Chronicles of an Armature Trader: Part Two – The Journey to becoming a Dollar Millionaire begins …

Before I proceed from where I left off on Sunday, first I would like to thank Gloriouschartpatterns for giving me this opportunity to document my journey as a beginner. The main goal of this column is to record all that I am experiencing in trading as a beginner to an amateur and eventually to a pro and by this, I mean actual experiences some unfolding at the present moment as I trade. Having read a bunch on trading and hearing lots of success stories, I am yet to come across any story that resonates with a beginner in a detailed manner by espousing the challenges that one goes through  when making countless mistakes every day . So, I shall endeavour to record my mistakes and successes. in fact, emphasis will be on the mistakes. This column has been inspired by a loss I suffered after having a good run following the discovery of my trading style. l made mistakes and reduced my account from $1,500 to a $495 in just two days! (and I still make mistakes hehe) I hope beginners can relate to my story. Hope you all enjoy. 

 So, I embarked on intensive research and reading. I have never read so much in my life, sometimes I am actually astonished by how much I read within that year (and how much I still continue to read up to today) and mind you I was still in Law school. After completing my first book on trading in a month (Anna Couling's Forex for Beginners ) I opened my first Demo account, a  Million Dollars here I come, ready to bank you! at first it was confusing but given my knack for Techy stuff I explored my MT4, learning how  it works  and deeply getting into more research, I started familiarizing myself with the economic Calendar and the key events ready to place a trade in anticipation of positive or negative news, I literally became a Financial News junky. Always scouring on www.bloomberg.com  and www.investing.com for information that can make me some quick cash. Making money never felt so easy!

As my experiments went on, it had a toll on my other part of life. I was a Legal Intern and this suddenly seemed boring and dull because I realized that I liked the Law but I did not have a passion for it and I hated the bureaucracy involved in practicing the law. I loved Justice, still do, but the court processes involved in seeking it and worst of all the delays in getting Justice made my stomach turn and to add more salt to the injury, delayed justice didn’t mean that an Advocate’s payday got delayed! Delayed justice is indeed painful. And to top up to the delays, in order for the wheels of Court bureaucracy to turn in your favour one had to line someone’s pocket at some point. To me, it is still amazing why such a dysfunctional system is tolerated and everyone just goes with the flow!  My moral beliefs on fairness slowly became aligned with trading but not legal practice (discussion for another day)

 Moving on, I came across  www.babypips.com and this is when I began familiarizing myself with technical analysis and the fact that I didn’t have to wait for a News release, finger on the mouse button ready to pull the trigger and place a trade. I further started reading blog posts from traders and trading coaches and watching hundreds of hours of trading videos  and by mid-2016 I had accumulated so much knowledge (I naively believed so ) and I was already trading on a $30 live trading account (what a Joke!) the money was “free money” from an online broker who was enticing potential clients ( www.xm.com ) I funded the Account with an extra $50 and got a leverage of 500:1!! Plus the broker offered a wide variety of tradable assets.

 I naively believed that given the information I had accumulated, I can be able to turn around the $50 to $500 within a short period of time. This is how brokers draw you in folks. By the time you learn about money management and you become consistently profitable the broker has made a handsome amount from commissions and spreads they charge you as you continue to fund and trade that tiny account.

Things didn’t go bad for me and did I make my killing as I had anticipated? Well, you’ll find out from part Three.