Trading: It’s not an enigma.
Of course, you can learn how to trade successfully, but you need to study and pass some kind of exams just like every other professional.
You may have heard of Jesse Livermore, a very famous stock trader also known as The Great Bear of Wall Street because of the enormous amounts of money he made during the stock market crash of 1929.
For those of you who don’t know, Wall Street is where the largest stock market in the world is located and it’s in lower Manhattan in New York.
Now Jesse Livermore was a very clever trader. He realized that history does tend to repeat itself and he recognized this situation in 1929, one that was very similar to that of the 1907 crash and he capitalized very handsomely on that.
Surprisingly, before 1929, Jesse actually had a lot of failures. In his first six-month trading period on Wall Street, he actually went bust. And again he went bust trading cotton after making some money in the 1907 crash.
The good thing is that Mr. Livermore learned quickly from his mistakes. He picked up a lot from the past market crash. This time around, he was prepared and organized and made something like a hundred million dollars from the Wall Street crash of 1929.
Every person who wishes to be a successful trader has to go through a learning process. Now, you do not need to go bankrupt as Jesse did. Like for every doctor, pilot, mechanic, computer engineer, etc., all jobs require you to learn a certain set of skills so you’re able to perform that role competently. And being a professional trader is absolutely no different.
Why do so many Traders fail?
Some people don’t treat professional trading like they would any other profession.
They just expect to sort of work it out on the job and they eventually end up losing a lot of money. Unfortunately, too many of us are quite happy to throw 5,000 pounds into a trading account and essentially gamble it away. But we’re not so keen to spend 50 pounds on a book that teaches us the essentials of trading.
It is the same case if we choose to be a doctor about to go into the emergency room and perform some form of surgery. Would any of us walk into a hospital and have a go at operating on someone without any medical training whatsoever? We may get lucky but chances are someone without any medical training is probably not going to do very well over a period of time.
It is the same for all of us who drive and undertake some form of driving lessons so we can learn the skills needed to operate a car. We didn’t just jump into a car alone and figured it out. That would be irresponsible and we would likely have a lot of accidents.
So, if you start trading live money without any real training and a track record of success, then you are likely to have quite a few trading accidents. Trading is a job and, as such, it requires you as the trader to learn a few skills needed to be able to carry out that role.
Remember, this is a zero-sum game. When you put your money down on a trade and you lose, somebody else has taken your money. Usually, you will find that that individual, the financial institution, or whoever it may be that’s taking your money, had more knowledge, did more analysis, and worked harder to get that decision right. Ultimately, they probably deserved to take your money.
So, if you don’t take the time and effort to learn how to be a professional, then you’re really doing yourself a huge disservice.
How long does it take to become a Professional Trader?
Not an easy question to answer because, of course, we all learn at a different pace.
It’s like asking: How many driving lessons does it take to become a race car driver? First, you need to learn how to drive a regular car and that could take some people five lessons whereas others twenty-five. Once you’ve learned how to drive a car, then you need to acquire a series of other skills before you can safely drive at, say, 180 miles an hour in a race. Unfortunately, some people find the beginning part of any lesson rather boring and want to move straight onto Formula 1 or NASCAR.
It’s this similar pattern of behavior that we see with people who want to get into trading. They want to skip the learning process, forget about trading a demo account, and just move straight onto trading live money so they can make a huge amount of money within a very short period of time.
The reality about the journey to becoming a Professional Forex Trader
In Forex, the reality is people need anything from six months onwards to understand the principles of trading and acquire the theoretical knowledge to be a professional trader.
Then, putting the knowledge acquired into practice will depend on your effort, how you practice your trades and keep your psychology in check. The biggest reason why people fail to become successful traders is no different from that for failing to become pilots or engineers or any other profession.
For this obvious reason, if you are skilled and lucky enough to be in the right position, you can take advantage of this opportunity. Of course, there will be factors out of your control and, unfortunately, the market does throw some risky situations at you.
Then, the only thing that’s standing in your way, ladies and gentlemen, is hard work.
It will take you some time to learn the skills needed to become a trader, just as it takes a little bit of time to learn the skills needed to become an accountant. There is NO shortcut to becoming a professional Forex trader.
If you want to become a professional trader, someone who can analyze the markets and make independent decisions, then you’re going to have to do the work and it’ll probably take you longer than a weekend.
So please be careful with your money. Don’t rush into throwing large sums of money at trading whilst you’re learning how to trade. You need to look after your money because when you do learn how to trade, you’re going to need money in order to do so.
We suggest that you trade and practice all of the techniques you pick up along the way on a demo account. That’s the only place where you will learn.
So, if you do start using a live account, we highly discourage you to do so, for it will interfere with your learning process. You’ll be focusing too much on the money as opposed to learning how to trade professionally.
That is one of the big reasons that many fail. They are focused so much on the money aspect and not focused enough on the learning aspect, and this has a negative impact on their judgment. That just wouldn’t be the right attitude for someone who wants to be a professional trader. The best is to accept that there is a lot to learn before you can become a professional trader or even before you can start trading real money.
And even at a point where you have the skills to trade Forex, please understand that your past performances do not guarantee your future results.
So, you should never trade with real money to begin with. You cannot afford to lose money until you’ve achieved a track record of success, or until you’ve got some structured and organized way to perform your duties
So, remember Jesse Livermore. Don’t follow those same footsteps where he went bankrupt twice. Do not skip the learning process, pick up the skills required, and you’ll find yourself in a much better place if you do so.
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*Any opinions, news, research, analyses, prices or other information contained here are provided as general market commentary and do not constitute investment advice. FXPRIMUS does not accept liability for any loss or damage, including without limitation to, any loss of profit, which may arise directly or indirectly from the use of or reliance on such information.
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