Hiya, folks...! It's another wall of text from some random person who could be doing just about anything else except for this... Who's ready for some paragraphs from some stranger?
I know you'd rather be doing anything else, or maybe not haha.. But it does mean a lot if you do take the time to try to attempt to accurately type me... I will DEFINITELY NOT overthink it this time, and take your consideration FULLY to heart, and stop overthinking my MBTI type and live happily ever after! (Hahahahhaha...! ... ...)
...
Ok, let's begin!
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• How old are you? What's your gender? Give us a general description of yourself.

I am a freshly 23 year old male that likes to do average Redditor bullcrap. Video games, memes, music, making my finger go up and down endlessly while staring at a glass LED screen with pixels on it while feeling like I've accomplished nothing. Just average stuff, I suppose. I'm not really that interesting tbh...
I work at home and I am just "vibing", as the kids say. I have some long term projects planned, but I'm at least trying to rest up from a really shitty 7 years that I've had back to back to back so... Nothing really insightful to write here haha..

• Is there a medical diagnosis that impact your mental/comportamental stability somehow?

Likely several... I had a very traumatic childhood that I constantly gaslight myself about like saying things like "it wasn't that bad, people have it worse" and much worse..
I disassociate from reality every 2.5 seconds, can't focus, have terrible insomnia, EXTREMELY low energy, mood swings, brain fog, random body pains 24/7, seventeen billion repressed emotions which don't help out anything else that I'm dealing with, memory problems, and I need caffeine to do the bare minimum of just about anything on most days, but some of that could be average American problems.
I've suspected I have some form as Aspergers, and probably A TON of mental illnesses, such as OCD, anxiety, depression, and maybe a personality disorder.

• Describe your upbringing. Did it have any kind of religious or structured influence? How did you respond to it?

My upbringing is a very mixed bag overall. I would not say I had a typically "tragic" childhood (there goes me gaslighting myself LOL) because people have DEFINITELY had it worse than me. But I can't sit here and pretend everything I went through was "normal". To attempt to sum it up, I basically was a "gifted" kid who got good grades throughout school and maintained my image of being this perfect kid, but meanwhile in the shadows, I was just slowly dying inside and suffering from a lot of imposter syndrome (amongst other things), which I'd definitely would say is warranted because I was NOT cut out for anything in school and it showed. I basically faked my way through school, got burnt out EARLY but got mega burnt out by senior year, and basically started college with no plan but somehow still managed to graduate (barely) and just kinda end up where I am now.
As far as a religious upbringing is concerned, I definitely was heavily influenced by religion, in kind of a negative way (?) Religion and I have a VERY weird relationship. On the one hand, I guess I love my religious friends, the lessons I learned from it, and a lot of what it says, but on the other hand I can not ever be a part of one mostly because of some of the dogmatic thinking and extremely toxic aspects to it that people use to justify hate and violence, and that's not really my type of thing. Also, I used to be really kinda "uppity" or arrogant about my religion, and now I DESPISE seeing the same type of "holier than thou" attitude projected. It kinda irks me on the inside.
Looking back, my response to it all was a major polarity shift from one extreme, to the other, and now where I'm at, I can look back at both sides and take the good from both. What do I mean by that? Welllllll... I mentioned earlier how I can't stand the "holier than thou" type, and for a while, that was DEFINITELY me. I was REALLY into it and took it extremely serious. I wouldn't mind being called "lame" or "whack" for having my faith, but looking back, it really made my quality of life kinda worse because I did have those strong beliefs and those off-putting characteristics that ostracized me from my peers and some potentially great experiences. I grew out of this and then became an EXTREME atheist, and for a while, it felt freeing. I felt better, smarter, edgier, and just superior, but looking back, I was just cynical and a total asshole, and arguably worse than the "holier than thou douche persona" that I had growing up. Luckily, my extreme atheism phase kinda fizzled out after some other trauma that happened around the time I became an atheist, and now, I can respect religion and be open to it, the ideas, and the amazing things that come from it while also maintaining my independent thinking but not to the point of being "hur dur be skeptical and point out everything wrong with religion all the time and be an asshole for no reason to religious people", if that makes any sense.
As far as my relationship to the structure in my life.. It's kind of a mixed bag. I had a pretty suffocated childhood, and I wasn't allowed certain things, but I guess it wasn't really all that bad in the end, or at least as it could've been. Most of this was just protection from a single parent who just didn't want anything to me and wanted me to be the best I could be in life, and I can respect this and look back on some parts of my structured childhood with fondness. But I most certainly got sick of it all by the time I was almost finished with highschool and in a lot of my college career. I basically used to be Mr. Structured. I had everything organized, I was neat, clean, got everything done at the right time, all the good stuff. But my brain just got tired of maintaining that forever, because I was already pretty much bad at life, but I was forced to just continue faking everything until something happened. So, by the end of high school, I lost all of those characteristics and became extremely sloppy. But I really do blame that on being physically tired. Being as organized as I was was TAXING because of how I overdid it. And now, thinking back, a lot of my structuredness was just on the surface level, and it was me trying to live up to everyone's standards and be just on top of everything, all the time, at a VERY unhealthy level, and that's probably what burnt me out too. I was addicted to the image of being this extremely put together person who has their shit together, while not having absolutely any shit to get together because I was withering away inside faster than fresh cotton candy from the fair melts in your mouth when your mouth is dry.
So, basically to sum it all up, I was a really clean cut religious smart "gifted" kid who wasn't really that, at all (AND I still don't know who I am now tbh haha) and I got tired of putting on that image all the time and turned to a dirty neckbeard atheist cynic for a short time, and then balanced out to whatever the fuck I am now because I wear 238234 different masks for each and every occasion, but THAT'S a different story haha.. I look back at both equally cringey and horrible chapters of my life with some scorn for myself and the times, but overall a much more understand a balanced perspective, because I had to go through it all to be me, and I'm just glad I can be here now. I'd say I definitely liked moments from those chapters, but overall, I'm much happier where I'm at now, which is not nearly as anally obsessive at the concept of being structured and not nearly as hyper-faithful to my religion or just a total asshole piece of shit atheist.

• What do you do as a job or as a career (if you have one)? Do you like it? Why or why not?

Right now, I'm sorta half employed. I do trade a bit on the Forex markets from signals groups and make enough to help out my family, and buy myself things here and there. I'm only really doing this because I went through a really shitty 7 years and I just need time to myself to kind of figure out, A LOT (clearly, as you can see by reading this HORRIBLE reddit post LOL) and rest. I just like the amount of freedom I have, and the money. I really like the idea of me having money saved and ready for any emergency, or family member or friend. I just need money to help out, stay safe, and to have time for myself to rest and take care of my health, or just pursue all the hobbies I missed out on, and I'm totally fine doing this the rest of my life. I don't really need or want that much in life, and I've always kind of been like this. I just want things to be peaceful and simple, so that my mind can be at ease and to just have free time for myself and a solution for any random chaotic emergency that happens because my mind always thinks of the worst that can happen by catastrophizing literally everything ever in the world. So my "career" is just a means to an end, like I'm sure a lot of people's careers are, unless you happen to have a passion or something, which is also amazing.
I do like writing, and I do wanna finish my book. I daydream a lot about it, and sometimes that's much more fun than actually writing it, but I do wanna finish it, but I also want it to be absolutely perfect and plothole free, and much more. I also wanna do YouTube and Twitch, but I feel like I have a lot to do as a person before I can freely be on those sites as a full person/"influencer" (I have so many mixed feelings about having a full time career as an influencer and having my life under that much pressure and scrutiny, BUTTTTT that's a different discussion...), so I might pursue those slowly or just freestyle it for fun. Those were my big dreams as a kid, but growing up, I see that writing a good book is damned hard (worth it, but hard) and being a Youtubesocial media star is a different world entirely, and I don't know how I feel about it. Like, I know I'd never be a Shane Dawson (YIKES) or Cryaotic (EWWWWW) but to even just disappoint one person, or have any sort of fuckup, or.. I don't know where I'm going with this... Basically, everything I suffer from now would only be amplified by having a YouTube career, my people pleasing tendencies, my over obsession with being perfect for others/myself, my workaholic tendencies, my being hard on myself, my fear of fucking anything up, and my imposter syndrome, those would all go BRRRRRR if I got any decent success on YouTube, so... *Phew*
That's my weird relationship with my life, and where I wanna go with it. To be honest, I'd be happy where I'm at right now, because at the end of the day, as long as I'm healthy and my family is happy, I'm ok, but a part of me also wants to live out those big dreams like having my book be a thing and animated, and being a good YouTuber, meme maker, Twitch streamer, all the above at the same time but my insecurities are like "BWAHAHAHAHA", so I'm just like: -_- But I'll figure it out! Hopefully..

• If you had to spend an entire weekend by yourself, how would you feel? Would you feel lonely or refreshed?

Hm... Interesting question. Honestly, I'd never feel lonely on weekends by myself. Even when my friends are doing better things or aren't around, I don't really feel lonely I guess. Most of the time I have weekends alone, I feel pretty refreshed I suppose. It's kinda hard to tell haha.. This feels more like a circumstantial question where a myriad of things that are going on during the hypothetical week or just in my life/mind would determine this answer. Sometimes I just need that weekend to recharge and be alone and in my thoughts, or watching Netflix or being an absolute video game degenerate while dancing alone in my room and eating junk food. And sometimes, I like to be out and about with my friends, or just doing stuff. I probably lean more towards refreshed though, overall in a general sense.

• What is your relation with movement and your surroundings? For instance do you prefer a sport or outdoors event? If an outdoors event what is it? And why? If not what type of activities do you tend to engage in?

BIG YIKES. I feel like a non human that doesn't belong on this planet or universe 99% of the time. I'm VERY slow, awkward movements, jittery, sometimes it looks like I was born yesterday with my grasp on physical reality, but yet, I do interestingly enough find myself loving to sweat and workout. I don't really have the coordination for any type of real sport, but I do like walks and I would run if I lived in an area where I could have a private or peaceful run where I would not be interrupted or seen by anyone because I look HIDEOUS running. I won't say I could never get into running at a professional or serious level, like with a group, but I'd just say it's more unlikely, for now. It sounds really exciting and interesting to be good at something physical, and I have always admired people who could do really sick stuff in sports, and I've always wanted to do it. But, right now, my uncoordinated ass will stick to just riding my exercise bike occasionally to burn off some restlessness and help me sleep betteperform better because working out makes my brain feel oddly stable lol. (I guess that's why I have such a fascination with physical stuff even though I am absolutely hopeless in most of it in the grand scheme of things)

• How curious are you? Do you have more ideas then you can execute? What are your curiosities about? What are your ideas about - is it environmental or conceptual, and can you please elaborate?

I don't know if I'd say I'm curious, I guess I just think a lot. Like, I'll see something or watch something and daydream about it all the time, making new ideas out of it in my head or creating something new with it, trying to take it a new level or understand it at a different level, if that makes sense. Like, I'll sort of mentally digest something and that's what gives me inspiration, or ideas. I take in everything as I go and make up new shit with it later on (LOL this sounds like regular human being talk, because everyone does this).
I would say I have a lot of ideas on everything. I daydream about random chapters in my book a lot, like full on scenes. I'll daydream about a new melody for a song I've never heard with lyrics, and I'll try to make lyrics in my head and extend the melody. I'll daydream about my interactions in life, and just how I could have responded differently, or maybe what the other person is thinking, or feeling, or stuff like I wonder if they're okay. I'll daydream about new memes I can make, or me in an interview (OMG MEGA CRINGE ROFL). I pretty much daydream about... Everything. And then I'll daydream about what I'm daydreaming about, and why I'm doing it, and it gets too meta at that point. (this could very well just be maladaptive daydreaming and NOT indicative of any cognitive function ROFL)

• Would you enjoy taking on a leadership position? Do you think you would be good at it? What would your leadership style be?

Nope, nuh uh. I am too much of a people pleaser and pushover. I'd be dead or betrayed before my first week is over. The thing about me is that generally, I feel like I'd be a terrible leader because I can overthink a lot, all the time, and I'd be slow to action and prone to analysis paralysis and extreme people pleasing tendencies. I can also be conflict avoidant, and just want people to be happy, so I'd let a lot of stuff slide that I maybe should not. Now, don't get me wrong, I can be firm and tough when needed, but eventually that'd be too much for me to bear, and I couldn't be in a position like that for long. I genuinely hope I never become a leader, because even when I'm looking back to five minutes ago, I can say that "ew, that's cringe bro", so I clearly have a lot of work to do before I have something that serious on my plate.

• Are you coordinated? Why do you feel as if you are or are not? Do you enjoy working with your hands in some form? Describe your activity?

HAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHA. Funny question. But.. Yeahhhhhhh... No. I am NOT coordinated. I can barely walk in my kitchen without the fear of me accidentally turning wrong or moving incorrectly and just breaking something or knocking over everything in the kitchen. SOMETIMES I'm in James Bond mode, and it feels like I can do anything physical, and I feel aware of everything, my body, my surroundings, and I can actually move like a human being, but that usually doesn't last long. I can do just the bare minimum that an average human can do, but MUCH MUCH worse and at a greater cost of my energy, and my mental energy trying not to fuck anything up because I have literally just been sitting at times and barely move and knock over EVERYTHING somehow, because that's just how much my body was not meant to be on planet earth and I maybe should have been incarnated as a slug, idk.

• Are you artistic? If yes, describe your art? If you are not particular artistic but can appreciate art please likewise describe what forums of art you enjoy. Please explain your answer.

I'd describe myself as artistic, even if I haven't drawn in years LOL. But let me explain... I do still have a love for it, I just haven't really been able to practice. In general, my art is just aiming for whatever is in my brain, and I don't have a solid style. I'm just going for whatever I'm going for in the moment. I prefer a mix of realism with some "quirks", if that makes sense. While I haven't drawn in a while, this is how I'd imagine I'd want my art to look nowadays. Pretty realistic with perfect everything, perfect features, perfect environment or whatever I'm illustrating or going for (perfect features on a person, all the hair strands drawn individually, etc), with a mix of my own little "spice", if that makes sense. Back in the day, my art was just trying to copy classic anime, and while I have no problem with that style, I just wanna kinda make my own style, even if that is hard to verbalize lmao.
Alright guys.. I would write more, but I'm sleepy and some of this is getting dumb/boring (as if it wasn't already LOL). I'm glad you made it this far, and thank you for reading and putting up with this actual garbage fire of a post. Please take care of yourselves during these crazy weird times, and I hope you are doing well. I look forward to reading you guys responses (if I get any LOL).
Stay amazing, and stay healthy :3

Someone posted on here a few days ago asking about forex and forex trading in Kenya, I have gone through the responses and clearly, most people don’t have an idea. It is 3am in the morning and am in a good mood so let me make this post. This will be a comprehensive and lengthy post so grab a pen and paper and sit down. We’ll be here a while.
FIRST OF ALL, who am I..?
I am a forex trader, in Nairobi, Kenya..i have been actively involved in forex since I found out about it in Feb 2016 when I somehow ended up in a wealth creation seminar (lol) in pride inn Westlands, the one close to Mpaka Rd. Luckily for me, it was not one of those AIM global meetings or I’d be on Facebook selling God knows what those guys sell. I did not take it seriously till August of the same year and I have been active ever since.
I don’t teach, mentor or sell a course or signals, I trade my own money. I am also posting from a throwaway account because I don’t want KRA on my ass.
What the fuck is forex and forex trading.
In simple plain English, forex is like the stock market but for currencies. Stock Market = Shares, forex = currencies. If you want more in-depth explanation, google is your friend.
These currencies are pegged on specific countries, united states- dollar, UK- pound, euro zone- euro, Switzerland- Swiss franc, Kenya- Kenya shilling.. you get the point. Now, there are specific events and happenings between these economies that affect the movement and values of the currencies, driving their value (purchasing power up and down). Forex trading exploits these movements to make money. When the value is going up, we buy and vice versa (down –sell)
Is forex trading illegal in Kenya? Is it a scam?
Illegal, no. scam, no. All the banks in the world do it (KCB made about 4 billion from trading forex in 2019)
Have there been scams involving forex in Kenya?
Yes. Here is one that happened recently. This one is the most infamous one yet. Best believe that this is not the end of these type of scams because the stupidity, greed and gullibility of human beings is unfathomable.
However, by the end of this post, I hope you won’t fall for such silliness.
What next how do I make it work..?
Am glad you asked. Generally, there are two ways to go about it. One, you teach yourself. This is the equivalent of stealing our dad’s car and hoping that the pedal you hit is the brake and not the accelerator. It is the route I took, it is the most rewarding and a huge ego boost when you finally make it on your own. Typically, this involves scouring the internet for hours upon hours going down rabbit holes, thinking you have made it telling all your friends how you will be a millionaire then losing all your money. Some people do not have the stomach for that.
The second route is more practical, structured and smarter.
First Learn the basics. There is a free online forex course at www.babypips.com/learn/forex this is merely an introductory course. Basically it is learning the parts of a car before they let you inside the car.
Second, start building your strategy. By the time you are done with the babypips, you will have a feel of what the forex market is, what interests you, etc. Tip..Babypips has a lot of garbage. It is good for introductory purposes but not good for much else, pick whatever stick to you or jumps at you the first time. Nonsense like indicators should be ignored.
The next step is now the most important. Developing the skill and building your strategy. As a beginner, you want to exhaust your naivety before jumping into the more advanced stuff. Eg can you identify a trend, what is a pair, what is position sizing, what is metatrader 4 and how to operate it, what news is good for a currency, when can I trade, what are the different trading sessions, what is technical analysis, what is market sentiment, what are bullish conditions what is emotion management, how does my psychology affect my trading (more on this later) an I a swing, scalper or day trader etc
Mentors and forex courses.. you have probably seen people advertising how they can teach and mentor you on how to trade forex and charging so much money for it. Somehow it seems that these people are focused on the teaching than the trading. Weird, right..? Truth is trading is hard, teaching not quite. A common saying in the industry is “Those who can’t trade, teach” you want to avoid all these gurus on Facebook and Instagram, some are legit but most are not. Sifting the wheat from the chaff is hard but I did that for you. The info is available online on YouTube, telegram channels etc. am not saying not to spend money on a course, if you find a mentor whose style resonates with you and the course is reasonably priced, please, go ahead and buy..it will cut your learning curve in half. People are different. What worked for me might not work for you.
Here are some nice YouTube channels to watch. These guys are legit..

1. Sam sieden
   
2. Cuebanks
   
3. TheCoinFx
   
4. The trading channel
   
5. Astro
   
6. Forex family
   
7. Wicksdontlie
   

Advanced stuff

1. ICT

After a short period of time, you will be able to sniff out bs teachers with relative ease. You will also discover some of your own and expand the list. Two tips, start with the oldest videos first and whichever of these resonates with you, stick with till the wheels fall off.
How long will it take until things start making sense
Give yourself time to grow and learn. This is all new to you and you are allowed to make mistakes, to fail and discover yourself. Realistically, depending on the effort you put in, you will not start seeing results until after 6 months. Could take longeshorter so there is no guarantee.
Social media, Mentality, Psychology and Books
Online, forex trading might not have the best reputation online because it takes hard work and scammers and gurus give it a bad name. However, try to not get sucked into the Instagram trader lifestyle as it is nowhere close to what the reality is. You will not make millions tomorrow or the day after, you might never even make it in this market. But that is the reality of life. Nothing is promised, nothing is guaranteed.
Your mentality, beliefs and ego will be challenged in this market. You will learn things that will make you blood boil, you will ask yourself daily, how is this possible, why don’t they teach this in school..bla bla bla..it will be hard but growth is painful, if it wasn’t we’d all be billionaires. Take a break, take a walk, drink a glass of whatever you like or roll one..detox. Chill with your girl (or man) Gradually you will develop mental toughness that will set you up for life. Personally, I sorta ditched religion and picked up stoicism. Whatever works for you.
Psychology, this is unfortunately one of the most neglected aspects of your personal development in this journey. Do you believe in yourself? Can you stand by your convictions when everyone is against you? Can you get up every day uncertain of the future? There will be moments where you will question yourself, am I even doing the right thing? the right way? It is normal and essential for your growth. People who played competitive sports have a natural advantage here. Remember the game is first won in your head then on the pitch.
Books: ironically, books that helped me the most were the mindset books, Think and grow rich, trading for a living, 4 hour work week, the monk who sold his Ferrari..just google mindset and psychology books, most trading books are garbage. Watch and listen to people who have made it in the investing business. Ray Dalio, warren, Bill Ackman and Carl Icahn.
This is turning out to be lengthier than I anticipated so I’ll try to be brief for the remaining parts.
Brokers
You will need to open up an account with a broker. Get a broker who is regulated. Australian ones (IC Market and Pepperstone) are both legit, reliable and regulated. Do your research. I’d avoid local ones because I’ve heard stories of wide spreads and liquidity problems. International brokers have never failed me. There are plenty brokers, there is no one size fits all recommendation. If it ain’t broke..don’t fix it.
Money transfer.
All brokers accept wire transfers, you might need to call your bank to authorize that, avoid Equity bank. Stanchart and Stanbic are alright. Large withdrawals $10k+ you will have to call them prior. Get Skrill and Neteller if you don’t like banks like me, set up a Bitcoin wallet for faster withdrawals, (Payoneer and Paypal are accepted by some brokers, just check with them.)
How much money can I make..?
I hate this question because people have perceived ceilings of income in their minds, eg 1 million ksh is too much to make per month or 10,000ksh is too little. Instead, work backwards. What % return did I make this month/ on this trade. Safaricom made 19.5% last year, if you make 20% you have outperformed them. If you reach of consistency where you can make x% per month on whatever money you have, then there are no limits to how much you can make.
How much money do I need to start with..?
Zero. You have all the resources above, go forth. There are brokers who provide free bonuses and withdraw-able profits. However, to make a fulltime income you will need some serious cash. Generally, 50,000 kes. You can start lower or higher but if you need say 20k to live comfortably and that is a 10% return per month, then you can do the math on how big your account should be. Of course things like compound interest come into play but that is dependent on your skill level. I have seen people do spectacular things with very little funds.
Taxes..?
Talk to a lawyer or an accountant. I am neither.
Family? Friends?
Unfortunately, people will not understand why you spend hundreds of hours watching strangers on the internet so it is best to keep it from them. Eventually you will make it work and they will come to your corner talking about how they always knew you’d make it.
The journey will be lonely, make some trading buddies along the way. You’d be surprised at how easy it is when people are united by their circumstances (and stupidity) I have guys who are my bros from South Africa and Lebanon who I have never met but we came up together and are now homies. Join forums, ask questions and grow. That is the only way to learn. Ideally, a group of 5-10 friends committed to learning and growth is the best model. Pushing each other to grow and discovering together.
Forex is real and you can do amazing things with it. It is not a get rich quick scheme. If you want a quick guaranteed income, get a job.
And now it is 5am, fuck.
This is oversimplified and leaves out many many aspects.
Happy to answer any questions.

Yup, as stated. Tried to post in relevant subreddit but kept getting deleted by mob bot.
PM me u/fistno or email [email protected] if you like the following:
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Trading currencies takes both practice and lots of research. Countless factors can affect the value of these trading instruments and circumstances can change at any point in time. Fortunately, there are a number of was to determine whether or not your trading theory is a viable one before bringing it to market and risking your hard-one cash.
It is important for all currency traders to have access to a good trade simulator. This is a program that allow you to put your trading theories into action, even before you actually risk any money. They are great practice tools for people who are just getting started in this market, but even more seasoned traders to continue to use them to further hone their skills.
Another major benefit in using these tools is the fact that they can help you verify your sources. If you implement a trade in a simulated environment based upon info that you've gleaned from your sources, the results will tell you whether or not the information supplied was reliable. This is actually a very effective tactic for testing sources out all throughout your trading endeavours.
Find out what's going on in the world new, particularly within the countries with currencies that you are targeting. Whenever you engage in foreign markets in any capacity, even if it's just through Forex trading, you have to remain abreast of world events. Changes in foreign policies and political strife can and do have an impact on currency values. You must be well read.
To be even more thorough in your research, take the time to learn about world events outside of these areas that still have the potential to impact their economic standing. Companies that have formed alliances can affect gross domestic products and other natural factors. Find a good world newspaper and read it daily.
Access a good trader forum and pay attention to what other traders are talking about. Look for information that is specific to your targeted currencies. You will find that many successful traders are reticent to talk about their own, unique theories and strategies. They will, however, offer a lot of helpful advice that you can glean and use to make informed decisions in your future transactions.

Hello everyone.
First of all thank you for reading this and giving attention to my story I'm about to share. I want to mention this is a throwaway account because I feel shy talking about this subject. It is something personal to me.
To give you some quick background information about what's going on: - I'm currently 27 years old while my "career" has ended 7 years ago. In all this time in between, I've had the desire to achieve something similar but so far without the success I had imagined.
​
Here we go...

1. When I was 12 years old, I had the desire to become an artist (a DJ/Electronic music artist). I had tons of ambition and motivation and had set my goal for life. From that point in my life I kept pursuing it and put in the hard work to achieve it. It was literally the thing that kept me awake at night. I imagined and visualized my dream of standing on a stage in front of 10k people and playing my own music. I visualized one of my idols supporting me and my music. That was the person I looked up to, the guy who sparkled my fire and inspired me to achieve something similar.
2. Years went by where I got laughed at on every online forum possible. My music sucked, I was too confident about my thing and people basically told me it was pure shit haha. Yet it did not stop me from pursuing my dream. I was the little kid amongst older guys being better at this music production thing. It was fun to be honest. After 3 or 4 years, when I was around 16 my music got noticed by someone bigger than myself. My music started to get noticed by local clubs and "famous" DJ's. They started playing it every single week in clubs and reached out to me. That's where it all began. Somebody I looked up to emailed me and wanted to make a song together. That's what opened many doors for me. Eventually, it led to releasing (and distributing) a real song under my name and having more support and plays as I wished for.
3. After a few more musical releases, I got approached again. This time by one of the biggest artists within this scene. I had the luck this scene was very local and everything happened in my country. So we met up. I was a shy little kid who took the train to cross the country to meet one of my idols. This was a big day. I felt like the luckiest and happiest kid alive. A dream coming true. My dream of being a star and realizing my goals didn't seem far away.
4. Things went well from this point. It took some time but eventually near the time I graduated I was ready and settled to make this my business and job. I was happy, around 18 years old. And I was playing shows around the globe and earning a nice amount of money per booking. The fans and "likes" kept coming in and it seemed like I established some sort of fanbase. This was the life I imagined. My goal seemed reached and I was happy.
5. As I grew older I started to become a bit more pessimistic or perfectionistic.. or both. There are a lot of fake things going on in the music business and I was not the type of artist who likes to play along with that. I felt real. I spoke real (to my fans, on my social media pages, etc), and I acted that way. I want to mention that at this same period of my life, my family was putting some sort of pressure on me that I should find a part-time job for some extra income. Since I didn't play shows every week, I didn't generate a stable income doing music alone. Yet this was the goal, and this was perfectly possible as almost everyone in my crew was making a living from this. I want to mention that "my crew" was my record label / booking agency where I was part of. I kept believing that this was possible but due the pressure and stress my family gave me I think I started to doubt myself at some point. Although I was living my dream and touring the world, my family didn't push or believe it enough so they would suggest me to find a parttime job. I hated that. Every time they brought that up it made me annoyed because I just wanted to focus on my career and because I knew I could pull this off.
6. My career was still in a good line at that time. It was also the time I was smoking cannabis. I became an addict. It was something I did on a daily basis and I think it had a negative impact on my behavior and work ethic to produce music. It also had an impact on my social media posts and thoughts about the music industry.
7. Eventually, everything let to the point where I made a social media post which my label and booking agency didn't like, at all. It was so "off-track" for them that they decided to cancel some of my bookings for that upcoming summer. My post was about justice, and I shared some of my thoughts on the "fake" aspect of this music business because it made me extremely annoyed how people could achieve the same things putting in less work than I did (friends, connections, money..). As my label and booking agency supported those fake activities as well, they were kind of pissed that I shared those honest words in front of my fans online.
8. Since I was a honest person, stubborn, and perfectionistic, I was like "fuck this" and basically never made contact again with them. Eventually this led to my last booking and then my career died. To this day (7 years later), I still get spotify plays from those old songs, and I still get messages every now and then of people asking what happened and why I stopped making this music.
9. I would like to mention that my interest for that specific genre was fading away near the time I made that post on my social media. Don't get me wrong, obviously, I would've loved to keep doing it as my job. But personally it just wasn't touching me that much anymore as there were other genres that started to appeal to me more.

​
Here is an important thing I remember telling my dad at the age of 20, after destroying my career and right before starting some labour work which I absolutely hated. "Dad, I'm going to do this job maximum 3 months before I'm off on another musical adventure in another style!".
So far 7 years have passed hopping jobs and not saving a lot of money. It's only been 2 years I finally been able to quit smoking cannabis. I have made tons of songs in all those years, and removed tons of songs completely from my computer because I hate them at some point and I get angry because of everything.
I get a few plays a month on Spotify with my new musical project but it never really took off. I decided to abandon my previous name and start from scratch because I didn't want any connection to my older project. The closest I got to achieving something big was another famous artist reaching out because he liked one of my songs, but eventually it led to nothing (unfortunately).
I have not played a single show as my new project and haven't got close to being successful or making this my job, at all.
As the years are passing by and I'm slowly starting to realize I'm no longer the "golden boy" (aka the little 13 year old kid with big dreams) it starts to eat me and devastate me mentally. It's a big part of my life and the dream is still alive but it feels like the fire or belief that I will get there is slowly fading away.
There have barely been days that I did not make music but no matter how much I produce or whatever genre or style I try, it doesn't seem to take off.
At this point, and for the last year, or 2-3 years, it has become worse.. I highly doubt every step I take and I feel like I cannot make any decision at all for my musical path anymore. I changed my artist name multiple times and even while writing this post I still think the name isn't good enough and I should start another project from scratch. I basically like a lot of genres and I can't seem to make a choice on what I really wanna go after. The musical world has exploded so much with social media and everything right after my career died and there just seems to be too much choice and things going on. I cannot seem to find the right path and I can't find my fire and ambition like I had when I was younger.
Every now and then I still look back at my musical colleagues which I abandoned 7 years ago and see what they are up to, what the music sounds like and how successful they are right now. It makes me feel worse but some part of me likes looking at it and imagined what I could've become. The fact of seeing them so successful right now and still doing their dream job just makes me even more sad realizing its been 7 years and I'm still living at home, hopping jobs and thinking how to take off on another musical path.
Last year I have met the most amazing girlfriend in the world, and in the meantime I found some other hobbies that I'm passionate about such as trading in forex and doing visuals. But I feel like it will never replace music since that's like my main-quest in life.
If I think about it, being able to do shows again and make an income being a music artist would make me the happiest person alive but there's no way I'm going back to my older project and certainly no way I'm going to knock on the door of my label and say 'Whatsup' after 7 years.
Without a doubt, my behavior and stubbornness led to the most stupid choice I ever made in my life.
​
Thanks for reading along. I might delete this post later because I feel like I shared too much personal stuff and it makes me insecure. Although I want to admit it felt good writing all of this.
Peace.

Hello everyone.
First of all thank you for reading this and giving attention to my story I'm about to share.I want to mention this is a throwaway account because I feel shy talking about this subject. It is something personal to me.
To give you some quick background information about what's going on:- I'm currently 27 years old while my "career" has ended 7 years ago. In all this time in between, I've had the desire to achieve something similar but so far without the success I had imagined.
Here we go...

1. When I was 12 years old, I had the desire to become an artist (a DJ/Electronic music artist). I had tons of ambition and motivation and had set my goal for life.From that point in my life I kept pursuing it and put in the hard work to achieve it. It was literally the thing that kept me awake at night. I imagined and visualized my dream of standing on a stage in front of 10k people and playing my own music. I visualized one of my idols supporting me and my music. That was the person I looked up to, the guy who sparkled my fire and inspired me to achieve something similar.
2. Years went by where I got laughed at on every online forum possible. My music sucked, I was too confident about my thing and people basically told me it was pure shit haha. Yet it did not stop me from pursuing my dream. I was the little kid amongst older guys being better at this music production thing. It was fun to be honest. After 3 or 4 years, when I was around 16 my music got noticed by someone bigger than myself. My music started to get noticed by local clubs and "famous" DJ's. They started playing it every single week in clubs and reached out to me. That's where it all began. Somebody I looked up to emailed me and wanted to make a song together. That's what opened many doors for me. Eventually, it led to releasing (and distributing) a real song under my name and having more support and plays as I wished for.
3. After a few more musical releases, I got approached again. This time by one of the biggest artists within this scene. I had the luck this scene was very local and everything happened in my country. So we met up. I was a shy little kid who took the train to cross the country to meet one of my idols. This was a big day. I felt like the luckiest and happiest kid alive. A dream coming true. My dream of being a star and realizing my goals didn't seem far away.
4. Things went well from this point. It took some time but eventually near the time I graduated I was ready and settled to make this my business and job. I was happy, around 18 years old. And I was playing shows around the globe and earning a nice amount of money per booking. The fans and "likes" kept coming in and it seemed like I established some sort of fanbase. This was the life I imagined. My goal seemed reached and I was happy.
5. As I grew older I started to become a bit more pessimistic or perfectionistic.. or both. There are a lot of fake things going on in the music business and I was not the type of artist who likes to play along with that. I felt real. I spoke real (to my fans, on my social media pages, etc), and I acted that way. I want to mention that at this same period of my life, my family was putting some sort of pressure on me that I should find a part-time job for some extra income. Since I didn't play shows every week, I didn't generate a stable income doing music alone. Yet this was the goal, and this was perfectly possible as almost everyone in my crew was making a living from this. I want to mention that "my crew" was my record label / booking agency where I was part of. I kept believing that this was possible but due the pressure and stress my family gave me I think I started to doubt myself at some point. Although I was living my dream and touring the world, my family didn't push or believe it enough so they would suggest me to find a parttime job. I hated that. Every time they brought that up it made me annoyed because I just wanted to focus on my career and because I knew I could pull this off.
6. My career was still in a good line at that time. It was also the time I was smoking cannabis. I became an addict. It was something I did on a daily basis and I think it had a negative impact on my behavior and work ethic to produce music. It also had an impact on my social media posts and thoughts about the music industry.
7. Eventually, everything let to the point where I made a social media post which my label and booking agency didn't like, at all. It was so "off-track" for them that they decided to cancel some of my bookings for that upcoming summer. My post was about justice, and I shared some of my thoughts on the "fake" aspect of this music business because it made me extremely annoyed how people could achieve the same things putting in less work than I did (friends, connections, money..). As my label and booking agency supported those fake activities as well, they were kind of pissed that I shared those honest words in front of my fans online.
8. Since I was a honest person, stubborn, and perfectionistic, I was like "fuck this" and basically never made contact again with them. Eventually this led to my last booking and then my career died. To this day (7 years later), I still get spotify plays from those old songs, and I still get messages every now and then of people asking what happened and why I stopped making this music.
9. I would like to mention that my interest for that specific genre was fading away near the time I made that post on my social media. Don't get me wrong, obviously, I would've loved to keep doing it as my job. But personally it just wasn't touching me that much anymore as there were other genres that started to appeal to me more.

​
Here is an important thing I remember telling my dad at the age of 20, after destroying my career and right before starting some labour work which I absolutely hated. "Dad, I'm going to do this job maximum 3 months before I'm off on another musical adventure in another style!".
So far 7 years have passed hopping jobs and not saving a lot of money. It's only been 2 years I finally been able to quit smoking cannabis. I have made tons of songs in all those years, and removed tons of songs completely from my computer because I hate them at some point and I get angry because of everything.
I get a few plays a month on Spotify with my new musical project but it never really took off. I decided to abandon my previous name and start from scratch because I didn't want any connection to my older project. The closest I got to achieving something big was another famous artist reaching out because he liked one of my songs, but eventually it led to nothing (unfortunately).
I have not played a single show as my new project and haven't got close to being successful or making this my job, at all.
As the years are passing by and I'm slowly starting to realize I'm no longer the "golden boy" (aka the little 13 year old kid with big dreams) it starts to eat me and devastate me mentally. It's a big part of my life and the dream is still alive but it feels like the fire or belief that I will get there is slowly fading away.
There have barely been days that I did not make music but no matter how much I produce or whatever genre or style I try, it doesn't seem to take off.
At this point, and for the last year, or 2-3 years, it has become worse.. I highly doubt every step I take and I feel like I cannot make any decision at all for my musical path anymore. I changed my artist name multiple times and even while writing this post I still think the name isn't good enough and I should start another project from scratch. I basically like a lot of genres and I can't seem to make a choice on what I really wanna go after. The musical world has exploded so much with social media and everything right after my career died and there just seems to be too much choice and things going on. I cannot seem to find the right path and I can't find my fire and ambition like I had when I was younger.
Every now and then I still look back at my musical colleagues which I abandoned 7 years ago and see what they are up to, what the music sounds like and how successful they are right now. It makes me feel worse but some part of me likes looking at it and imagined what I could've become. The fact of seeing them so successful right now and still doing their dream job just makes me even more sad realizing its been 7 years and I'm still living at home, hopping jobs and thinking how to take off on another musical path.
Last year I have met the most amazing girlfriend in the world, and in the meantime I found some other hobbies that I'm passionate about such as trading in forex and doing visuals. But I feel like it will never replace music since that's like my main-quest in life.
If I think about it, being able to do shows again and make an income being a music artist would make me the happiest person alive but there's no way I'm going back to my older project and certainly no way I'm going to knock on the door of my label and say 'Whatsup' after 7 years.
Without a doubt, my behavior and stubbornness led to the most stupid choice I ever made in my life.
​
Thanks for reading along. I might delete this post later because I feel like I shared too much personal stuff and it makes me insecure. Although I want to admit it felt good writing all of this.
Peace.

Let me just sum some stuff up for you newbies out there. Ive been trading for years, last couple of years more seriously and i turned my strategies into algorithms and i am currently up to 18 algorithms thats trading for me 24/7. Ive learned alot, listened to hundreds of podcasts and read tons of books + research papers and heres some tips and tricks for any newbie out there.
​

1. Strategy - How to... When people say "you need a trading strategy!!" Its because trading is very hard and emotional. You need to stick to your rules at all times. Dont panic and move your stop loss or target unless your rules tell you to. Now how do you make these rules? Well this is the part that takes alot of time. If your rules are very simple (for example: "Buy if Last candles low was the lowest low of the past 10 candles." Lets make this a rule. You can backtest it manually by looking at a chart and going back in time and check every candle. or you can code it using super simple software like prorealtime, MT4 ++ Alot of software is basicly "click and drag" and press a button and it gives you backtest from 10-20-30 years ago in 5 seconds. This is the absolute easiest way to backtest rules and systems. If your trading "pure price action" with your drawn lines and shit, the only way to truly backtest that kind of trading is going in a random forex pair to a random point in time, could be 1 year ago, 1 month ago, 5 years ago.. and then you just trade! Move chart 1 candle at a time, draw your lines and do some "actual trading" and look at your results after moving forward in the chart. If you do not test your strategy your just going in blind, which could be disaster.. Maybe someone told u "this is the correct way to trade" or "this strategy is 90% sure to win every trade!!!" If you think you can do trading without a strategy, then your most likely going to look back at an empty account and wonder why you moved that stop loss or why you didnt take profit etc.. and then your gonna give up. People on youtube, forums, interwebz are not going to give you/sell you a working strategy thats gonna make you rich. If they had a working strategy, they would not give it away/sell it to you.
2. Money management - How to.... Gonna keep this one short. Risk a small % of your capital on each trade. Dont risk 10%, dont risk 20%. You are going to see loosing trades, your probably gonna see 5-10 loss in a row!! If your trading a 1000$ account and your risking 100$ on each trade (10%) and you loose 5 in a row, your down -50% and probably you cant even trade cus of margin req. Game over.. Now how does one get super rich, super fast, from risking 1-3% of your account on each trade?? Well heres the shocking message: YOU CANT GET RICH FAST FROM TRADING UNLESS YOUR WILLING TO GO ALL IN! You can of course go all in on each trade and if you get em all right, you might get 1000%, then you go all in 1 more time and loose it all... The whole point of trading is NOT going bust. Not loosing everything, cus if you loose it all its game over and no more trading for you.
3. Find your own trading style.... Everyone is different. You can have an average holding period of 1 month or you could be looking at a 1 min chart and average holding time = 10 minutes. For some, less volatility helps them sleep at night. For others, more volatility gives them a rush and some people crave this. There is no "correct" timeframes, or holding periods, or how much to profit or how much to loose. We are all individuals with different taste in risk. Some dont like risk, others wanna go all in to get rich over night. The smart approach is somewhere in the middle. If you dont risk anything, your not gonna get anything. If you risk everything, your most likely going to loose everything. When people are talking about trading style, this is kinda what that means.
4. There are mainly 2 ways to trade: Divergence and Convergence. Or in other words: Mean reversion or trend following. Lets talk about them both: Trend following is trying to find a trend and stay with the trend until its over. Mean reversion is the belief that price is too far away from the average XX of price, and sooner or later, price will have to return to its average/mean (hence the name: MEAN reversion). Trend following systems usually see a lower winrate (30-40% winrate with no money management is not uncommon to see when backtesting trend following systems.. You can add good money management to get the winrate % higher. Why is the % winrate so low? Well a market, whatever that market is, tend to get real choppy and nasty right after a huge trend. So your gonna see alot of choppy fake signals that might kill 5-6 trades in a row, until the next huge trend starts which is going to cover all the losses from the small losses before the trend took off. Then you gotta hold that trade until trade is done. How do you define "when trend starts and stops"? Well thats back to point 1, find a strategy. Try defining rules for an entry and exit and see how it goes when you backtest it. For mean reversion the win % is usually high, like 70-90% winrate, but the average winning trade is alot smaller than the average loosing trade. this happens because you are basicly trying to catch a falling knife, or catch a booming rocket. Usually when trading mean reversion, waiting for price to actually reverse can very often leave you with being "too late", so you kinda have to find "the bottom" or "the top" before it actually has bottomed/ topped out and reversed. How can you do this you ask? Well your never going to hit every top or every bottom, but you can find ways to find "the bottom-ish" or "the top-ish", thens ell as soon as price reverts back to the mean. Sometimes your gonna wish you held on to the trade for longer, but again, back to point 1: Backtest your rules and figure that shit out.

​
Read these 4 points and try to follow them and you are at least 4 steps closer to being a profitable trader. Some might disagree with me on some points but i think for the majority, people are going to agree that these 4 points are pretty much universal. Most traders have done or are doing these things every day, in every trade.
Here is some GREAT material to read: Kevin Davey has won trading championship multiple times and he has written multiple great books, from beginner to advanced level. Recommend these books 100%, for example: Building winning algorithmic trading systems" will give you alot to work with when it comes to all 4 of the above points. Market wizards, Reminiscences of a stock operator are 2 books that are a great read but wont give you much "trading knowledge" that you can directly use for your trading. Books on "The turtles" are great reading. Then you have podcasts and youtube. I would stay away from youtube as much as possible when it comes to "Heres how to use the rsi!!!" or "this strategy will make you rich!!". Most youtube videoes are made by people who wanna sell you a course or a book. Most of this is just pure bullshit. Youtube can very harmfull and i would honestly advice about going there for "strategy adivce" and such. Podcasts tho are amazing, i highly recommend: Better systems trader, Chat with traders, Top traders unplugged, We study billionairs, to name a few :)
Also, on a less funny note.. Please realize that you are, and i am, real fucking stupid and lazy compared to the actual pro's out there. This is why you should not go "all in" on some blind stupid strategy youve heard about. This is why this is indeed VERY FUCKING HARD and most, if not everyone has busted an account or two before realizing just this. Your dumb.. your not going to be super rich within 1 year.. You can not start with 500$ account and make millions! (some might have been able to do this, but know that for every winner, theres 999 loosers behind him that failed... Might work fine first 5 trades, then 1 fuckup tho and ur gone..
And lastly: Try using a backtesting software. Its often FREE!!! (on a demo account) and often so simple a baby could use it. If your trading lines and such there exists web broweser "games" and softwares that lets you go "1 and 1 candle ahead" in random forex pairs and that lets you trade as if its "real" as it goes.
A big backtesting trap however is backtesting "losely" by just drawing lines and looking at chart going "oh i would have taken this trade FOR SURE!! I would have made so much money!!" however this is not actually backtesting, its cherry picking and its biased beyond the grave, and its going to hurt you. Try going 1 candle at a time doing "real and live" trades and see how it goes.
​
Bonus point!!
many people misunderstands what indicators like the RSI is telling you. Indeed something is "overbought" or "oversold" but only compared to the last average of xx amounts of bars/candles.
It doesn't tell you that RIGHT NOW is a great time to sell or buy. It only tells you that the math formula that is RSI, gives you a number between 1-100, and when its above 70 its telling you that momentum is up compared to the last average 14 candles. This is not a complete buy/sell signal. Its more like a filter if anything. This is true for MOST indicators. They INDICATE stuff. Dont use them as pure buy/sell signals.. At least backtest that shit first! Your probably gonna be shocked at the shitty results if you "buy wehn rsi is undeer 30 and sell when RSI is above 70".
​
Editedit: Huge post already, why not copy paste my comment with an example showing the difference in trend following vs mean reversion:
The thing about trend following is that we never know when a trade starts and when it ends. So what often happens is that you have to buy every breakout going up, but not every breakout is a new trend. Lets do an example. Check out the photo i included here: https://imageshost.eu/image/image.RcC
​
THE PHOTO IS JUST AN EXAMPLE THAT SHOWS WHY A TYPICAL TREND FOLLOWING STRATEGY HAVE A "LOW" WINRATE.
THE PHOTO IS NOT SHOWING AN EXAMPLE OF MY STRATEGIES OR TRADING.
​

1. We identify the big orange trend up.
2. We see the big break down (marked with the vertical red line) this is telling us we are not going higher just yet. Our upwards trend is broken. However we might continue going up in a new trend, but when will that trend come?
3. We can draw the blue trend very earyly using highs and lows, lines up and down. Then we begin to look for breakouts of the upper blue line. So every time price breaks upper blue line we have to buy (cus how else are we going to "catch the next trend going up?)

As you can see we get 5 false breakouts before the real breakout happens!
Now if you could tell fake breakouts from real breakouts, your gonna be rich hehe. For everyone else: Take every signal you can get, put a "tight" stop loss so in case its a fake signal you only loose a little bit. Then when breakout happens as you can clearly see in chart, your going to make back all the small losses.
So in this example we fail 5 times, but get 1 HUGE new trend going further up. This 1 huge trade, unless we fuck it up and take profits too early or shit like that, is going to win back all those small losses + more.
This is why trend following has a low winrate. You get 5 small loss and 1 big win.
​
Now lets flip this! Imagine if your trading Mean reversion on all the same red arrows! So every time price hits the blue line, we go short back to the bottom (or middle) again! You would have won 5 trades with small profits, but on that last one you would get stopped out so hard. Meaning 5 small wins, 1 big loss (as some have pointed out in comments, if you where trading mean reverting you would wanna buy the lows as well as short the tops - photo was suppose to show why trend following strategies have a lower % winrate.)
​
Final edit: sorry this looks like a wall of text on ur phones.

Introduction
Contrary to what every Forex 'expert' out there would have you believe, it's not easy to learn how to trade Forex at all. Trading Forex is one of the most challenging skills you can ever set out to learn, which is especially daunting if you're a beginner just starting out to learn how to trade Forex. If you're finding it hard to learn how to trade Forex successfully right now, you're probably wondering: "Can a beginner make money in Forex trading?" By the end of this article, you'll know what you can do to make money in Forex trading right now.
Can A Beginner Make Money In Forex Trading?
If you have a look around the many Forex websites, forums, seminars and magazines, it seems like everyone's making millions of dollars trading Forex! The thing is, Forex traders love to talk about their winning trades and make themselves out to be wildly profitable traders, but the reality is that only 5% of Forex traders are consistently making money. Yes, even a beginner can make money in Forex trading, but there's a big difference between making money in Forex and making a full time income, achieving financial freedom, and building wealth through Forex.
What Stops Beginners From Making An Income
So what's stopping beginners from making a consistent, long term income from trading Forex? Well, unlike the professional Forex traders working for the big banks and hedge funds, most beginner traders learning to trade Forex aren't paid a full time salary to immerse themselves in the markets. If you're just starting out in Forex, then you've probably got a full time job that you spend at least 8 hours a day on, and a family and social life outside of that. That means that you have a very real shortage of time to get yourself to the level where you can trade like a pro, and believe me, it takes a lot of time and consistent effort.
It takes years of study, practice and real experience in the markets to learn how to trade Forex successfully, and get to the level where you can consistently make money in Forex trading. Not to mention that you'll be taking on, for all intents and purposes, an unpaid part time job that will chain you to your computer while you are trading. It's something that will alienate you from your social circle, and put considerable strain on your family relationships as well. It's no wonder that most traders wanting to learn how to trade Forex will give up within 3 months, and never make money in Forex trading.
What You Can Do To Make Money In Forex Trading Now
So what can you do to make money in Forex trading right now? The best shortcut I know is to buy a proven Forex trading system to do your trading for you. I'm not going to look you in the eye and tell you that you can just go out there and pick any system and make millions, because that's simply not true. Profitable trading systems are rare, and you need to choose very carefully. That said, if you can find a trading system that works, you can overcome the biggest challenges any trader faces while they learn how to trade Forex. You'll be able to gain valuable Forex market experience, preserve your personal relationships and most importantly make money in Forex trading while you learn how to trade Forex.
When you've built up the capital and income of your Forex systems operation, and have gathered up valuable trading experience, you may decide to try out trading Forex for yourself. Regardless of whether you trade with an automatic Forex system in the short, medium or long term, it's a powerful solution that will enable you to make money in Forex trading even if you're a beginner.

Hello fellow traders,
I'm a new forex trader who has succeeded in 1-Month Demo account by doubling his balance and I'm ready to move on Live. I've gone through lots of forum posts about forex mindset, risk management, R:R ratio, stop loss, take profits etc. I consider these rules complete bullshit (yes, I mean it). However I still wonder how people become profitable by following these "rules" tightly.
I wanna share my so far experience with you, and I am free to hear all your opinions. Lemme make it easy for your eyes now:
- Never used fixed stop loss level (25 pips as many suggest). I adjust my SL in every trade depending on my technical analysis before.
- Same goes for Take Profit Level. I cannot only aim for these 20-30 pips per trade man, that's hard sometimes.
- So, it is logically assumed that I don't use fixed Risk/Reward ratios. There's a pretty common theory about those and how they cooperate with win %, so I'm not going deep in that, you already know what I'm talking about. Some days are just bad, some days are golden
- I do NOT have a specific trade style. I can say I'm not that guy that keeps positions for weeks for sure though. Sometimes I close the trade after 5 pips and really quickly. Sometimes I let it sit for days, because of my gut feeling (only 1 time that it betrayed me in this month)
- I never (BUT NEVER) aim for these "pips per day". As I said, some days go negative, some days hit the ideal weekly goal. Having daily pip aim makes you overtrade to succeed in my opinion.
That's it. I know many will dislike all of what I said. I might do so in future as well. But for now, this free trading strategy has helped me double my demo balance in 1 month. Yes, I went at -30% at some point, yes I lost a lot in my demo, yes yes yes.. Tell me what you think of that. Tell me how could I be different, better , anything! I'd appreciate some help with lot sizes as well.
*doubling is done with 1 std lot in 10k balance
Thanks for reading! Happy trading!

So here it is, three more days and October begins, which marks one year of trading for me. I figured I would contribute to the forum and share some of my experience, a little about me, and what I've learned so far. Whoever wants to listen, that's great. This might get long so buckle up..
Three years ago, I was visiting Toronto. I don't get out much, but my roommate at the time travels there occasionally. He asked everyone at our place if we wanted to come along for a weekend. My roommate has an uncle that lives there and we didn't have to worry about a hotel because his uncle owns a small house that's unlived in which we could stay at. I was the only one to go with. Anyways, we walk around the city, seeing the sights and whatnot.
My friend says to me "where next?"
"I don't know, you're the tour guide"
"We can go check out Bay Street"
"what's 'Bay Street?'"
"It's like the Canadian Wall street! If you haven't seen it you gotta see it!"
Walking along Bay, I admire all the nice buildings and architecture, everything seems larger than life to me. I love things like that. The huge granite facades with intricate designs and towering pillars to make you think, How the fuck did they make that? My attention pivots to a man walking on the sidewalk opposite us. His gait stood out among everyone, he walked with such a purpose.. He laughed into the cell phone to his ear. In the elbow-shoving city environment, he moved with a stride that exuded a power which not only commanded respect, but assumed it. I bet HE can get a text back, hell he's probably got girls waiting on him. This dude was dressed to kill, a navy suit that you could just tell from across the street was way out of my budget, it was a nice fucking suit. I want that. His life, across the street, seemed a world a way from my own. I've worn a suit maybe twice in my life. For my first communion, it was too big for me, I was eleven or whatever so who gives a shit, right? I'm positive I looked ridiculous. The other time? I can't remember.
I want that. I want the suit. I want the wealth, the independence. I want the respect and power, and I don't give a shit what anyone thinks about it.
Cue self doubt.
Well, He's probably some rich banker's son. That's a world you're born into. I don't know shit about it. \sigh* keep walking..*
​
A year later, I'm visiting my parents at their house, they live an hour away from my place. My dad is back from Tennessee, his engineering job was laying people off and he got canned... Or he saw the end was near and just left... I don't know, hard to pay attention to the guy honestly because he kind of just drones on and on. ("Wait, so your mom lives in Michigan, but your dad moved to Tennessee... for a job?" Yea man, I don't fucking know, not going to touch on that one.) The whole project was a shit show that was doomed to never get done, the way he tells it. And he's obviously jaded from multiple similar experiences at other life-sucking engineer jobs. My mom is a retired nurse practitioner who no longer works because of her illness. I ask him what he's doing for work now and he tells me he trades stocks from home. I didn't even know you could do that. I didn't know "trading" was a thing. I thought you just invest and hope for the best.
"Oh that's cool, how much money do you need to do that?"
"Ehh, most say you need at least $25,000 as a minimum"
"Oh... guess I can't do that..."
Six months later, I get a call and it's my dad. We talk a little about whatever. Off topic, he starts asking if I'm happy doing what I'm doing (I was a painter, commercial and residential) I tell him yes but it's kind of a pain in the ass and I don't see it as a long term thing. Then he gets around to asking if I'd like to come work with him. He basically pitches it to me. I'm not one to be sold on something, I'm always skeptical. So I ask all the questions that any rational person would ask and he just swats them away with reassuring phrases. He was real confident about it. But basically he says for this to work, I have to quit my job and move back home so he can teach me how to trade and be by my side so I don't do anything stupid. "My Name , you can make so much money." I say that I can't raise the $25,000 because I'm not far above just living paycheck to paycheck. "I can help you out with that." Wow, okay, well... let me think about it.
My "maybe" very soon turned into a "definitely." So over the next six months, I continue to work my day job painting, and I try to save up what I could for the transition (it wasn't a whole lot, I sucked at saving. I was great at spending though!). My dad gives me a book on day trading (which I will mention later) and I teach myself what I can about the stock market using Investopedia. Also in the meantime, my dad sends me encouraging emails. He tells me to think of an annual income I would like to make as a trader, and used "more than $100,000 but less than a million" as a guideline. He tells me about stocks that he traded that day or just ones that moved and describes the basic price action and the prices to buy and sell at. Basically saying "if you bought X amount of shares here and sold it at X price here, you could make a quick 500 bucks!" I then use a trading sim to trade those symbols and try to emulate what he says. Piece of cake. ;)
Wow, that's way more than what I make in a day.
He tells me not to tell anyone about my trading because most people just think it's gambling. "Don't tell your Mom either." He says most people who try this fail because they don't know how to stop out and take a loss. He talks about how every day he was in a popular chatroom, some noob would say something like, "Hey guys, I bought at X price (high of day or thereabout), my account is down 80% .. uhh I'm waiting for it to come back to my entry price.. what do I do??"
Well shit, I'm not that fucking dumb. If that's all it takes to make it is to buy low, sell high, and always respect a stop then I'll be fantastic.
By the end of September, I was very determined. I had been looking forward everyday to quitting my painting job because while it used to be something I loved, it was just sucking the life out of me at this point. Especially working commercial, you just get worked like a dog. I wasn't living up to my potential with that job and I felt awful for it every minute of every day. I knew that I needed a job where I could use my brain instead of slaving my body to fulfill someone else's dream. "Someone's gotta put gas in the boss's boat" That's a line my buddy once said that he probably doesn't know sticks with me to this day.
It ain't me.
So now it was October 2018, and I'm back living with Mom n' Pops. I was so determined that on my last day of work I gave away all of my painting tools to my buddy like, "here, I don't need this shit." Moving out of my rental was easy because I don't own much, 'can't take it with ya.' Excited for the future I now spend my days bundled up in winter wear in the cold air of our hoarder-like basement with a space heater at my feet. My laptop connected to a TV monitor, I'm looking at stocks next to my dad and his screens in his cluttered corner. Our Trading Dungeon. I don't trade any money, (I wasn't aware of any real-time sim programs) I just watch and learn from my dad. Now you've got to keep in mind, and look at a chart of the S&P, this is right at the beginning of Oct '18, I came in right at the market top. Right at the start of the shit-show. For the next three or four weeks, I watch my dad pretty much scratch on every trade, taking small loss after small loss, and cursing under his breath at the screen.
Click.
"dammit."
Click.
"shit."
Click. Click.
"you fuck."
Click.
This gets really fucking annoying as time goes on, for weeks, and I get this attitude like ugh, just let me do it. I'll make us some fucking money. So I convince him to let me start trading live. I didn't know anything about brokers so I set up an account using his broker, which was Fidelity. It was a pain and I had to jump through a lot of hoops to be able to day trade with this broker. I actually had to make a joint account with my dad as I couldn't get approved for margin because my credit score is shit (never owned a credit card) and my net worth, not much. Anyways, they straight up discourage day trading and I get all kinds of warning messages with big red letters that made me shit myself like oooaaahhh what the fuck did I do now. Did I forget to close a position?? Did I fat finger an order? Am I now in debt for thousands of dollars to Fidelity?? They're going to come after me like they came after Madoff. Even after you are approved for PDT you still get these warning messages in your account. Some would say if I didn't comply with "whatever rule" they'd even suspend my account for 60 days. It was ridiculous, hard to describe because it doesn't make sense, and it took the support guy on the phone a good 20 minutes to explain it to me. Basically I got the answer "yea it's all good, you did nothing wrong. As long as you have the cash in your account to cover whatever the trade balance was" So I just kept getting these warnings that I had to ignore everyday. I hate Fidelity.
My fist day trading, I made a few so-so trades and then I got impatient. I saw YECO breaking out and I chased, soon realized I chased, so I got out. -$500. Shit, I have to make that back, I don't want my dad to see this. Got back in. Shit. -$400. So my first day trading, I lost $900. My dumbass was using market orders so that sure didn't help. I reeled the risk back and traded more proper position size for a while, but the commissions for a round trip are $10, so taking six trades per day, I'm losing $60 at a minimum on top of my losing trades. Quickly I realized I didn't know what the hell I was doing. What about my dad? Does HE know? One day, in the trading dungeon, I was frustrated with the experience I'd been having and just feeling lost overall. I asked him.
"So, are you consistently profitable?"
"mmm... I do alright."
"Yea but like, are you consistently profitable over time?"
.........................
"I do alright."
Silence.
"Do you know any consistently profitable traders?"
"Well the one who wrote that book I gave you, Tina Turner.. umm and there's Ross Cameron"
......................
"So you don't know any consistently profitable traders, personally.. People who are not trying to sell you something?"
"no."
...................
Holy fucking shit, what did this idiot get me into. He can't even say it to my face and admit it.
This entire life decision, quitting my job, leaving my rental, moving from my city to back home, giving shit away, it all relied on that. I was supposed to be an apprentice to a consistently profitable day trader who trades for a living. It was so assumed, that I never even thought to ask! Why would you tell your son to quit his job for something that you yourself cannot do? Is this all a scam? Did my dad get sold a DREAM? Did I buy into some kind of ponzi scheme? How many of those winning trades he showed me did he actually take? Are there ANY consistently profitable DAY TRADERS who TRADE FOR A LIVING? Why do 90% fail? Is it because the other 10% are scamming the rest in some way? Completely lost, I just had no clue what was what. If I was going to succeed at this, if it was even possible to succeed at this, it was entirely up to me. I had to figure it out. I still remember the feeling like an overwhelming, crushing weight on me as it all sunk in. This is going to be a big deal.. I'm not the type to give up though. In that moment, I said to myself,
I'm going to fucking win at this. I don't know if this is possible, but I'm going to find out. I cannot say with certainty that I will succeed, but no matter what, I will not give up. I'm going to give all of myself to this. I will find the truth.
It was a deep moment for me. I don't like getting on my soapbox, but when I said those things, I meant it. I really, really meant it. I still do, and I still will.
Now it might seem like I'm being hard on my dad. He has done a lot for me and I am very grateful for that. We're sarcastic as hell to each other, I love the bastard. Hell, I wouldn't have the opportunity to trade at all if not for him. But maybe you can also understand how overwhelmed I felt at that time. Not on purpose, of course he means well. But I am not a trusting person at all and I was willing to put trust into him after all the convincing and was very disappointed when I witnessed the reality of the situation. I would have structured this transition to trading differently, you don't just quit your job and start trading. Nobody was there to tell me that! I was told quite the opposite. I'm glad it happened anyway, so fuck it. I heard Kevin O'Leary once say,
"If I knew in the beginning how difficult starting a business was, I don't know that I ever would've started."
This applies very much to my experience.
So what did I do? Well like everyone I read and read and Googled and Youtube'd my ass off. I sure as hell didn't pay for a course because I didn't have the money and I'm like 99% sure I would be disappointed by whatever they were teaching as pretty much everything can be found online or in books for cheap or free. Also I discovered Thinkorswim and I used that to sim trade in real-time for three months. This is way the hell different than going on a sim at 5x speed and just clicking a few buy and sell buttons. Lol, useless. When you sim trade in real-time you're forced to have a routine, and you're forced to experience missing trades with no chance to rewind or skip the boring parts. That's a step up because you're "in it". I also traded real money too, made some, lost more than I made. went back to sim. Traded live again, made some but lost more, fell back to PDT. Dad fronted me more cash. This has happened a few times. He's dug me out of some holes because he believes in me. I'm fortunate.
Oh yeah, about that book my dad gave me. It's called A Beginner's Guide to Day Trading Online by Toni Turner. This book... is shit. This was supposed to be my framework for how to trade and I swear it's like literally nothing in this book fucking works lol. I could tell this pretty early on, intuitively, just by looking at charts. It's basically a buy-the-breakout type strategy, if you want to call it a strategy. No real methodology to anything just vague crap and showing you cherry-picked charts with entries that are way too late. With experience in the markets you will eventually come to find that MOST BREAKOUTS FAIL. It talks about support/resistance lines and describes them as, "picture throwing a ball down at the floor, it bounces up and then it bounces down off the ceiling, then back up." So many asinine assumptions. These ideas are a text book way of how to trade like dumb money. Don't get me wrong, these trades can work but you need to be able to identify the setups which are more probable and identify reasons not to take others. So I basically had to un-learn all that shit.
Present day, I have a routine in place. I'm out of the dungeon and trade by myself in my room. I trade with a discount broker that is catered to day traders and doesn't rape me on commissions. My mornings have a framework for analyzing the news and economic events of the particular day, I journal so that I can recognize what I'm doing right and where I need to improve. I record my screens for later review to improve my tape reading skills. I am actually tracking my trades now and doing backtesting in equities as well as forex. I'm not a fast reader but I do read a lot, as much as I can. So far I have read about 17-18 books on trading and psychology. I've definitely got a lot more skilled at trading.
As of yet I am not net profitable. Writing that sounds like selling myself short though, honestly. Because a lot of my trades are very good and are executed well. I have talent. However, lesser quality trades and trades which are inappropriately sized/ attempted too many times bring down that P/L. I'm not the type of trader to ignore a stop, I'm more the trader that just widdles their account down with small losses. I trade live because at this point, sim has lost its value, live trading is the ultimate teacher. So I do trade live but I just don't go big like I did before, I keep it small.
I could show you trades that I did great on and make people think I'm killing it but I really just don't need the validation. I don't care, I'm real about it. I just want to get better. I don't need people to think I'm a genius, I'm just trying to make some money.
Psychologically, to be honest with you, I currently feel beaten down and exhausted. I put a lot of energy into this, and sometimes I work myself physically sick, it's happened multiple times. About once a week, usually Saturday, I get a headache that lasts all day. My body's stress rebound mechanism you might call it. Getting over one of those sick periods now, which is why I barely even traded this week. I know I missed a lot of volatility this week and some A+ setups but I really just don't give a shit lol. I just currently don't have the mental capital, I think anyone who's been day trading every day for a year or more can understand what I mean by that. I'm still being productive though. Again, I'm not here to present an image of some badass trader, just keeping it real. To give something 100% day after day while receiving so much resistance, it takes a toll on you. So a break is necessary to avoid making bad trading decisions. That being said, I'm progressing more and more and eliminating those lesser quality trades and identifying my bad habits. I take steps to control those habits and strengthen my good habits such as having a solid routine, doing review and market research, taking profits at the right times, etc.
So maybe I can give some advice to some that are new to day trading, those who are feeling lost, or just in general thinking "...What the fuck..." I thought that every night for the first 6 months lol.
First of all, manage expectations. If you read my story of how I came to be a trader, you can see I had a false impression of trading in many aspects. Give yourself a realistic time horizon to how progress should be made. Do not set a monetary goal for yourself, or any time-based goal that is measured in your P/L. If you tell yourself, "I want to make X per day, X per week, or X per year" you're setting yourself up to feel like shit every single day when it's clear as the blue sky that you won't reach that goal anytime soon. As a matter of fact, it will appear you are moving further AWAY from that goal if you just focus on your P/L, which brings me to my next point.
You will lose money. In the beginning, most likely, you will lose money. I did it, you'll do it, the greatest Paul Tudor Jones did it. Trading is a skill that needs to be developed, and it is a process. Just look at it as paying your tuition to the market. Sim is fine but don't assume you have acquired this skill until you are adept at trading real money. So when you do make that leap, just trade small.
Just survive. Trade small. get the experience. Protect your capital. To reach break even on your bottom line is a huge accomplishment. In many ways, experience and screen time are the secret sauce.
Have a routine. This is very important. I actually will probably make a more in-depth post in the future about this if people want it. When I first started, I was overwhelmed with the feeling "What the fuck am I supposed to DO?" I felt lost. There's no boss to tell you how to be productive or how to find the right stocks, which is mostly a blessing, but a curse for new traders.
All that shit you see, don't believe all that bullshit. You know what I'm talking about. The bragposting, the clickbait Youtube videos, the ads preying on you. "I made X amount of money in a day and I'm fucking 19 lolz look at my Lamborghini" It's all a gimmick to sell you the dream. It's designed to poke right at your insecurities, that's marketing at it's finest. As for the bragposting on forums honestly, who cares. And I'm not pointing fingers on this forum, just any trading forum in general. They are never adding anything of value to the community in their posts. They never say this is how I did it. No, they just want you to think they're a genius. I can show you my $900 day trading the shit out of TSLA, but that doesn't tell the whole story. Gamblers never show you when they lose, you might never hear from those guys again because behind the scenes, they over-leveraged themselves and blew up. Some may actually be consistently profitable and the trades are 100% legit. That's fantastic. But again, I don't care, and you shouldn't either. You shouldn't compare yourself to others.
"Everyone's a genius in a bull market" Here's the thing.. Markets change. Edges disappear. Trading strategies were made by traders who traded during times when everything they did worked. Buy all the breakouts? Sure! It's the fucking tech bubble! Everything works! I'm sure all those typical setups used to work fantastically at some point in time. But the more people realize them, the less effective they are. SOMEONE has to be losing money on the opposite side of a winning trade, and who's willing to do that when the trade is so obvious? That being said, some things are obvious AND still work. Technical analysis works... sometimes. The caveat to that is, filters. You need to, in some way, filter out certain setups from others. For example, you could say, "I won't take a wedge pattern setup on an intraday chart unless it is in a higher time frame uptrend, without nearby resistance, and trading above average volume with news on that day."
Have a plan. If you can't describe your plan, you don't have one. Think in probabilities. You should think entirely in "if, then" scenarios. If X has happens, then Y will probably happen. "If BABA breaks this premarket support level on the open I will look for a pop up to short into."
Backtest. Most traders lose mainly because they think they have an edge but they don't. You read these books and all this stuff online telling you "this is a high probability setup" but do you know that for a fact? There's different ways to backtest, but I think the best way for a beginner is manual backtesting with a chart and an excel sheet. This builds up that screen time and pattern recognition faster. This video shows how to do that. Once I saw someone do it, it didn't seem so boring and awful as I thought it was.
Intelligence is not enough. You're smarter than most people, that's great, but that alone is not enough to make you money in trading necessarily. Brilliant people try and fail at this all the time, lawyers, doctors, surgeons, engineers.. Why do they fail if they're so smart? It's all a fucking scam. No, a number of reasons, but the biggest is discipline and emotional intelligence.
Journal every day. K no thanks, bro. That's fucking gay. That's how I felt when I heard this advice but really that is pride and laziness talking. This is the process you need to do to learn what works for you and what doesn't. Review the trades you took, what your plan was, what actually happened, how you executed. Identify what you did well and what you can work on. This is how you develop discipline and emotional intelligence, by monitoring yourself. How you feel physically and mentally, and how these states affect your decision-making.
Always be learning. Read as much as you can. Good quality books. Here's the best I've read so far;
Market Wizards -Jack Schwager
One Good Trade -Mike Bellafiore
The Daily Trading Coach -Bret Steenbarger
Psycho-cybernetics -Maxwell Maltz
Why You Win or Lose -Fred Kelly
The Art and Science of Technical Analysis -Adam Grimes
Dark Pools -Scott Patterson
Be nimble. Everyday I do my research on the symbols I'm trading and the fundamental news that's driving them. I might be trading a large cap that's gapping up with a beat on EPS and revenue and positive guidance. But if I see that stock pop up and fail miserably on the open amidst huge selling pressure, and I look and see the broader market tanking, guess what, I'm getting short, and that's just day trading. The movement of the market, on an intraday timeframe, doesn't have to make logical sense.
Adapt. In March I used to be able to buy a breakout on a symbol and swing it for the majority of the day. In the summer I was basically scalping on the open and being done for the day. Volatility changes, and so do my profit targets.
Be accountable. Be humble. Be honest. I take 100% responsibility for every dime I've lost or made in the market. It's not the market makers fault, it wasn't the HFTs, I pressed the button. I know my bad habits and I know my good habits.. my strengths/ my weaknesses.
Protect yourself from toxicity. Stay away from traders and people on forums who just have that negative mindset. That "can't be done" mentality. Day trading is a scam!! It can certainly be done. Prove it, you bastard. I'm posting to this particular forum because I don't see much of that here and apparently the mods to a good job of not tolerating it. As the mod wrote in the rules, they're most likely raging from a loss. Also, the Stocktwits mentality of "AAPL is going to TANK on the open! $180, here we come. $$$" , or the grandiose stories, "I just knew AMZN was going to go up on earnings. I could feel it. I went ALL IN. Options money, baby! ka-ching!$" Lol, that is so toxic to a new trader. Get away from that. How will you be able to remain nimble when this is your thought process?
Be good to yourself. Stop beating yourself up. You're an entrepreneur. You're boldly going where no man has gone before. You've got balls.
Acknowledge your mistakes, don't identify with them. You are not your mistakes and you are not your bad habits. These are only things that you do, and you can take action necessary to do them less.
It doesn't matter what people think. Maybe they think you're a fool, a gambler. You don't need their approval. You don't need to talk to your co-workers and friends about it to satisfy some subconscious plea for guidance; is this a good idea?
You don't need anyone's permission to become the person you want to be.
They don't believe in you? Fuck 'em. I believe in you.

What're your thoughts on these forex funded accounts? such FTMO, 5%ers etc. I understand that the target to max drawdown ratio on FTMO is 1:1, this isn't too bad as you can just adjust your risk per trade, but isn't staying below a 10% max drawdown unrealistic over the stretch of a year? I hear so many people talking about 10-30% returns a month on this forum. If we even believe that's true, do you really think you can acheive that without a 10% or even 20% drawdown? To me it seems like even if you manage to pass, you'll eventually have your acount closed but the leverage you gain from trading huge accounts can make it worth it. Anyway, at this point im just rambling but let me know your stance on these companies

Hello all.
The reason I am starting this AMA is because I want to give back to the community, many years ago when I first started in online marketing, a few people I bumped into online helped me massively when I was a complete noob. I recall a guy called Steve (not even sure where we first started talking) but I remember hassling him all the time, asking him really basic stuff such as 'how do I change my name servers' and 'how do I setup one HTML page to link to another' he never once ignored me and always helped me.
Then there were a varied bunch on Digital Point forums and Niche Chopper forums who helped massively when I was getting into affiliate marketing, Clickbank mainly and using SEO & PPC to drive traffic.
To put it bluntly, I am very grateful for the people that have helped me out over the years. Their support and my own persistence has helped me to achieve what I've achieved and I thought what better way to give back, than to do an AMA in a community which I feel is as close as resemblance as that of the communities of my past.
So, before we start, let me quickly go through what I am experienced in, as there is no point people asking questions I can't help to answer. I started affiliate marketing in 2007, after joining Digital Point forum, first it was proxy websites and Google Adsense and then selling proxy advertising on Yahoo Groups I'd built and then an SEO blog and Clickbank and a whole variety of other Clickbank products (forex, health, DJ recording software e.t.c.) then I was a vendor on Clickbank, then I sold that website. Then I began to focus on Amazon Associates and I've pretty much focused on that ever since, alongside third party monetisation with advertising platforms such as AdThrive, Affiliate Window, CJ and ShareaSale.
I am fortunate enough to be able to say I have made seven figure profits in this time all from Amazon Associate based websites, I've sold seven figure websites and bought six figure websites, I am from the UK and have a limited company.
Note: if one of the mods needs to verify any of these things, just message me, I appreciate it might look odd as I've used a throwaway account.
So ask away, I'll try my best to be as detailed as possible but there are a few things I have to keep confidential due to contracts e.t.c.

What factors predict the success of a Steam game?

I've seen quite a few discussions, comments and questions on /gamedev about what determines a game's success. How much does quality matter? Is establishing market awareness before launch the only thing that matters? Does a demo help or hurt? If your game has a poor launch, how likely is it to recover? Is it possible to roughly predict the sales of a game before launch?
In preparation for my game's launch, I spent a lot of time monitoring upcoming releases trying to find the answer to these questions. I compiled a spreadsheet, noted followers, whether it was Early Access or not, and saw how many reviews it received in the first week, month and quarter.
I'm sharing this data now in the hopes that it helps other developers understand and predict their games' sales.
First some notes on the data:

• One of the important sources of data are the number Steam reviews. There is good evidence that these correlate strongly with copies sold, with frequently cited ratios of 50 sales per Steam review, but there's a wide range. It seems likely that the majority of Steam games fall between 25 and 120 sales per Steam review, but there are outliers. Also, games with a very small number of reviews are much more likely to be outliers in this respect. My own game is the only game I have hard sales numbers for. You can read my lengthy Reddit post on its release, but the relevant numbers are that it sold 1587 copies in the first week and 3580 copies in its first quarter.
• The total number of games in the sample was 115.
• I selected games semi-randomly from from both Popular Upcoming and All Upcoming. This favors the popular upcoming tab somewhat and this was deliberate: I wanted a diverse sample but also one not completely dominated with titles that sold zero copies.
• Games are ordered by their release date which range from 10/26/18 to 12/20/18.

Game	Price	Launch Discount	Week Guess	Week actual	3 Month	3 Month/week	Followers	Early Access	Demo	Review Score
Pit of Doom	9.99	0	7	27	43	1.592592593	295	Y	N	0.8
Citrouille	9.99	0.2	16	8	12	1.5	226	N	N
Corspe Party: Book	14.99	0.1	32	40	79	1.975	1015	N	N	0.95
Call of Cthulhu	44.99	0	800	875	1595	1.822857143	26600	N	N	0.74
On Space	0.99	0.4	0	0	0		4	N	N
Orphan	14.99	0	50	0	8		732	N	N
Black Bird	19.99	0	20	13	34	2.615384615	227	N	N
Gloom	6.99	0	20	8	17	2.125	159	N	N
Gilded Rails	5.99	0.35	2	3	7	2.333333333	11	N	Y
The Quiet Man	14.99	0.1	120	207	296	1.429951691	5596	N	N	0.31
KartKraft	19.99	0.1	150	90	223	2.477777778	7691	Y	N	0.84
The Other Half	7.99	0	2	3	27	9	91	N	Y	0.86
Parabolus	14.99	0.15	0	0	0		16	N	Y
Yet Another Tower Defense	1.99	0.4	20	22	38	1.727272727	396	N	N	0.65
Galaxy Squad	9.99	0.25		8	42	5.25	3741	Y	N	0.87
Swords and Soldiers 2	14.99	0.1	65	36	63	1.75	1742	N	N	0.84
SpitKiss	2.99	0	3	1	2	2	63	N	N
Holy Potatoes	14.99	0	24	11	22	2	617	N	N	0.7
Kursk	29.99	0.15	90	62	98	1.580645161	2394	N	N	0.57
SimpleRockets 2	14.99	0.15	90	142	272	1.915492958	3441	Y	N	0.85
Egress	14.99	0.15	160	44	75	1.704545455	7304	Y	N	0.67
Kynseed	9.99	0	600	128	237	1.8515625	12984	Y	N	0.86
11-11 Memories	29.99	0	30	10	69	6.9	767	N	N	0.96
Rage in Peace	12.99	0.1	15	10	42	4.2	377	N	N	0.85
One Hour One Life	19.99	0	12	153	708	4.62745098	573	N	N	0.81
Optica	9.99	0	0	2	3	1.5	18	N	N
Cybarian	5.99	0.15	8	4	18	4.5	225	N	N
Zeon 25	3.99	0.3	3	11	12	1.090909091	82	Y	N
Of Gods and Men	7.99	0.4	3	10	18	1.8	111	N	Y
Welcome to Princeland	4.99	0.1	1	15	55	3.666666667	30	N	N	0.85
Zero Caliber VR	24.99	0.1	100	169	420	2.485207101	5569	Y	N	0.73
HellSign	14.99	0	100	131	334	2.549618321	3360	Y	N	0.85
Thief Simulator	19.99	0.15	400	622	1867	3.001607717	10670	N	N	0.81
Last Stanza	7.99	0.1	8	2	4	2	228	N	Y
Evil Bank Manager	11.99	0.1		106	460	4.339622642	8147	Y	N	0.78
Oppai Puzzle	0.99	0.3		36	93	2.583333333	54	N	N	0.92
Hexen Hegemony	9.99	0.15	3	1	5	5	55	Y	N
Blokin	2.99	0	0	0	0	0	10	N	N
Light Fairytale Ep 1	9.99	0.1	80	23	54	2.347826087	4694	Y	N	0.89
The Last Sphinx	2.99	0.1	0	0	1	0	17	N	N
Glassteroids	9.99	0.2	0	0	0	0	5	Y	N
Hitman 2	59.99	0	2000	2653	3677	1.385978138	52226	N	N	0.88
Golf Peaks	4.99	0.1	1	8	25	3.125	46	N	N	1
Sipho	13.99	0	24	5	14	2.8	665	Y	N
Distraint 2	8.99	0.1	40	104	321	3.086538462	1799	N	N	0.97
Healing Harem	12.99	0.1	24	10	15	1.5	605	N	N
Spark Five	2.99	0.3	0	0	0	0	7	N	N
Bad Dream: Fever	9.99	0.2	30	78	134	1.717948718	907	N	N	0.72
Underworld Ascendant	29.99	0.15	200	216	288	1.333333333	8870	N	N	0.34
Reentry	19.99	0.15	8	24	78	3.25	202	Y	N	0.95
Zvezda	5.99	0	2	0	0	0	25	Y	Y
Space Gladiator	2.99	0	0	1	2	2	5	N	N
Bad North	14.99	0.1	500	360	739	2.052777778	15908	N	N	0.8
Sanctus Mortem	9.99	0.15	3	3	3	1	84	N	Y
The Occluder	1.99	0.2	1	1	1	1	13	N	N
Dark Fantasy: Jigsaw	2.99	0.2	1	9	36	4	32	N	N	0.91
Farming Simulator 19	34.99	0	1500	3895	5759	1.478562259	37478	N	N	0.76
Don't Forget Our Esports Dream	14.99	0.13	3	16	22	1.375	150	N	N	1
Space Toads Mayhem	3.99	0.15	1	2	3	1.5	18	N	N
Cattle Call	11.99	0.1	10	19	53	2.789473684	250	Y	N	0.71
Ralf	9.99	0.2	0	0	2	0	6	N	N
Elite Archery	0.99	0.4	0	2	3	1.5	5	Y	N
Evidence of Life	4.99	0	0	2	4	2	10	N	N
Trinity VR	4.99	0	2	8	15	1.875	61	N	N
Quiet as a Stone	9.99	0.1	1	1	4	4	42	N	N
Overdungeon	14.99	0	3	86	572	6.651162791	77	Y	N	0.91
Protocol	24.99	0.15	60	41	117	2.853658537	1764	N	N	0.68
Scraper: First Strike	29.99	0	3	3	15	5	69	N	N
Experiment Gone Rogue	16.99	0	1	1	5	5	27	Y	N
Emerald Shores	9.99	0.2	0	1	2	2	12	N	N
Age of Civilizations II	4.99	0	600	1109	2733	2.464382326	18568	N	N	0.82
Dereliction	4.99	0	0	0	0	#DIV/0!	18	N	N
Poopy Philosophy	0.99	0	0	6	10	1.666666667	6	N	N
NOCE	17.99	0.1	1	3	4	1.333333333	35	N	N
Qu-tros	2.99	0.4	0	3	7	2.333333333	4	N	N
Mosaics Galore. Challenging Journey	4.99	0.2	1	1	8	8	14	N	N
Zquirrels Jump	2.99	0.4	0	1	4	4	9	N	N
Dark Siders III	59.99	0	2400	1721	2708	1.573503777	85498	N	N	0.67
R-Type Dimensions Ex	14.99	0.2	10	48	64	1.333333333	278	N	N	0.92
Artifact	19.99	0	7000	9700	16584	1.709690722	140000	N	N	0.53
Crimson Keep	14.99	0.15	20	5	6	1.2	367	N	N
Rival Megagun	14.99	0	35	26	31	1.192307692	818	N	N
Santa's Workshop	1.99	0.1	3	1	1	1	8	N	N
Hentai Shadow	1.99	0.3		2	12	6	14	N	N
Ricky Runner	12.99	0.3	3	6	13	2.166666667	66	Y	N	0.87
Pro Fishing Simulator	39.99	0.15	24	20	19	0.95	609	N	N	0.22
Broken Reality	14.99	0.1	60	58	138	2.379310345	1313	N	Y	0.98
Rapture Rejects	19.99	0	200	82	151	1.841463415	9250	Y	N	0.64
Lost Cave	19.99	0	3	8	11	1.375	43	Y	N
Epic Battle Fantasy 5	14.99	0	300	395	896	2.26835443	4236	N	N	0.97
Ride 3	49.99	0	75	161	371	2.304347826	1951	N	N	0.74
Escape Doodland	9.99	0.2	25	16	19	1.1875	1542	N	N
Hillbilly Apocalypse	5.99	0.1	0	1	2	2	8	N	N
X4	49.99	0	1500	2638	4303	1.63115997	38152	N	N	0.7
Splotches	9.99	0.15	0	2	1	0.5	10	N	N
Above the Fold	13.99	0.15	5	2	6	3	65	Y	N
The Seven Chambers	12.99	0.3	3	0	0	#DIV/0!	55	N	N
Terminal Conflict	29.99	0	5	4	11	2.75	125	Y	N
Just Cause 4	59.99	0	2400	2083	3500	1.680268843	50000	N	N	0.34
Grapple Force Rena	14.99	0	11	12	29	2.416666667	321	N	Y
Beholder 2	14.99	0.1		479	950	1.983298539	16000	N	N	0.84
Blueprint Word	1.99	0		12	15	1.25	244	N	Y
Aeon of Sands	19.99	0.1	20	12	25	2.083333333	320	N	N
Oakwood	4.99	0.1		32	68	2.125	70	N	N	0.82
Endhall	4.99	0	4	22	42	1.909090909	79	N	N	0.84
Dr. Cares - Family Practice	12.99	0.25	6	3	8	2.666666667	39	N	N
Treasure Hunter	16.99	0.15	200	196	252	1.285714286	4835	N	N	0.6
Forex Trading	1.99	0.4	7	10	14	1.4	209	N	N
Ancient Frontier	14.99	0	24	5	16	3.2	389	N	N
Fear the Night	14.99	0.25	25	201	440	2.189054726	835	Y	N	0.65
Subterraneus	12.99	0.1	4	0	3	#DIV/0!	82	N	N
Starcom: Nexus	14.99	0.15		53	119	2.245283019	1140	Y	N	0.93
Subject 264	14.99	0.2	25	2	3	1.5	800	N	N
Gris	16.9	0	100	1484	4650	3.133423181	5779	N	N	0.96
Exiled to the Void	7.99	0.3	9	4	11	2.75	84	Y	N

Column Explanations
For the columns that are not self-explanatory:

• Launch Discount: Percent first week discount, 0.25 = 25% off
• Week Guess: This is my guess, made before the game launched as to how many Steam purchaser reviews it would have after exactly one week.
• Week Actual: The number of reviews that the game had after 1 week.
• 3 Month: The number of reviews that the game had after 3 months.
• Followers: The number of group followers the game had prior to launch. In some cases this recorded just before launch, in some cases up to a week before.
• Review score: The percent favorable score on Steam at the one month mark. Games needed a minimum of 20 reviews to be counted.

Question 1: Does Quality Predict Success?

There was a recent blog post stating that the #1 metric for indie games' success is how good it is.
Quality is obviously a subjective metric. The most obvious objective measure of quality for Steam games is their % Favorable Review score. This is the percentage of reviews by purchasers of the game that gave the game a positive rating. I excluded any game that did not have at least 20 user reviews in the first month, which limited the sample size to 56.
The (Pearson) correlation of a game's review score to its number of reviews three months after its release was -0.2. But 0.2 (plus or minus) isn't a very strong correlation at all. More importantly, Pearson correlation can be swayed if the data contains some big outliers. Looking at the actual games, we can see that the difference is an artifact of an outlier. Literally. Valve's Artifact by far had the most reviews after three months and had one of the lowest review scores (53% at the time). Removing this game from the data changed the correlation to essentially zero.
Spearman's Rho, an alternative correlation model that correlates rank position and minimizes the effect of huge outliers produced a similar result.
Conclusion: If there is correlation between a game's quality (as measured by Steam review score) and first quarter sales (as measured by total review count), it is too subtle to be detected in this data.

Question 2: Do Demos, Early Access or Launch Discounts Affect Success/Failure?

Unfortunately, there were so few games that had demos prior to release (10) that only a very strong correlation would really tell us anything. As it happens, there was no meaningful correlation one way or another.
There were more Early Access titles (28), but again the correlation was too small to be meaningful.
More than half the titles had a launch week discount and there was actually a moderate negative correlation of -0.3 between having a launch discount and first week review count. However it appears that this is primarily the result of the tendency of AAA titles (which sell the most copies) to not do launch discounts. Removing the titles that likely grossed over a $1 million in the first week reduced the correlation to basically zero.
Conclusion: Insufficient data. No clear correlation between demos, Early Access or launch discount and review counts: if they help or hurt the effect is not consistent enough to be seen here.

Question 3: Does pre-launch awareness (i.e., Steam followers) predict success?

You can see the number of "followers" for any game on Steam by searching for its automatically-created Community Group. Prior to launch, this is a good rough indicator of market awareness.
The correlation between group followers shortly before launch and review count at 3 months was 0.89. That's a very strong positive correlation. The rank correlation was also high (0.85) suggesting that this wasn't the result of a few highly anticipated games.
Save for a single outlier (discussed later), the ratio of 3 month review counts to pre-launch followers ranged from 0 (for the handful of games that never received any reviews) to 1.8, with a median value of 0.1. If you have 1000 followers just prior to launch, then at the end of the first quarter you should expect "about" 100 reviews.
One thing I noticed was that there were a few games that had follower counts that seemed too high compared to secondary indicators of market awareness, such as discussion forum threads and Twitter engagement. After some investigation I came to the conclusion that pre-launch key activations are treated as followers by Steam. If a game gave away a lot of Steam keys before launch (say as Kickstarter rewards or part of beta testing) this would cause the game to appear to have more followers than it had gained "organically."
Conclusion: Organic followers prior to launch are a strong predictor of a game's eventual success.

Question 4: What about price?

The correlation between price and review count at 3 month is 0.36, which is moderate correlation. I'm not sure how useful that data point is: it is somewhat obvious that higher budget games have larger marketing budgets.
There is a correlation between price and review score of -0.41. It seems likely that players do factor price into their reviews and a game priced at $60 has a higher bar to clear to earn a thumbs up review than a game priced at $10.

Question 5: Do first week sales predict first quarter results?

The correlation between number of reviews after 1 week and number of reviews after 3 months was 0.99. The Spearman correlation was 0.97. This is the highest correlation I found in the data.
Excluding games that sold very few copies (fewer than 5 reviews after the first week), most games had around twice as many reviews after 3 months as they did after 1 week. This suggests that games sell about as many copies in their first week as they do in the next 12 weeks combined. The vast majority of games had a tail ratio (ratio of reviews at 3 months to 1 week) of between 1.3 to 3.2.
I have seen a number of questions from developers whose game had a poor launch on Steam and wanted to know what they can do to improve sales. While I'm certain post-launch marketing can have an effect on continuing sales, your first week does seem to set hard bounds on your results.
Conclusion: ALL SIGNS POINT TO YES

Question 6: Does Quality Help with a Game's "Tail"?

As discussed in the last question while first week sales are very strongly correlated with first quarter, there's still quite a wide range of ratios. Defining a game's Tail Ratio as the ratio of reviews after 3 months to after 1 week, the lowest value was 0.95 for "Pro Fishing Simulator" which actually managed to lose 1 review. The highest ratio was 6.9, an extreme outlier that I'll talk about later. It is perhaps not a coincidence that the worst tail had a Steam score of 22% and the best tail had a Steam score of 96%.
The overall correlation between the Tail Ratio and Steam score was 0.42.
Conclusion: Even though there is no clear correlation between quality and overall review count/sales, there is a moderate correlation between a game's review score and its tail. This suggests that "good games" do better in the long run than "bad games," but the effect is small compared to the more important factor of pre-launch awareness.

Question 7: Is it possible to predict a game's success before launch without knowing its wishlists?

While I was compiling the data for each game, sometime prior to its scheduled launch date, I would make a prediction of how many reviews I thought it would receive in its first week and add that prediction to the spreadsheet.
The #1 factor I used in making my prediction was group follower count. In some cases I would adjust my prediction if I thought that value was off, using secondary sources such as Steam forum activity and Twitter engagement.
The correlation between my guess and the actual value was 0.96, which is a very strong correlation. As you can see in the data, the predictions are, for the most part, in the right ballpack with a few cases where I was way off.
Based on my experience, multiplying the group follower count by 0.1 will, in most cases, give you a ballpark sense of the first week quarter review count. If a game doesn't have at least one question in the discussion forum for every 100 followers, that may indicate that there are large number of "inorganic" followers and you may need to adjust your estimate.
Conclusion: Yes, with a few exceptions, using follower data and other indicators you can predict first week results approximately. Given the strong correlation between first week and quarter sales, it should also be possible to have a ballpark idea of first quarter results before launch.

Final Question: What about the outliers you mentioned?

There were a few games in the data that stood out significantly in one way or another.
Outlier #1: Overdungeon. This game had 77 group followers shortly before launch, a fairly small number and based solely on that number I would have expected fewer than a dozen reviews in the first week. It ended up with 86. Not only that, it had a strong tail and finished its first quarter with 572 reviews. This was by a wide margin the highest review count to follower ratio in the sample.
Based on the reviews, it appears to basically be Slay the Spire, but huge in Asia. 90% of the reviews seem to be in Japanese or Chinese. If anyone has some insight to this game's unusual apparent success, I'm very curious.
This seems to be the only clear example in the data of a game with minimal following prior to launch going on to having a solid first quarter.
Outlier #2: 11-11 Memories Retold. This game had 767 group followers shortly before launch, ten times as many as Overdungeon. That's still not a large number for even a small indie title. It had a fair amount going for it, though: it was directed by Yoan Fanise, who co-directed the critally acclaimed Valiant Hearts, a game with a similar theme. It was animated by Aardman Studios of "Wallace and Gromit" fame. Its publisher was Bandai Namco Europe, a not inexperienced publisher. The voice acting was by Sebastian Koch and Elijah Wood. It has dozens of good reviews in both gaming and traditional press. It currently has a 95% positive review rating on Steam.
Despite all that, nobody bought it. 24 hours after it came out it had literally zero reviews on Steam. One week after it came out it had just 10. Three months later it had demonstrated the largest tail in the data, but even then it had only climbed to 69 reviews. Now it's at about 100, an incredible tail ratio, but almost certainly a commercial failure.
This is a solid example that good game + good production values does necessarily equal good sales.

Final notes:
The big take-aways from this analysis are:

• The success of a game on Steam very strongly depends on its first week performance
• A game's first week performance is strongly correlated with its pre-launch market awareness
• Quality does not seem to strongly impact first week performance, but may have some positive effect on a game's "tail"
• All inferences regarding sales are dependent on the relationship between review counts and sales

Thanks for reading!