Hi all,

I'm quite overdue to do this. I've been trying to write about my brief Trading Journey thus far, for some time now but haven't been able to put pencil to paper due to a lack of confidence and ego humiliation.
But it's time to come out of the closet and share my ideas, views and experiences on this wonderful pass time.
That I want to be entirely open and transparent, and as silly as what I need to say might sound I need to say it.
By beginning this thread I hope to meet a few like minded traders since I really don't have any friends that are interested in Trading and this produces a bit of emptiness inside.
I feel a need to share my perspectives and opinions and ideally with experience get better at work.
I totally love trading btw in my short time that I feel as though I have found the Job that I want to pursue for life.
I've been an avid reader of theforexintuitiveforums for a long time, but my few posts I have made come out wrong and dumb sounding so I presumed that it would be better to say all of it in my own thread.
I will post all of my transactions, though occasionally it may be after the fact. The reason being I'm a complete time carer of a 1yr old baby boy so Trading is that tiny bit harder for me.
Win or lose I will post for debate.

Therefore my name is Con, I'm 44yo, married with 3 children. I live in Melbourne, Australia.
I stopped working full time in Sep 09 to assist my wife look after our new born infant, she has since gone back to work so I'm now MR Mum.
We own our house, have no debt, so that I have the luxury of studying to trade at my rate with no financial strain that I feel is of extreme importance.
My hobbies are AFL football, Horse racing, tinkering with Computers, Motorcycling, Cars and ingesting.

So just how did it all start?
Well August 09 whilst slaving away as a humble Clerk to get a unappreciative Transport business on Night Shift I'd notice a jingle on the radio. ” Learn to Trade, it's cash earning money”
It's not often that I really care about jingles but I've always been interested in Trading but not known it.

A few years prior while working for a Large Brewing company the word” Day Trader” became very much a buzzword.
The Herald Sun started a weekly column, everyone was speaking shares, our company was also giving away business shares on interest free loans.
My work friend and I had been curious as his friend was apparently a successful trader.
I remember coming home one night, putting up an internet trading account with my bank and financing it with $2K.
When it was setup, I bought stocks in 3 companies. A telco, a mining stock, and also a new online trading firm. Well to cut it short my $2K became $300 a couple of months later.LOL
Actually I recall the Telco ( Onetel?) Going bust, the mining stock went from 3c into .05c which was that. WELCOME TO TRADING !!

OK that was my intro, no prep, no guidelines nothing just jumped straight in, not charts....
Quick forwarding back to Aug 09, I filled in a web form and has been sent a dvd. I was completely stoked, adored it, the notion, the charts, the terminology, I felt just like a reborn Wall Street broker. LOL
I was going to throw 3K to a 2day weekend course but I did not. A tiny voice in my mind was telling me it's a waste of money. I mean I spent 3K doing a Comptia A tech course which taught me nothing whatsoever that I didn't all ready know.
It was really just a rehearsal of knowledge needed to pass ex.
Therefore I thought that I should research this further before committing.
Then I found Baby Pips, a wonderful intro into the world of Forex out of A-Z.
The banner links directed me to FXCM, my 1st broker along with a demo account has been born.

So I began demo trading understanding absolutely nothing whatsoever besides the Baby pips school. Well how easy is this??
The game plan was simple...A pair of Bollinger Bands were the tool of choice.
Look at the charts for 15 mins before leaving for work, place 2 transactions. Come home in the afternoon cash them and put another 2 transactions, go to sleep, wake up cash them in and open another two etc.
All transactions were 100K lots and from the end of week , I left $1200. Week 2 I created $3000.
That was so damn easy why did It take me all of my life to find this...HELLALUYA BROTHER!!!
I strung 15 or so wins in a row !!!!!! Money for Jam !!!! .... LOL

that I demoed for approximately 1 month I think, so it was time to go LIVE. FXCM was the only broker I knew of besides GFT. Since GFT was referred to as a bucket shop and FXCM was a real” Non dealing desk” broker they got the nod.
I opened up a $500 mini account on 200-1 leverage. I adored the noise of leverage. To restrain $10K with a mere $50 sounded like a dream come true.
At this point of time I felt quite nervous about placing on my 1st trade. Don't understand the reason why I use to have a couple bets on sports and Horseracing all of the time with fairly good results, a couple wins a couple of losses but usually around even or slightly infront so I'd think.
Ist transaction lasted two mins and I won $10.
WOW a win, I was glad to get that out of the way. No prizes for guessing what was to follow....... .
I blew the account, 1st Margin Call I read about on Baby Pips, in a little over a week.
That frightened the life from me. Not that $500 meant much for me, I mean I've blown thousands over the years on cars, motorcycles etc.. But just the way it fell apart following a successful stint at demo had me imagining WHY??
And so fast...I did the maths and thought I can't afford to blow $25K in 12 months.

PlanB was in order...learn more and demo more!!!
I did a course offered by FXCM which was free for account holders. This was a slight step up from Baby pips. I read a novel,” Currency trading for Dummies” good name, and a few more demoing. At this point of time I was experimenting with time frames. MA's, all of the bells and whistles. Again I was having good success with Demo, $2K per week no matter.
OK prepared for another shot. This time I thought $1K account was better, room to breathe so to speak.LOL

At this stage I began to observe news events and enormous moves in short duration. I understand you guys know where this is going, haha...
BUY the spikes was a no brainer. LOL
OK a few more unsuccessful transactions. Then the big one in which I still haven't recovered from. I understand you need to proceed, but 1 big loss comparative to account dimensions could leave deep wounds. This one still haunts me although I know why I just can't let it move!!!
After observing AUD moves with RBA meetings, and making some good cash on the demo on this egy I was going live.
I had convinced myself who Interest rates weren't going up that day. EURO dramas were beginning and a bit of fear was creeping into the markets.
My egy was 5 mini lots buy or sell based on the decision.
Eyes firmly focussed on theforexintuitivecalendar, hands were shaking, worried as... The outcome came out and it was a black figure, AHA that I was right,'SELL”!!
I wanted 100 pips, I thought it was a given. It actually went my method for more than 20 pips and then began reversing. Nah it can't undo, IR didn't go up so that I held, saw my gains go from and $110 to minus. I told the wife what ever I say do not let me cancel the trade...My stop was previously yesterdays high, it can't break that hopeless!!
Obviously I dropped $500 in one swoop in a little more than 1 hour.
I could not know till the evening news came on TV saying IR went upward, WTF???
AHHHH my mistake, I looked about theforexintuitivecalendar and required the expected increase because it didn't happen. On the lookout for a red or green figure it was black and I assumed they didn't go up. Neglected to observe the expected column.
Together with my new account dwindled down to about $100 I took another dumb commerce about the USD/JPY, my most despised and expensive pair and watched another margin call.

OK 2 accounts trashed, demo good, what is going on??
I can't answer this, it still plagues me.
Strategy, Emotions, so many Issues. They say the Markets will work out what sort of person who you are and that's dead right.
At the time that I felt as a torn apart plogical mess, these times I still do.

The problem here was that I couldn't and still can't replie demo results in real accounts. So what is the solution to this??

It's obvious isn't it?? SACK YOUR BROKER !!!! LOL

Not that FXCM were to blame specifically for my flaws but I felt that my account together was cursed. Infact which was my motive on their account closure form.
A few things I didn't like: The platform, although pleasant and easy to use, the EMA's would proceed into another position if you went back a couple of days to look at history and return the EMA was in another spot. WTF ??
If you refreshed it was good, but go back a couple of days and again it moved, how can I know which is right??? It was obviously repainting determined by periods on your display but it was sufficient to peeve me off!!
Amongst other things were I'm sure every traders pet hate, taken out by 1 pip only to see price reverse, do not you just hate that!!!
I felt as though they had been gunning for my mini lot. LOL
It took me a while to figure out that I was placing my ceases where my limit order should have been. Rather than buying or selling from that point and waiting for a retest of price, I'd use quit sell or buy orders over the price action and placing my stop loss where the retest price action would happen.
This drove me nuts.... .thankfully I really don't do that anymore, Well maybe occasionally but not as regular. I was a sitting duck for the market to take out me no matter if I picked the wrong or right direction. And of course that the risk reward ratio could be horrible with this egy.
Please note I am not specifically having a go at the broker just expressing my feelings and thoughts of my trip thus far.
I've got a lot more to add but I'll leave it here for now and proceed when I have some more time.
I really hope I have not bored too many people.... .