Would I Be A Failure For Quiting Forex?
Lamenting how I blew up trading accounts, or how difficult it has been predicting the market in an attempt to become profitable wouldn't be a good use of your time. I thought I had reached my breaking point when I quit soccer betting and would drop forex trading for good. But you know, when the reality of my situation hit me, I realized I was only fooling myself, as I had gone too far to turn back. This is my story.
In the first quarter of 2015, freshly graduated from the University with a useless degree in Agriculture, majoring in Animal Science, I knew I wouldn’t look for a job on any farm, nor did I have a piece of land to cultivate and practice what I learned. I dreamed of being financially independent and believed music would take me there if I had the capital to build my studio, (where I would practice music production, release albums, and make a ton of money).
The only legal means of generating large sums of money within a short period of time I knew was forex trading. Boy was I wrong, as I was about to find out how deluded I was, chasing a pipe dream. I borrowed $100, added it to the $100 I had saved up, and deposited my first $200 with a broker I had found during my research into the financial markets industry. I was so proud of myself as I saw the road to millions of dollars, paved with gold.
On the fateful Monday morning I charged my laptop and took a short trip to a restaurant I trusted would have a constant power supply, air conditioning, and a serene ambiance where I wouldn’t be bothered. I planned to buy a bottle of soft drink as an excuse to use the space, taking a sip every 10 minutes to avoid getting kicked out. I thought I would be there all day, making money from carefully executed trades and coming back home, richer than my wildest dreams. Boy was I mistaken.
I chose Kilimanjaro Restaurant in Port Harcourt GRA, opposite the group of banks, and I felt like a serious multimillionaire. I was in the zone, I thought, and I was making big-boy moves. I plugged my charger into their sockets while I waited for my order, powered up my laptop and in no time, my phone hotspot was connected. I was online, in a dog-it-dog world, trying for the first time to make a buck.
Inexperienced and anxious, I knew nothing about emotional control. Discipline was a foreign word as I strongly believed, luck was on my side and I had to be brave enough to make a move. I had no risk management. Armed with a couple of indicators and enthusiasm, I believed I was ready. My lot size was huge and my EUR/USD forex pair was locked and loaded, about to take a leap into my new millionaire destiny. I felt I was born to do this and all my life decisions were orchestrated to bring me to that very moment. So I hit the Buy button.
The first few seconds read a loss of a few dollars, (which I later learned was the spread - a broker’s fee for each market execution) and I panicked, thinking I was losing my money, so I closed the trade. Sweating in the air-conditioned cafe, I began to have doubts. My $200 had come down to a little over $180. I took a hard look at the market and I decided to take another position. This time I would Sell, I thought.
After hitting the Sell button, I saw a loss, then a profit of a few dollars, and in under a minute I was at a loss again. But this time the market moved faster than the first. The loss was too big to get out of the trade, so I stayed regretting closing the first Buy position, as I would have been in huge profit. I believed the market would reverse, so I stayed, shaking in fear, watching my money go down. I had entered the market with no stop-loss and I had a huge lot size.
In less than 10 minutes, my $200 was gone. Immediately the account was blown the market reversed its direction. I felt the broker manipulated the charts and I was scammed. I also felt it was a curse to have been facing the right direction in the first trade, only to get out prematurely and face the wrong direction. I had a lot of negative thoughts flowing through my mind, and I was about to be broke for a long time.
This was not how I imagined forex trading, as the online tutorials showed a relatively easy process of getting in and out of trades. Nobody told me about the demons I would encounter in the self-sabotaging habits of greed, impatience, fear, anxiety, superstition, and all other emotional problems I could never have guessed would pop up. Forex trading became the source of trouble that led me to a deep dive into my mental health and well-being. Spirituality became a must, as I sought help from all the forces of the Universe responsible for success.
I shut down my laptop, and left the Cafe, feeling defeated and fighting the urge to shed a tear. I was just a novice, I thought, and I decided I wasn’t ready for that world. So I quit. I went back home, slept off the growing depression, and woke up angry at my unprepared attempt to make money online. I blamed myself totally and vowed to be careful next time. How long it would take to raise another couple hundred dollars, was a mystery, but I knew I would be back someday.
Months later, I was posted to Kano to serve in the National Youth Service Corp, a program for fresh graduates, designed to mix up the citizens of Nigeria. This program involved taking graduates from one part of the country to another, aimed at unifying the multicultural population. It was during this phase of life that I learned how to predict soccer outcomes and this world of betting became my new nightmare. Beginners' luck led me to believe I had the hang of it and a few profits here and there convinced me to dive in deep. I was hooked, worse than forex, as the minimum bet required was way too accessible.
Every penny I could muster was taken by these brokers and all profits were lost in no time. I could barely feed. I was barely able to go anywhere or meet with my colleagues for any event. I was stuck on the platforms, trying to make money from all sorts of predictions. I researched hacks, fixed-match sources, and all sorts of prediction sites that promised high win rates all to no avail.
When my monthly government allowance was paid, I ran to the market to get foodstuff for the month because I knew the risk of having the money in my bank account, with such an expensive gambling habit. I would bet and have all games come through but one. Most times I would win and lose the money before getting a chance to withdraw it. This went on for a year and all my money was gone. A nightmare that continued into my first 3 years of employment.
Forex trading replaced the online soccer betting addiction when I got a job. This time I was hooked on binary options. Its allure was my ability to make a lot of fast money. I was able to raise my account balance from a hundred dollars to a couple of thousand, predicting the direction of the forex market within a short timeframe. I was making and losing so much money, so fast that I felt I could master the process in a short while and become profitable. This was only an illusion, as all my profits were reclaimed after a few days of trading.
Binary options played on the emotions, with the algorithm giving a couple of wins followed by a bunch of losses. I traded using the martingale strategy, which meant for every loss, the next trade had to be 2.3 times bigger to reclaim the previous loss. This meant that a short losing streak would wipe out an account balance that took hours and sometimes days to build, depending on the initial trade size.
Convinced that I was almost figuring myself out, formulating lots of strategies with which my emotions could be tamed and my profits would be spared, I was devasted to find out that the markets are manipulated and no amount of care could save me from their carefully targeted assaults. I was a tiny goldfish, swimming in an ocean of piranhas and sharks. Outnumbered and vulnerable, I decided the millions of Naira I had lost were enough.
After 7 years of trying to conquer the markets, I realized it was never going to happen, as I had too much pressure to succeed. Rushing the markets to yield a profit, I needed to clear my loan debt and make some vital purchases. This meant I was always going to be emotional, revenge trading and blowing up accounts, regularly. The money I set out to get was lost slowly over time and without a betting or trading addiction, my studio would have been built a long time ago. These and many more negative experiences made me decide to quit, in January 2023.
Then I remembered the overdue loans and how long it would take me to save up my meager salary to pay them back. I thought of my wardrobe screaming for new clothes. My almost dead computer system, my old phone, and my original goal, financial independence. These thoughts made me reconsider and I gave trading one more try. I went back to the drawing board. My forex courses became my favorite form of entertainment. I would watch traders share their journey to becoming profitable and I could relate to everything they shared, except the profitability part. I saw how much they used to fund their trading accounts and I got discouraged.
I decided to get back onto the scene, trading via proxy. I tried a couple of times to copy a signal provider manually. This meant looking at his telegram channel for buy and sell signals. It was so stressful as I needed to pay attention at work as well. This meant a lot of missed trades and late entries, leading to losses. I blew a part of my deposit and I decided signal providers weren't for me either. Then I made the worse mistake of all... I trusted an online trading telegram group.
I changed my approach once again. This time I sent $200 of my hard-earned, loan-stricken money to a scammer, posing as my forex coach. I was hoping for a huge return according to their fake testimonials. This fake telegram account posted fake screenshots and payout receipts for months, and I believed it was real. They blocked me after receiving my deposits. A full month's salary. My heart was broken. They had me doubting my intuition and feeling like a targetted individual. I wondered why I would make such a mistake in the first place. I took accountability for my stupidity and left them to karma.
My next strategy was to invest in copy-trading. I had tried and lost a lot of money copying traders with a broker I had trusted... A broker I knew for years. The first broker I had traded with them I discovered something fishy about their spread and slippage. Traders had access to my deposit and for some reason, they executed losing trades. It almost felt like they had the incentive to lose. I lost thousands of dollars over many trials.
Luckily, I stumbled on OctaFX Copytrading.
I realized traders wouldn't have access to my money, so I searched the OctaFX Copytrading app for promising traders to copy and it was a disaster. I still lost money when they lost money, and this they did shortly after I copied them. I wondered why a trader seemed to make all the right decisions and was profitable until I put my money to copy their trade. This brought back feelings of being witch-hunted. I couldn't believe that a trader did well when I wasn't copying them, but flopped when I did. So I quit that too. It turns out I was meant to be a Master Trader myself, providing services to other struggling traders. (Update: I withdrew the money and blew the account few days after this post ðŸ˜).
Finally, I decided to trade by myself, so I opened my Master Trader account, providing an opportunity for traders to make money as I make a profit. It’s been great so far, as the Forex Mastery course I took, had prepared me for such an adventure. I intend to keep improving, learning, and practicing what I learn, till I reach the “Profit Land”, carrying every copier along. My strategy is to take small profits, regularly, and over time, this would yield great overall profits for copiers who trust the process and myself.
Forex trading is advised to be done with a huge trading account, for adequate risk management and reward per trade, but I began with only $80, as that was all I could muster from bank overdrafts. This is a bad idea as trading is only advised with capital that one can afford to lose. I cannot afford to lose any more dollars to the market, therefore, I have to win. I know this story is just beginning, and I'm already sharing its success. Cheers to new beginnings and not quitting the dream of financial independence.
I’m here now. Find me on the OctaFX Copytrading platform going by the nickname Humbled-Trader. Let's get to the "Profit Land" together, one pip at a time. Below is a progress report after 4 days of trading. Join our Telegram channel for more updates.
Psssssyyyyccchhhhheeeee! ðŸ˜
As I said a couple lines back, I had to update this post and repost it for full disclosure and transparency. I lost all that progress and sme couple more millions. I think I grew impatient with the low leverage I was using, so I withdrew the money, opened a higher leverage account, then blew the money. And it's been downhill since then.
I have tried everything except use the low leverage again. For some reason I keep feeling I can make this money faster, but the market just keeps knocking me back down. I even tried prop Firm accounts. After passing and getting funded, I blew the account. This happened to 3 accounts and since then I haven't been able to pass any funded challenges. Even when I passed phase 1 in the last 2 accounts I purchased, I still blew it in phase 2.
When I knew here was a serious problem was when I blew a $100,000 prop fim account. A large sum I felt I could retire on once I was able to purchase it. I have been humbled beyond my imagination, and I intend to get to the bottom of this. I am already at the bottom, just waiting to spring back up, so help me God.
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