Hello everybody,
I have not been very active on this forum for last few years, but kind of return feeling brought me back so that I can share some advice for all the beginners or not so beginners who are struggling with trading, since this site and people on this site helped me a lot at the beginning.
Just a little bit of background: Are trading FX and other markets because I was 16 (so nearly 10y of experience by now), and have been trading FX on an institutional level for 4 years in total. I started doing prop FX trading (place and FX choices ) to get an adequate bank during my college studies and have done it for two years. Now, based in London, I'm a portfolio manager / trader (co-managing a hedge fund) at among the most prominent financial businesses in the world, where I'm one of the major risk takers in the FX market (i.e. I trade in large size) - have been around for two years by now.
These are the things which come to my head right now since I do not have much time to spend on proper preparations, I might add some things in the future or more closely remark on those under if there's interest and when I have more time. There's not any particular order to follow, this is not related to how you should trade of an overall advice.
1. Forget about getting rich quick and get a feeling of what is consistently achievable over the future
2. Realize that getting this right will require years of studying, learning from personal mistakes, loosing cash, fruion and other matters - you might not get there at the end so weight up your choices - you might become a physician, earn a degree or become an expert at anything in that huge time period you need to devote to trading before getting it right
3. Trading is an art not a science in my opinion - it's a lot about what kind of personality you are, since it's tough to alter a few of our biases. It isn't hopeless though, i.e. many people are born as very good risk takers / traders, some people are not but might turn out to be very great, and, some people never do.
4. Quit looking for this 1 system, robot, holy grail. Traders generally fall into this pursuit (as myself previously ) since they want to get a method which doesn't need them to THINK - that doesn't exist though. You need to treat it as a company, do your analysis, do your assignments, consider a lot, plan everything beforehand, risk handle everything, handle every trade continuosly and your emotions, be open minded different factors and all the time . Markets are constantly changing and you need to adapt if you would like to succeed. To perform these things properly, of course you require a lot of experience and wisdom.
5. You need to read a LOT of great books too, trust me
6. I advise you to understand macro fundamentals flows picture properly on top of the technicals - doesn't hurt to know what factors are the men who have a price effect considering when they take trading choices
7. This one is Extremely important - stop trading miniature timeframes and targeting few pips each each commerce - If you can't calculate how badly that skews your prospective advantage, you have a lot of homework to do....
8. Most retail traders end up being over-levered and risk too much for each trade (although by many recommended 2% is far too much)
9. Do not trust everything what is being said about trading forums (like this one and many others ) - There is a huge ammount of BS around here, you truly have to be picky to who and what you listen to
10. Likewise don't blindly trust people on trading forums, particularly not about investment performance - at the end, who'd tell you the facts? And, what is the proof?
11. Especially do not trust anything that you read up about brokers hunting your stops, so called large dogs, and how things operate on a large institutional level (e.g. big banks, hedge funds etc.) So far, a huge majority of items written on this topics by random people were exceptionally poor and not factual at all - because people generally have very little comprehension of the topic, there's a lot of conspiracy theories going around which are misleading many.
12. A lot of people claim to be professional traders usually trying to sell you something. I would be careful with this what is the definition of a professional trader? I mean, should I trade my cash from my bedroom, does this clasify me as a professional trader? I am not saying you shouldn't buy a few of those services, as it can assist you in the process in certain cases - just do your homework before you do. I'm saying this because I have seen examples where people were getting hoaxed the prices for those services are astoundingly high and high quality of people's understanding providing them very poor.
13. Do not abandon different things in your life just due to trading (e.g. wohoo I'm falling out of school / resigning from job to be a complete time trader) unless you have sufficient funds and quite a powerful confidence in your skills
14. Do not get obsessed with trading, maintain a healthy diet, do sports, keep up with your social life - it's very important once you have this kind of stressful profession as trading
There are a post of similar size as that one for all the things above, to explain them properly, but will leave this for the future (possibly ). Feel free to ask anything and I will attempt to say as far as I can / want - of course will not be teaching you exactly how to trade and will not reveal everything - one who hasn't gone through it can't even envision what type of hard work, work and sleepless nights it takes. Also and thus don't attempt to contact me for 18, I'm not providing any solutions or mentoring.
I guess it was enough for today, hopefully a few of you will find it useful!
Cheers,
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