How to become a full time forex trader
Full Time Forex Trading
There are several different paths a trader could take to trade forex full time. Before outlining a few of the best approaches first let’s discuss the journey I took to become a full time trader.
I was young and single which means the only person I was providing for was myself. I had the freedom to take on a large amount of risk because not having any responsibilities. At the age of twenty six I left my first successful business which was lease financing to trade full time.
With only a year of learning to trade in what was a bear market after the collapse of the dot com bubble and the raging bull of the late 1990’s. My trading experience at this point was making money off of a swing trading style simple moving average cross over system. Once price had pulled back 5% from the four day moving average of an up trending stock I bought on the first resumption toward the trend. I had to work around the day trading rule which is that if you were trading an account less than $25,000 you could only make three day trades a week. So I had to design a system that more often than not held an open trade over night.
I had spent countless hours prior to making the leap to trading full time reading books on trading. Everything I could get my hands on. I loved learning about technical analysis; chart patterns, candle stick formations, oscillators and price action. I learned a great deal in my early days from the guys at tradingmarkets.com and from spending countless hours staring at the 5 minute charts as I traded equities.
As I was growing my account past the 25K mark I took a job as a private equity trader for a private firm on Wall Street who provided me a sizable trading account. Within a short amount of time I had earned enough money day trading to trade my own account from home.
I soon moved to the e-mini future markets as they are a dream for day trading. I traded the mini russel and the eurodollar (a different instrument than the eur/usd) on the 3 minute charts and the hang seng futures on the 1 minute chart since it moved hundreds of ticks within minutes. I spent 7 hours a day glued to the screen and the focus was intense. I learned how markets move and how to trade and amassed a large trading account.
I progressed to trading on the daily and 4 hour time frames as they gave me more freedom one of the primary reasons I decided to become a trader. Trading a sizeable amount of money I also became highly risk adverse and spent a great deal of time studying and learning about money management through position sizes and risk to reward ratios.
Trading is repeating the same behaviors over and over again and it can be lonely. Although living my dream of trading full time something was missing as trading was not rewarding on many levels for me. I contemplated perhaps finding a new career path when I had the inspiration to create community. I began JCL’s Forex trading in November of 2005. We are just getting started and already it has been a richly rewarding experience that has lead to many friendships and introductions to great people whom many of have become profitable traders.
I travel the world now trading and have the freedom to spend time with my family (although trading is not easy when a four year old wants to play!) which were exactly the reasons I set out to trade forex full time. I receive show much through sharing my market knowledge with new and experienced traders through the gratefulness of people who are progressing toward achieve their goals now too. The markets have been very good to me and I appreciate being able to give back. I am very blessed and grateful always mindful that I know nothing and am not smarter than the markets. Above all I am excited for the future as we continue to conquer the markets.
