Sincere apologies in advance for such a long post.

I'm getting close to retirement and I've been looking at Forex trading as a hobby. I wanted to see if there were any professional or hobbyist Aggie Forex traders who are making money trading currencies.

I've been paper trading for several months with the Tradingview platform and I've developed a few trading strategies. I haven't settled on any one strategy just yet. Though I regularly lost my butt in the beginning, due to the learning curve, I'm managing to win more than I lose...but....it is paper trading.

Tradingview demo starts you out with 100K monopoly money to learn - if any are interested. Admittedly, I lost over half of it in the first month of learning. I almost gave up. Even though it's just paper trading, the emotions that come as a beginner in trading are quite real. The thought of losing that kind of real money made me a little sick to my stomach. I stayed with it, got the emotions under control, kept learning, kept chipping away with smaller trades and I'm about 8K short of the 100K I started with. It took me a little over 6 months to earn it back, but I've gotten pretty confident in my trade skills.

So, before I dive off into the deep end of this endeavor with a couple hundred bucks, I'm looking for a bit of advice.

Questions:

• Besides the obvious, are there differences between paper trading in demo and trading with a live account? This question is more directed at spreads and booking times.
• What trading platform are you using and why?
• How often have you had technical issues with the trading platform you are using?
• Based on reasonable trade fees, customer service, etc. would you care to recommend a broker?

I appreciate any constructive feedback.

I used to work for a major US broker right out of school (over a decade ago). First as an in-house trader, then in fraud detection and AML before business school.

You have to use stops and limits religiously to avoid losing money - news can come out overnight and make large moves. Of our clients, only 8% made money over the life of their account. Over 30% lost every penny they put in. Seriously consider if this is what you want to do with retirement money. You're trading on third and fourth decimal places and on margin, any major move can drain your account without safeguards in place. I wouldn't recommend it.

You main concerns with a real account are slippage and timely order fulfillment during a large move - make sure you understand the platform performance of who you use. Paper trading will execute perfectly.

Depending on interest rate spreads, you'll be charged daily or weekly interest adjustments on open positions as well. I'd also make sure I wasn't trading against a dealing desk (make sure my broker wasn't taking the other side of the trade). Only trade with a broker that serves as a middle man and offloads your trade to a bank. No conflict of interest there.

Most successful traders trade a few key pairs on news announcements (Bregxit, non-farm payroll, Trump trade news, etc). Most of our technical traders lost money long-term, especially when dealing with exotic pairs.

I won't comment publicly on who I worked for, but feel free to shoot me a PM - they've shifted their main focus to China anyway. So glad I don't work there anymore.

This is not a good idea.

Forex Market in a nutshell:

Fairly OTC
Massive players in it and tons of day traders
Round the clock market

Buck is being nice because it sounds like he used to work in the space... but that market is full of market and broker manipulation.

You are the small money... they are the big money... if you opt to trade, you aren't going to win.

I won't pull punches. TONS of market manipulation, although that's been reigned in a bit after all the scandals. The real threat now is algorithmic trading is so prevalent, most of the volume data means nothing.

I hated it. I didn't know some of the behind the scenes issues, but let's put it like this, my former firm can no longer do business in the United States. Banned in perpetuity for manipulating traders to sign on through white label intermediaries who they shared commissions with after traders lost money.

Might be a better idea to trade S&P Emini's. It's a much better regulated market, and you won't be up 2AM sweating that your 30bp stop gets hit.

I would recommend reading the Business and Investing Board's Stock Market thread. Lots of day traders who trade options.

There's really good folks on there who are happy to answer question, point you in the right direction as you learn, and share good tidbits.

If you're going to day trade, at least trade something that intrinsically you want to see appreciate in value, as well as represent something more easily quantifiable.

People like FOREX because you can 'trade the news' but you can do that better with something like ZS stock options.

Buck Compton said:

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I used to work for a major US broker right out of school (over a decade ago). First as an in-house trader, then in fraud detection and AML before business school.

You have to use stops and limits religiously to avoid losing money - news can come out overnight and make large moves. Of our clients, only 8% made money over the life of their account. Over 30% lost every penny they put in. Seriously consider if this is what you want to do with retirement money. You're trading on third and fourth decimal places and on margin, any major move can drain your account without safeguards in place. I wouldn't recommend it.

You main concerns with a real account are slippage and timely order fulfillment during a large move - make sure you understand the platform performance of who you use. Paper trading will execute perfectly.

Depending on interest rate spreads, you'll be charged daily or weekly interest adjustments on open positions as well. I'd also make sure I wasn't trading against a dealing desk (make sure my broker wasn't taking the other side of the trade). Only trade with a broker that serves as a middle man and offloads your trade to a bank. No conflict of interest there.

Most successful traders trade a few key pairs on news announcements (Bregxit, non-farm payroll, Trump trade news, etc). Most of our technical traders lost money long-term, especially when dealing with exotic pairs.

I won't comment publicly on who I worked for, but feel free to shoot me a PM - they've shifted their main focus to China anyway. So glad I don't work there anymore.

---

This is the reality everyone should know. All the get rich adds are their own money making schemes. 90% of the traders lose.

OP, I have started to look into this "hobby" also and have run across the YouTube channel of No Nonsense Forex and his accompanying blog and podcast. Seems to be a very reasoned approach. For example, VP recommends not putting real money into this market until you have demo traded for at least 6 months with a 6% return. If you can't beat that, better off putting the money in the stock market.

Also says his information is a 201 level course and recommends first taking the 101 level offered free at https://www.babypips.com/learn/forex. I'm working through this in preparation for getting started demo trading.

If you haven't yet, you might check out his YT video "Trading Forex For Beginners - The No Nonsense Forex Way". Seems to be a very good place to start for anyone who wants to develop a plan for success that factors in the motivation and weight the big banks have in this market.

Thanks for the replies, gentlemen.

Very helpful.

I have followed the stock market thread for a while. It appears that you would be much better off using that. Pay attention to Oldarmy and irishag