The Entrepreneur Forum | Financial Freedom | Starting a Business | Motivation | Money | Success

Welcome to the only entrepreneur forum dedicated to building life-changing wealth.

Build a Fastlane business. Earn real financial freedom. Join free.

Join over 80,000 entrepreneurs who have rejected the paradigm of mediocrity and said "NO!" to underpaid jobs, ascetic frugality, and suffocating savings rituals— learn how to build a Fastlane business that pays both freedom and lifestyle affluence.

Free registration at the forum removes this block.

Forex trading

marrio

PARKED
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
0% - New User
Feb 10, 2019
1
0
Hello

I want to know more about forex trading. Here where I live (South Africa) it is not a big thing so I couldn't find much information about it.

I would like to take my first steps but still need some basic knowledge about this topic. Can you help me with that?

Thank you!
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Leigh Farrell

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
129%
Nov 27, 2017
48
62
37
Adelaide, South Australia
Go to amazon, search for the top rated books on forex trading, read, take notes, read, take notes, read, take notes.
Set up a demo account with one of the big firms.
Trade demo for 6 months until you have proven strategies. If you don't do this, you will lose money.
Then put in $100 and trade with that. Don't put more than that! This is where you learn that emotions change the way you trade. That's why you're starting small and building up.
When your account gets to $200, boost it to $500. When your account gets to $1000, you can boost it to $1500. When you get to $3000, you won't need to boost it anymore.
Just be aware:
This is not a fastlane business.
This will require 10,000+ hours to learn to trade.
This will require your time and attention every single day.
You can't take a day off to spend time with your girlfriend or kids.
You can't take the day off of you're sick.
There are no holidays.
The recipe for success with forex is bust your a$$ for 10 years, then move money into other assets.
You have no business to sell at the end.
 

lejus

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
146%
Jun 8, 2017
65
95
UK
Go to amazon, search for the top rated books on forex trading, read, take notes, read, take notes, read, take notes.
Set up a demo account with one of the big firms.
Trade demo for 6 months until you have proven strategies. If you don't do this, you will lose money.
Then put in $100 and trade with that. Don't put more than that! This is where you learn that emotions change the way you trade. That's why you're starting small and building up.
When your account gets to $200, boost it to $500. When your account gets to $1000, you can boost it to $1500. When you get to $3000, you won't need to boost it anymore.
Just be aware:
This is not a fastlane business.
This will require 10,000+ hours to learn to trade.
This will require your time and attention every single day.
You can't take a day off to spend time with your girlfriend or kids.
You can't take the day off of you're sick.
There are no holidays.
The recipe for success with forex is bust your a$$ for 10 years, then move money into other assets.
You have no business to sell at the end.

This is an excellent post. I couldn't say that better. I would add it is very exciting at first, but as soon as you learn to control your trading and you just execute signals it becomes super boring, and I stopped it because I found myself very hard to sit and look at the screen for hours. I moved what I made into other assets, tried once again but when I was out of touch after the break I noticed I can't execute my system efficiently anymore and I quit for good since I did not wanted to sit and stare for hours on demo account till I get it all together again.
 

Leigh Farrell

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
129%
Nov 27, 2017
48
62
37
Adelaide, South Australia
This is an excellent post. I couldn't say that better. I would add it is very exciting at first, but as soon as you learn to control your trading and you just execute signals it becomes super boring, and I stopped it because I found myself very hard to sit and look at the screen for hours. I moved what I made into other assets, tried once again but when I was out of touch after the break I noticed I can't execute my system efficiently anymore and I quit for good since I did not wanted to sit and stare for hours on demo account till I get it all together again.
Absolutely!
If you're excited, you're not in control of yourself and you should still be in demo mode.
Successful Trading is almost robotic and systematic, like an IF Statement in an excel spreadsheet. If ''this'', then ''this'', otherwise ''this''.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

SunnyN

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
76%
Oct 2, 2014
37
28
39
Babypips.com will be like an encyclopedia of Forex Trading, and it will teach you everything about technical trading based on charts.
But, beware of so-called "Make you rich" mentors and courses. Demo trading will instill confidence though it is not a guarantee due to emotions while trading with real money initially.
 

Kevin88660

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
118%
Feb 8, 2019
3,457
4,080
Singapore
I have a degree in Economics and I worked more than one year as a full-time proprietary trader in a firm dealing with equity futures and crude oil futures.

As of now I still trade part-time during peak market hours only.

I can cut short your learning curve by focusing on what has proven to be working in the current financial climate instead of the a lot BS Teaching materials online.

Anyone can write a book about trading but you have to read research papers about financial market and research on trading written by professors from universities. There is no short-cut. They do not teach you how to trade but they tell you what strategies are making money now. What are the “speculated methods” made by fund managers who are making money now.

If you can code or willing to learn coding you can google quantitative trading. There is a community out there very rich in information.

If you cannot code you still can money. You have less automation power but more discretionary power. The algo cannot interpret news or qualitative events well. You need to focus on one market and know the inside-out.

You have to develop your own ways to trade short-term mean reversion strategies. Just doing trend following is not going to work well in today’s market.


Hello

I want to know more about forex trading. Here where I live (South Africa) it is not a big thing so I couldn't find much information about it.

I would like to take my first steps but still need some basic knowledge about this topic. Can you help me with that?

Thank you!
ave
 

lejus

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
146%
Jun 8, 2017
65
95
UK
I have a degree in Economics and I worked more than one year as a full-time proprietary trader in a firm dealing with equity futures and crude oil futures.

As of now I still trade part-time during peak market hours only.

I can cut short your learning curve by focusing on what has proven to be working in the current financial climate instead of the a lot BS Teaching materials online.

Anyone can write a book about trading but you have to read research papers about financial market and research on trading written by professors from universities. There is no short-cut. They do not teach you how to trade but they tell you what strategies are making money now. What are the “speculated methods” made by fund managers who are making money now.

If you can code or willing to learn coding you can google quantitative trading. There is a community out there very rich in information.

If you cannot code you still can money. You have less automation power but more discretionary power. The algo cannot interpret news or qualitative events well. You need to focus on one market and know the inside-out.

You have to develop your own ways to trade short-term mean reversion strategies. Just doing trend following is not going to work well in today’s market.



ave

I stopped trading years ago since I moved into other things (stock/shares, retail, online business) but I wouldn't mind part-time extra trading in the meantime. Any academic resources that you would recommend to refresh my knowledge that will be suitable for part-time? My techniques were very time consuming and so many years later they might not even be valid at all but I wouldn't mind checking what works for part-time.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Kevin88660

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
118%
Feb 8, 2019
3,457
4,080
Singapore
I stopped trading years ago since I moved into other things (stock/shares, retail, online business) but I wouldn't mind part-time extra trading in the meantime. Any academic resources that you would recommend to refresh my knowledge that will be suitable for part-time? My techniques were very time consuming and so many years later they might not even be valid at all but I wouldn't mind checking what works for part-time.

https://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/odean/papers/Day Traders/Day Trade 040330.pdf

This is a study done on Taiwanese day traders. Its a popular paper.

The lessons I learnt are as follow.

1)Most traders lost more money after commission
2)A small number of traders can win consistently
3)They do so mainly by using aggressive limite order to predict short-term price directions.

I stopped trading years ago since I moved into other things (stock/shares, retail, online business) but I wouldn't mind part-time extra trading in the meantime. Any academic resources that you would recommend to refresh my knowledge that will be suitable for part-time? My techniques were very time consuming and so many years later they might not even be valid at all but I wouldn't mind checking what works for part-time.
 

Kevin88660

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
118%
Feb 8, 2019
3,457
4,080
Singapore
I stopped trading years ago since I moved into other things (stock/shares, retail, online business) but I wouldn't mind part-time extra trading in the meantime. Any academic resources that you would recommend to refresh my knowledge that will be suitable for part-time? My techniques were very time consuming and so many years later they might not even be valid at all but I wouldn't mind checking what works for part-time.
https://www.cfainstitute.org/-/media/documents/book/rf-lit-review/2016/rflrv11n11.ashx

A must read article.

By introducing the concept of the return horizon to their study, Conrad and Kaul’s study recognizes that technical traders are not a homogenous group. This observation has important practical implications for traders. Their findings can be restated as follows: Trend following and momentum strategies are more likely to deliver gains for long-term traders, while short-term traders are more likely to attain success with mean-reversion strategies”
 

antonn

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
25%
Feb 11, 2019
4
1
Hello

Welcome to the wonderful world of forex. It is hard at the beginning but it gets easier when you learn some things. You can find a lot of good information about forex on trading forums, but be careful because not everybody is an expert even though they claim so. Another good resources of information are sites like these one Forex Trading in South Africa here you can find a lot of information for beginners. Hope this will help you a little bit in the beginning.

One more thing: Get a Demo Account at a good brokerage and start practicing: so you can learn an not lose your money.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Kevin88660

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
118%
Feb 8, 2019
3,457
4,080
Singapore
Trading is an enjoyable game/hobby that pays, especially to those who like the intellectual challenge.

It is also an areana full of BS-popular opinions without empirical evidence. That can lead to wealth destruction very quickly.
 

Xvll

PARKED
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
0% - New User
Dec 9, 2018
1
0
How do you become a millionaire through forex trading or trading in general?
 

JM35

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
176%
Jul 13, 2013
168
296
28
Denver
How do you become a millionaire through forex trading or trading in general?
By winning more often that you lose, over a long period of time.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Kevin88660

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
118%
Feb 8, 2019
3,457
4,080
Singapore
How do you become a millionaire through forex trading or trading in general?
I view financial market as a wealth preservation and enhancement tool, not a rapid way to build wealth.

If you are really good and lucky you can double your capital in 2-3 years. But If you starts with a small capital it takes too long to accumulate your first million. There are simply far more better routes.
 

AlexandreGoulart

New Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
136%
Nov 18, 2019
14
19
Brazil
For a complete beginner I would recommend the introductory Forex courses available on the Udemy platform - those offered by a guy named Kirill Eremenko. Nothing is clearer than that. He is a very good teacher and goes from the basic manual trading to automated systems development to remote servers setup. He also has a company and a blog called Forexboat, with links to the Udemy courses.

That being said, always keep in mind that these resources only disclose part of the path to become a trader. This is, perhaps, the most brutal and challenging market of all - the financial market. It's a knife fight in the dark. NO ONE will give you the complete information or guide you through all the personal discoveries and transformations necessary to adjust your psyche to operate in such an incomplete (sometimes misguided) information environment. For example, most people believe that automated trading eliminates the discipline and other psychological aspects off the equation. Think again. As long as you have the power to turn off the "robots" when the things go rough and you become desperate - just before the automated strategy recover the losses - your mind continues to be the weak link on the chain. There's no shortcut, you will have to change or at least adapt whatever discipline you may have.

It's not easy, but is doable.
Remember: the name of this game is resilience.
Good luck and success!
 

gebu

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
189%
Jan 1, 2017
9
17
46
Germany
I've been trading for quite some time already, but I'm really shitty - selling winners to early, holding looser to long. I'm currently working on a trading bot, it's been running for about a month now and produced ~ 5% net profit per day (on my balance, not the leveraged amount I trade with) during that time. Personally I think it's almost impossible to make money in forex without automation.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Kevin88660

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
118%
Feb 8, 2019
3,457
4,080
Singapore
Read trading research papers.

No way to play a game like casino without knowings the odds and statistical pattern of how price moves.
 

Lucky Lu

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
99%
Nov 2, 2019
247
244
Newport Beach, California
Which onlin
I stopped trading years ago since I moved into other things (stock/shares, retail, online business) but I wouldn't mind part-time extra trading in the meantime. Any academic resources that you would recommend to refresh my knowledge that will be suitable for part-time? My techniques were very time consuming and so many years later they might not even be valid at all but I wouldn't mind checking what works for part-time.

What kind of online business are you into?
 
Last edited:

Michael J

PARKED
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
0% - New User
Jul 3, 2019
1
0
Forex or 'FX', is the trading of one currency for another at a concurred trade cost on the over-the-counter (OTC) market. Forex is the world's most traded market, with a normal turnover in overabundance of US$5.3 trillion every day. You require a PC or laptop and web association with begin this business. Yet, learning is the most required thing.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Black_Dragon43

Legendary Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
336%
Apr 28, 2017
2,071
6,968
‍☠️ Eastern Europe
I view financial market as a wealth preservation and enhancement tool, not a rapid way to build wealth.

If you are really good and lucky you can double your capital in 2-3 years. But If you starts with a small capital it takes too long to accumulate your first million. There are simply far more better routes.
And yet... if you can consistently get good results trading, then other people will let you trade with their money, and that WILL be fastlane. The financial market is a very good one to make your fastlane money in. I've worked with quite a few businessmen from the financial market at my agency, and I can tell you that these guys have a lot of money generally.
 

c_morris

Gold Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
344%
Oct 30, 2016
474
1,632
51
Nova Scotia, Canada
In my opinion, the best book on trading is Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas. It is not specific to Forex, but is applicable to all trading. It focuses on developing the mindset of a successful trader. Once you master the trader's mindset, your odds of success increase dramatically.
 

Kevin88660

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
118%
Feb 8, 2019
3,457
4,080
Singapore
And yet... if you can consistently get good results trading, then other people will let you trade with their money, and that WILL be fastlane. The financial market is a very good one to make your fastlane money in. I've worked with quite a few businessmen from the financial market at my agency, and I can tell you that these guys have a lot of money generally.
Possible. But there is a large entry Barrier these days.

To qualify as a hedge fund there is a lot of cost required for compliance, rental and business operation.

A very small inefficient hedge fund is like 30million AUM these days. Such fund is usually the owner trading mainly his own money. It is very different from the past. And I can bet that the financial guys you talked about are over age 50 if they made big money trading for others.

Unless you have a rich uncle to back you, thats a different game.
 

Kevin88660

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
118%
Feb 8, 2019
3,457
4,080
Singapore
In my opinion, the best book on trading is Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas. It is not specific to Forex, but is applicable to all trading. It focuses on developing the mindset of a successful trader. Once you master the trader's mindset, your odds of success increase dramatically.
Google medallion fund and renaissance capital. They are the top guys in the game now.
 

Black_Dragon43

Legendary Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
336%
Apr 28, 2017
2,071
6,968
‍☠️ Eastern Europe
Possible. But there is a large entry Barrier these days.

To qualify as a hedge fund there is a lot of cost required for compliance, rental and business operation.

A very small inefficient hedge fund is like 30million AUM these days. Such fund is usually the owner trading mainly his own money. It is very different from the past. And I can bet that the financial guys you talked about are over age 50 if they made big money trading for others.

Unless you have a rich uncle to back you, thats a different game.
I've had around 17 or so clients in the financial industry - I've worked for millionaires as young as in their mid 30s - they weren't exactly hedge fund managers, but they were in financial-related industries (traders, brokers, etc.). So it's possible to make it, as to how difficult it is, I have no idea. I don't know much about the regulations surrounding the industry you probably have a much better understanding.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Mongol

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
71%
Dec 29, 2019
7
5
I don't think this is a big problem considering that you have the internet available. YouTube is filled with trading courses, for both assets and CFDs (if you're interested in them, some information can be also found on my broker's site - Investous). When I just started trading, YouTube was my book. Although a lot of information that I've learned was garbage and didn't bring me any income, some of it served as base for my knowledge. Believe me, trading is not difficult, for the beginning you should find an asset that you know, maybe commodities like gold or petroleum, or maybe shares of a company. All you'll have to do is to gather more information about it to know where the price will go.
 
Last edited:

Kevin88660

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
118%
Feb 8, 2019
3,457
4,080
Singapore
I've had around 17 or so clients in the financial industry - I've worked for millionaires as young as in their mid 30s - they weren't exactly hedge fund managers, but they were in financial-related industries (traders, brokers, etc.). So it's possible to make it, as to how difficult it is, I have no idea. I don't know much about the regulations surrounding the industry you probably have a much better understanding.
Ah Traders.

If they are in good companies with gold business model they will draw good salaries. One that is making money now is the commodity physical trading business.

Brokers are having their jobs replaced by electronic broking systems.

Traders and brokers are having their lunch eaten by automation these days.

The only thing that still makes money now is selling financial products. A lot of jobs in finance are sales position coded with different names-relationship officer/manager, adviser/consultant.
 

Urabayen

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
25%
Dec 27, 2019
4
1
Traders and brokers are having their lunch eaten by automation these days.

You have no idea what you are talking about.

As a trader I use Stop limit orders with attach bracket orders to take profit, or stop loss in all of my trades at a fixed risk per share distance depending of the specifique strategy I'm using. Which is all automations that I do to myself.

And brokers makes their comision for every open,and close position in the market so it doesn't really matter if it's an OCO Order or a manual order.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Kevin88660

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
118%
Feb 8, 2019
3,457
4,080
Singapore
You have no idea what you are talking about.

As a trader I use Stop limit orders with attach bracket orders to take profit, or stop loss in all of my trades at a fixed risk per share distance depending of the specifique strategy I'm using. Which is all automations that I do to myself.

And brokers makes their comision for every open,and close position in the market so it doesn't really matter if it's an OCO Order or a manual order.
I am referring to Traders who are paid a salary by a financial company to trade.
-Execution Traders who place orders based on instructions from their por
-Market makers who provided your bid and offers

I am refering to brokers who make a living through trading commission of their clients. These are sales people whose income depends on the trading activity of their clients. This business is basically dying because such platforms have high overheads and hence they charge high trading commission per trade. They are being replaced by electronic platforms. It is unlike 20 years ago when every stock market player has a human broker who gives them stocks tips.
 
D

Deleted78083

Guest
This will require 10,000+ hours to learn to trade.
This will require your time and attention eve

Slightly exaggerated, i have been trading bitcoin for a while now and all it takes me is 10min per day (5 in the morning, 5 before going to sleep).

Forex is not so different, but I wouldn't do that if I were you. Currencies don't vary much with each other, which is why you need high leverage to make money, and high leverage means high risk.

If I were you, I'd start by trading blue chip stocks. No need to read 738736 books about it, or spend 10 000 hours (wtf) studying it. Create an account, log in, and buy a stock. Watch it go up and down, see how you feel, start googling some strategies, some terms, and over time, you ll notice patterns in the stock you bought. Learn about beta, about variance, how to value companies, what does stock buyback mean, and also, very important, about VIX. You might have noticed the stock market lost 30% some weeks ago, it might (most likely will) crash again soon, so whatever money you are investing now, you have to be ok losing it (especially if you buy South-African stocks right now, I'd buy more EU or US stocks tbh).

Finally: you can find a lot of advice online on what to buy, from pros and from noobs. Sometimes, the noob is right and the pro is wrong. That is because NOBODY KNOWS if the stock will go up or down, unless your name is Jerome Powell. NEVER fulfill a trade you do not understand as you will most likely lose your money.

Unlike stated, stock trading is fastlane, it is just a difficult one. 90% of people trading the stock market lose money...to the 10% that make money. If you manage to become that 10%, you will make make money than anybody else on this forum. And like everything else, that will require practice.

Good luck!
 

Post New Topic

Please SEARCH before posting.
Please select the BEST category.

Post new topic

Guest post submissions offered HERE.

Latest Posts

New Topics

Fastlane Insiders

View the forum AD FREE.
Private, unindexed content
Detailed process/execution threads
Ideas needing execution, more!

Join Fastlane Insiders.

Top