Forex School Online Student Case Study to ‘Full Time’ Trading

Where it All Started for Me

My interest for money and looking to make money led me to the markets, and I was about 17 when I found out about trading and the opportunity available in the financial markets; in particular, Forex.

I researched a lot and studied many books before opening my first demo Forex account.

I have opened smaller accounts that have seen wild swings. In my first trading account, I traded down to about 75%, and then gained all that back and more. That was followed by more losses after increasing account size and making other trading errors such as not using a structured stop loss.

After this experience, I took a break to get back to the drawing board and reassess my trading because the stress was becoming too much and my trading was becoming super risky.

At one point, I thought expert advisors were the answer because I figured you could get real quantitative data to prove your method. That only led to the complete destruction of the account. That lesson with indicators was learned super fast there!

There is often a point in a trader’s life where all the pieces of the puzzle start to come together and they start to fit into place and all of a sudden, everything starts to make sense; almost like an “aha” moment.

This moment for me was when I got rid of all the indicators on my charts and I started trading pure clean price action with a plan and recording all my trades in a journal, which allowed me to improve over time because I saw what was working and what wasn’t. Once I had the journal, my trading started to improve because it was clear through my journal what things were working and what I then had to work on. It became very clear.

When Things Changed

A common mistake I have made is; after making a loss, I would then lose my rational train of thought and this would often lead to a lot of wasted time and money, thinking I needed to study more or deeper into something I already knew.

Mistakes are a valuable part of my trading history and I try to be as happy as I can in acceptance of them as they are unavoidable at some point along the line. I have made plenty of mistakes in my time, but always within limits.

Mistakes allow us to grow and they have been a part of my development as a trader. The mistakes I frequently encountered were letting my human instincts and emotions get the better of me in my trades.

A common mistake I have made is; after making a loss, I would then lose my rational train of thought and this would often lead to a lot of wasted time and money, thinking I needed to study more or deeper into something I already knew.

This just caused a snowball effect of over complication. I just needed to stick to the basics and follow a simple rule set and when the next setup came along that met my trading plan, pull the trigger and enter the trade.

At the time, I would let my mind run away and look at every detail as to why the trade lost, other areas I need to study, etc., when in fact, I needed to regroup and realize that no matter how great a setup looks, it can always fail and that a profitable edge is built over many trades, not just one or two or even five trades.

My Personal Routine

Trading Forex full-time is still like a job in a way that it is boring and with a set routine, but everything else makes up for it and allows me to do what I want to do in life. I am usually in my office early Sunday afternoon, getting ready for market open by 1700 New York time.

If I have any open positions, I will follow up in my journal with those. After that, I get down to the charts and marking levels on the daily charts where I would like to make trades from. Sometimes it’s two levels as I am marking the support and resistance from the daily. I do this for all 30 pairs I follow. Then, I make my daily briefing to get set for Monday.

This briefing is like my morning paper I read, so when I get up, my brain has time to focus and I’m not scrambling and spilling coffee everywhere. Coming up to the New York close, I usually will either go to my yoga studio and regain focus and relax there or I will do one of my endurance workouts of my three disciplines in sport (swim, bike, run), as this gets me super fresh for the New York close. New York close normally only takes me around 30 minutes to go through my charts to hunt for, place, and manage trades.

Trades are centered off the daily time frame because this allows for the greatest edge for a number of reasons such as lower cost of doing business, higher probability trades, less stress on the mind and emotions, as well as a common term you hear “less noise”.

I trade all markets from trending, counter trend, and range bound conditions, using support and resistance, combined with candlesticks for defining price action.

My strategy incorporates several enhancers such as the false break, swing high, swing low points, a minimum size, price level swing, psychology levels such as round numbers, and the size of candlestick to obtain a high probability trade.

Crucial For New Price Action Traders

My Tops Three Lessons for Traders;

1. Firstly, make sure you have a journal and make sure it is as detailed as possible because the more work you put into keeping your journal, the more you are going to be able to get out of it to improve.

Make an effort to review your journal at least every 20 trades and note what has been working and what hasn’t. I noticed in my personal journal, a large difference between intraday trading and trading from the daily charts, and this is just one example of what a good journal can pick up and show you where you may be able to turn your trading around if you make a tweak.

2. Your mind is the most significant part in trading.

A professional trader really is just a professional decision maker. There are so many landscapes to a mind that it goes a lot deeper than just trying to eliminate emotion altogether.

The real key is being able to create a successful state of mind where you have traded profitably before, and each time you are going into your trading, you can go back into the same mindset by using an anchor point or another technique so that you are ready to go. This is where treating trading like a business comes in.

You are not there to feel excitement or rid negative emotions, but to make each and every trade because it has a high probability of making money.

3. Go easy and realize that Forex trading is not a get rich quick way to profit. It requires many attributes to become a successful trader, but the thing is, Forex is unlike any other job in the world.

A common stat is that it takes 10,000 hours before you can become professional at something and whilst it often does not take that long, when you are trading, remember that you are working at something that does not put any limits on how much money you can earn or how long or little you have to work.

The only limits on how much money you can earn are on how good of a trader you are.

When thinking about this, you have to also remember that it is the same with any other job such as a lawyer or engineer or whatever, you cannot expect to walk straight into trading and start making consistent gains within one month of starting. It will take some time and you do have to commit to the ONE strategy to make it work.

Recap

I have no regrets of my past and have learned so much from my experience. I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for my history and what I had learned along the way.

If I could say one thing though, I would start off with clean charts and price action analysis and also, work with a pro mentor straight off the bat from the start because education can really help speed up the learning process massively.

Cheers,

Ryan

NOTE: This is pretty awesome by Ryan and a ton of good stuff to pick through. Do you ever notice that profitable traders hammer on about the same things? Not over-trading, keeping it clean, simple and high probability, sticking to YOUR guns, your plans and after losses coming back to trading and reviewing.

If you are ready to learn how to start using price action in your trading, then checkout the advanced price action trading course here;

Students Price Action Trading Course

Safe trading and all the success,

Leave your comments and questions below and I will get back to them for you!