, it will give you an extra edge few traders really understand or have bothered to think about.
As a final note, trading capital is important but what is even more critical is your depth of knowledge and actions towards forex trading are more important. Which comes down to preparation and dedication to your forex trading goal.
Good luck,
Robin