2. Trade in the Forex Market
What do I know about the forex market that makes me think I can win? Well, I know enough and have tested my strategy in the market and won. I learnt how the market works by reading books and attending free seminars. Initially I was studying the stock market since I knew nothing about the forex market. I found out about it during the free subscription period of a stocks magazine. There was a mini forex magazine inside the stock magazine. The forex magazine offered a free one-day seminar. So I signed up for it. Since that first seminar I started getting more offers for forex seminars and I signed up for them too. I was aware that these seminars have a catch to them – to buy into their premium forex program and pay thousands of dollars. Some of them were really appealing and if I had the money I would have bought into one them of them that cost around $5,000. But since I did not have the money a just went to all the free seminars then put the “pieces” together. I also bought a number of forex books for further enlightenment.
In 2007 I signed up for a forex demo account. They gave me $50,000 in practice money and I was able to use it to trade the market. In retrospect, to me the demo account is not like the real (live) account and was a waste of time. There is much more to trading than just the mechanics of trading. The demo account does not carry the depth of emotion and fear associated with the live account. Some of the risks you would take in a demo account would cause you to think twice in a live account.
When I ran out of patience with the demo account I decided to open a live account. I first deposited $1,000 in the account. I must admit that it did not go well. I realized that when I bought a currency pair, for some reason the pair went down instead. When I saw that I was losing, then closed the position, for some reason the pair starts to go up. If I shorted a pair it went up. If I hesitated to buy a pair, it goes up then when I eventually decide to buy, it starts to go down. I just could not understand why the market kept going the opposite directs of my positions. And yes I tried trading in the opposite direction of what I really thought I should have traded – it did not work. I saw my capital eating away on almost ever trade. My capital became uncomfortably low so I bought more books and searched the internet for help in finding out what I was doing wrong. I learnt some things and thought I was now in a better position to win. I therefore added to by capital and started trading again. By the time I gave up, I had lost $900 of my total $1,500 investment.
I had stopped trading for a few months. In the meantime I was still reading and going to free seminars. I reached a point were I could say: “I got it”. I therefore opened a new live account at another broker. I deposited $1,500 and started trading again in October 2007, and in the period of less than 8 months my account was up 80%. As the nature of trading is, you lose some you gain some, I lost some of it and I stopped trading when my return was at 68.12%. In dollars my account was at $2,521.77 by June 2008 – a gain of $1,021.77. To me, this is an excellent return on investment in 9 months. No savings account, CDs, bonds or mutual funds will every give you that – not even over 10 years. I withdrew $2,000 to pay my mortgage and stopped trading for a number of months.
In April 2009, I started to trade again. This time I started with the $521.77 that remained in the account after withdrawing the $2,000 and in less than a month I was up 20%. I would admit that trading the forex market is not easy, especially when you don’t have a mentor. I took the hard route for two reasons, 1) lack of money to pay to be trained, and 2) I did not have a mentor. There are great programs out there and there are scams out there. And these forex courses are not cheap. But you will get training plus a mentor who will show you everything you need to know.
As you can see from the foregoing information, I am very determined to learn, even if I don’t have the money. And that is the approach I am taking to make $1,000,000 in five years. In my next post I will mention how I’m going to use the stock market in my pursuit of $1M.