My adventures in Forex trading August 24th 2008 update

It wasn’t very long ago that I discovered the world of forex trading. My introduction to forex came about as a result of a web development project. I was hired to build some websites for a client, and the first website built was a forex website. My job was to build the site and fill it with useful forex content. Since I knew nothing about forex I had to do extensive research in order to create believable content for the forex website and that was how I developed an interest in forex trading.

The world of Forex trading seemed very exciting to me when I first began my research. The idea that I could wake up in the morning, boot up my computer, load up my trading station and have opportunities to make money every minute was more than a little bit tempting. With my financial situation in a perilous state I was looking for ways to make money that would not hinge on being able to get other people to pay me money for a product I would sell to them, or a service I would perform on their behalf. Forex trading seemed like the perfect solution.

After testing out a few forex trading platforms I settled on the FXCM trading station. I traded with a demo account for a little while and came to the conclusion that it would be possible to make up to $1500 per day trading forex based on my experiences with the demo account. Fast forward to the present time and I have almost wiped out the value of my account trading forex with FXCM. The experience of trading in real mode is not the same as the experience of trading in demo mode.

Based on my experiences trading demo, trading live, and trading live and demo simultaneously, you somehow end up with more profits than losses when trading in demo mode with FXCM, but in live mode, it’s difficult to finish a day with $1 in profit much less $1500.

I do believe that much of the difference in the experiences trading live vs the experiences trading demo come from the trader’s awareness that in one case there’s really nothing to lose since the money is only play money and in the other case there is everything to lose. In my first four days trading I lost $1000. It would be easy to suspect FXCM scams to be the culprit but I think it was more a case of panicking and making insane mistakes under the influence of my panic. It was also a matter of not really knowing enough about forex trading and not having any strategy or plan.

Once I realized that I was not really ready to be trading I withdrew all but $500 from my account and decided to focus on trading with that amount. I lost $365 of the $500 over the next several weeks. I then deposited $160 to bring my account to $295 and I now have $119 left in my account.

Can I possibly turn $119 around? I strongly doubt. My adventures in forex trading will either come to an end in a few days or I will deposit another $300, if I can manage to find it, and keep on trying. I would rather keep on trying because I am convinced that it is possible to make a great deal of money trading currency and I believe that I am capable of making money trading forex. That it took me 4 days to lose $1000, but has since taken weeks to lose the $760 I will have lost once my account runs out completely says to me that I have settled down considerably since my first 4 days. In the last several weeks many people have lost money in the market because of significant volatility and unprecedented events.

Considering that most of the the successful forex traders went through the same experience when they first started, I’m not convinced that I should regard my experience as as a failed experiment. I want to continue trading for a while. The problem is, I’ve used the rest of the money already. We’ll see what happens…..