When I first heard about Forex trading around 2004, (this was before crypto trading existed) I was immediately intrigued and fascinated.  Every day, for what seems like endless hours, I caught myself daydreaming and thinking about the idea itself and wondering, “What does it really mean?” or “Does this shit really work?”  Let’s say in theory, a person gains some kind of Skill or knowledge on how to outsmart the market and through this extraordinary skill, that person is then able to enter trades in what we are told is a global 6 trillion dollar liquid per day market (at that time it was 3 trillion) and be able to get profit from the trades.  Hopefully, the winning trades happen at least a higher percentage of time than the trades that don’t work out, right? And that’s reasonable to expect and doable by an average person, right?  (Ok.  Imagine going back in time to the point before you knew that almost know one ever achieves this and instead, enjoy the naivety and optimism you have for your newly discovered entrepreneurial project.)

Even a beginner can feel what it’s like to have a winning trade and that’s what gets us hooked on the addiction or in more positive terminology we could call it “motivation” or “passion” in Tony Robbins lingo. Yes, some would say it’s a delusional folly based on irrational exuberance. And if there is some special way to put the odds in your favor to have more winning than losing trades it seems like that would do the trick.  It seems like only a slight tweak or adjustment to most people’s trading strategies would activate the tipping point that puts them into the category of winning with consistent increase in capital.  I found plenty of reasons to be positive and optimistic about this project.  Later, I learned that some professionals had fewer winning trades than losing ones but the losing trades were really small and the winning trades were really big comparatively so it ends up creating a consistent increase in capital.  

Ok right.  I get it. But for me, I would prefer to actually know how to enter trades that win a high percentage of time in order to even feel like any increase would be legitimate.   I learned much later that even this belief is caused by unconscious core beliefs that limit success in trading but that’s a story for a later time. Still this desire for perfectionism, minimizing mistakes is part of what drove me to discover what works in trading. It has to be based on what I see is true about the market.  If I can see something is true and not base any trading strategy on something someone told me to do, then I know the probability is based on knowledge and skill and can be considered scientific to an extent. 

And then, the question arose, how much can a person make from trading?  This is a question that really enthralled me to the point of keeping me lying awake at night with wheels turning in my mind about how I would open my laptop for a few minutes at the beach, setting down my virgin margarita (limeade), and make a trade or two and seeing another $50,000 profit in my trading business, which of course, would be a simple easy and massively profitable enterprise. 

If the term “rude awakening” is appropriate for how to describe what actually happened later, that process was not a rude awakening of one day, it was drawn out over months and years of disappointment and struggle. But let’s not go there just yet because if this story leads to any discovery of a way to trade and actually get profit consistently, at least it has a happy ending and my sharing of ways to bypass the ridiculously excruciating trial and error that has happened along the way will be a way to really help a few people to not have to waste nearly as much time and money. 

The amount of wasted money on trading products like courses, software, and seminars has made me a bit of an activist on traders’ consumer rights leading to expose some outright scams and deceptions that are so prevalent in the trading world especially in Forex and crypto. After a while, a person can spot the charlatons who have popped up in the Forex niche, people who have never traded successfully but are professional marketers who needed a “product” and were stumped about what to offer the “course junkies” and software addicts in this buying frenzied crowd of newbies as well as seasoned enthusiasts searching for some legitimate way to earn money from what is believed to be an honest skill like being a bricklayer, an architect, or chef. 

I have met many people who take up Forex trading in the hope of creating a part time side hustle income of something like an extra $1000 per month.  And let’s face it, most of us come from working class backgrounds and have a mindset of searching for some income that is enough to pay our living expenses. 

There is a HUGE problem with that idea.  If you believe you can earn consistent profit in trading and you intend to use that skill to make a thousand dollars and then AFTER you spend a few years gaining that skill, you use it by taking out your capital to make sure it never increases so that you limit yourself to ONLY getting $1000 per month, that would not make any sense.  If you ever do get this extraordinary skill you have gained the power to create an income of any amount and make as much wealth as you desire. Trading is not a side hustle.  If you master it you will become wealthy.  If you somehow force yourself to not allow your account to increase in any normal sensible way, it is possible to stop yourself from getting wealthy if you really want that. But that would be like owning a 5 star hotel but only allowing yourself to keep for yourself a receptionist’s salary. 

Not only would it never make sense for any trader who knows how to trade to use that skill to make one or two thousand dollars for paying bills, since we all unconsciously know that to be true it is the source of much of the inner conflicts that prevent traders from being able to trade.  If you don’t know by now, no matter what trading strategy you use and no matter how advanced your understanding of technical analysis is, the results that all traders get are mostly due to unconscious core beliefs.  If you’re not aware that’s true, try typing some keywords into Google and reading a book or two on personal development or psychology. Soon you will run into plenty of proof regarding that fact. 

Trading is not a hobby and not a part time side project.  If you master it, you are wealthy. Period. The unconscious limiting core beliefs that cause people to believe they can earn a couple of thousand dollars from trading and use it to pay their bills, keeps them from ever realizing any mastery in trading.  “Oh, but I don’t want to be one of those greedy rich people!”  This belief stops traders dead in their tracks from ever getting mastery of trading and because the conflict is unconscious, most will never know what the real problem is. 

The Purpose or Intention of This Journey

That’s what this story is about.  How to get to the bottom of whether there is a way to trade with a high enough probability and not fuck it up with psychological sabotage like suddenly feeling an anxiety attack that shuts off function of the frontal lobes of the brain while trying to remain calm and wise about trading decisions. And for the first step on this journey I have found that getting clear about your purpose for even going on this journey will help to form a clear map that you will create and/or discover for leading you to the goal of using your own knowledge and skill to earn consistent profit that will become any amount you can imagine.  If you succeed in mastering this skill, It’s just a matter of knowing how much time it will take for your account to increase to be the amount you want it to be. 

A valuable exercise to get you going is to get a notebook to use as a trading journal and another one to use as a personal development journal and write down your intention for what you hope to attain through learning to trade with excellence.  How will your life change when you have this skill you seek?  Will you use this skill to help others and participate in some form of philanthropy?  Do you have a mission that requires you to have this skill and this wealth that is for the benefit of others?  It’s ok if you just want to trade to get a dope car and impress girls, have sex and become a cocain addict for your mission. But chances are, if you begin to make contact with any part of yourself that has an intention to fulfill your real purpose, it might involve helping others in some way and maybe even doing something good for the world.  What’s important is that before you do this you get clear about why you are doing it. People who give up in failure probably don’t know what their reason is for doing this in the first place. 

So to get started, take this step and be serious about it.  Write down why you want to learn to get profit consistently in trading and what you plan to do when that becomes a tangibly manifested reality of your life. No need to share anything on what you intend but being clear with yourself can help you to follow through with that intention. 

Now let the journey begin…

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