How to Make a Million

Well its now the 15th December 2015 and I'm still alive....just. Out of the ten cardinal sins that a trader can make I probably committed five of them at the start of this holiday period. The biggest of these sins was to trade at all. Trading in the currency markets is very thin from about a 3 weeks before Christmas through to around the 4th or 5th of January. Professional traders working for major financial institutions tend to take a couple or three weeks vacation away from currency trading. When all the trading centers are trading Asia-Europe-New York, it takes hundreds of millions of dollars to move the market. When the market is thin over a holiday period when one or more centers are closed, or on a Friday afternoon, it only takes a few million to move currency rates.

I traded and paid the price.....I lost 25% of my capital in one trading session. In fact I had only lost 5% but I committed a second traders sin and panicked. Instead of sitting back and taking a deep breath before thinking about my next move I dove straight into the market and lost another 20% in a few minutes. After losing the first 5% I should have stopped trading for that day and thought through why I lost the trade and not tried to win back the lost money in panic mode. I was lucky in that over the following few days I had some really good trades and gained 20% of my capital quite quickly. Now I am going to stop trading until after the new year. In fact I will start trading again on the 9th January 2016. My capital stands at $112.14 after 40 trading sessions. Despite the setbacks I am still on track for that elusive 1 million dollars by Christmas 2017. Just as a reminder to myself and to anyone who is following me or anyone who wants to start currency trading, below are the ten golden rules which successful traders follow.

• keep to your budget
• don't deviate from our strategy
• don't get emotionally involved..don't panic...don't get eaten up by greed
• don't let success go to your head
• use technical analysis to help your decisions not predict the market
• use both leading and lagging indicators
• don't buck the trends.....intra day movements are not trends.
• don't trade news stories immediately.....wait!
• don't over leverage...100 to 1 is the most you should do
• always set your stop lose and trailing stops prudently

If you keep things simple you will almost certainly enjoy some trading success.

Making a million dollars through currency trading is not so far fetched as it sounds. In fact it is a mathematically sound currency trading strategy which only needs one or two hours a day of your time using your trading platform. I actually use the eToro trading platform.

If you start with a risk capital of just $25, and a trading strategy that has three key elements.

1. Only trade one currency pair

2. Only risk 5% of your capital on a single trade.

3. Each day target a profit of 3.5% on your total capital.

If you keep focused and disciplined on these three elements you can reach a profit of 1 million dollars in 309 days. However, shit happens so I have extended the goal in case something hits the proverbial. So my target date is December 2017.

Just 40 days ago I started on just this project. I started with a risk capital of $25 and so far have kept to the key three elements in my trading strategy. Here is where I stand 40 days later.

The above spread sheet shows my progress in terms of numbers to date, only trading the EUR/USD currency pair. This is a partial snap shot of a spread sheet I update at the end of each day that I trade. As you can see although my target is 3.5% of my capital per session/day I am ahead of the target by $13.00. That's with 10 days when I either didn't meet my target or lost 5% of my capital. Of course there were other days when I made more than 3.5% and 4 days when I made or lost 20% and 25%.. The key though is that if I am disciplined enough to keep going like this I will meet my target of 1 million dollars by Christmas of 2017. What a lovely present to give myself.

I will update the spread sheet every 100 trading days so you see how I am doing.

Just a thought....get yourself a trading platform demo account for Christmas and start trading with virtual money. If you catch the bug...get in touch and I'll take you through the next steps.

Happy trading and happy holidays 2015!