For a few months, we’ve had a Forex category on the NicAndPatrick website, and through that time, no articles have been published in that specific category. That changes today. I want to start a blog series all about my experience with trading and Forex in general. I won’t be giving trading advice for specific currency pairs, at least, that isn’t the plan as of this article. So, if you’re looking for that, I recommend looking for closed groups with professional and knowledgable traders. If you looking for someone’s personal experiences, you’ve find the right place. I will have articles about my best trades, worst trades, biggest winners and biggest losers. Along with that, I’ll have motivational articles and articles that explain why Forex was better for me than stocks. Let’s begin with a very important topic, though, which is how I began trading right out of high school.

My fascination with trading began my sophomore year in high school, mainly when I started looking into stocks. I had heard so many thing about the market crash of 2008, but I knew very little about it. My family, at least from my knowledge, are not active traders in markets. I know that a decent amount of my family has money in certain funds and stocks, but to my knowledge, none of them are active traders by themselves. Because of this, my life wasn’t too altered by this huge market crash, but it also meant that I had very little knowledge of the whole situation.

I started looking into markets, specifically stocks, and what makes them move. I took in a lot of knowledge about stocks, which I will talk about more in my post about why I chose FX over stocks, but one of the biggest things I noticed is that those trading FX in 2008 seemed (on the surface) to be more composed than those trading stocks. Now, there is a huge list of reasons why this happened, but it, from my understanding, comes down to the fact that most FX traders are trading at least 8 different pairs of currency, so their equity is likely to not be affected AS MUCH if just one pair crashes.

Keep in mind, I realize there was a ton of money made during the “crash.” But it seems like people are often too shy to talk about how much money they made shorting companies that year, especially while others were suffering from losing so much. I just wanted to point out that I do understand that, because it’s likely someone will claim I am ignorant about stocks. Truth is, most people are ignorant about trading – including traders. There is so much information to take in, and you can spend years doing research, studying markets, and reading and learning. You still won’t know it all.

Moving on, though, it seemed that having this interest in financial markets set me apart from a lot of other people my age. Most people would see the nice car and house that the person I was doing research on had and think it was:

1. A scam
2. Fake
3. Unrealistic
4. Perfect

Now, the people who thought the first three things would typically be cut out of my life immediately, but those people who saw it as perfect would go two ways. They would either get wrapped up in the possessions the person had and forget about what it took for them to get there, or they would show an interest in the work it took to get those things. There was one person I met throughout high school that shared that interest with me, and I bet you’ll never guess who it is..

Moving forward a few months, I was opened up to a new world of trading – Forex. When most people I’ve talked to think of trading, they think of Wall Street and stocks, unfortunately. In fact, when I say I trade currency, 90% of the time, the person has no clue what that means. While it isn’t as glorified in the media as stocks are, $4,000,000,000,000 are traded a day on the FX market. It is estimated that only $148,000,000,000 are traded in stocks per day. That is a massive difference. $4 trillion vs $148 billion. To me, it makes no sense for less people to understand currency trading, but that’s just how the world is now.

Anyway, I was opened up to currency trading through YouTube, which seems to have always been a place I called home. A car channel I watched had recently featured a new person, and there was a ton of controversy around this person, so I did my own research. Upon doing this research, I found out more information on trading foreign exchange.

I spend a couple years “lurking” around the markets and looking at stocks. I also spent a ton of time comparing stock to FX, but I could never decide what I enjoyed and understood more, until one day I just told myself I was going with Forex. I don’t necessarily remember what it was that convinced me, but whatever it was, it worked. By this time, it was Spring of 2014, and I was ready to pull the plug on purchasing a trading course, which was ironically co-founded by the same person I found on YouTube, and in early summer 2014, I finally purchased the course, which is Infinite Prosperity.

I’ll talk more about my experience with Infinite Prosperity in a future article. To this day, I still have mixed feelings about it. The content is phenomenal, and the lessons are great. After that though, my opinions change a bit. Another time, though.

After I read through the lessons, I setup my practice account with FXCM and had success with that account, so I funded my real account. Now, somebody will probably be curious as to where I had the money to trade, and I’ll be upfront about it. My grandparents had a college fund setup for me and my cousin and sister. As I chose not to go to college, I used a percentage of that money to start trading. I see no point in giving an exact figure, but that is how the initial deposit came about, just to clear the air. After all, I was straight out of high school, and I had just a few hundred dollars in my savings account.

After funding my account, I had a few incredible days of trading for the first time. I had just returned from an incredible trip to New York with Nic, and I was motivated, excited, and inexperienced. Put those together, and it’s a recipe for disaster.

The first few days, I made, to be honest, hundreds of dollars from trading. And two weeks later, I lost it all and some. To be completely honest, it was the most difficult thing I had ever put myself through. It ate at me for days, until I finally just had to realization that I had a choice. I could sit on my ass and mope about it, or I could get up and take back what was mine. It took time, but it finally worked it’s way back up to where I once way. And then repeat cycle. See, there’s an interesting thing about trading. Let’s take a minute to talk about it.

I see trading as a crazy, ridiculous thing, though that is meant in a good way from my perspective. See, you don’t ask a construction company to build a house one day, and then tell them to tear it down halfway the next. You especially don’t tell them to rebuild it the next day and have them tear the entire building down the next week. But with trading, that actually happens everyday. If you don’t focus on trading what you see, rather than trading what you think, you are likely fail.

Now, at this point in time, I am in profit, and everything is going very well. But I know that tomorrow, a lot could change, and after a few months of trading, I’m okay with that. I’m okay with that because I know that I WILL work back out of it. I’ve done it before with little experience, and I sure as hell can do it again. I’ve had multiple days where I’ve made more money than I used to make in over a month with just 20 minutes of trading at night.

I would also like to mention that after that cycle happened a couple times, I completely changed what I was doing. See, I got greedy – very greedy. I was too focused on making huge sums of money, rather than being consistent with returns. Now that I’m focused on consistency, rather than huge profit, things are working out. I also have had to learn a lot of discipline over that time. Mainly, I’ve had to discipline myself to stick to the strategy in every trade. I’m a rule breaker. I take what society says, and I try to turn it around. With most things I’ve done with the company and Nic, that’s worked. But this is a very different business. When the strategy signals an entry, enter. When one item is off, I stay away. I’ve missed out on big trades, but I’ve also saved myself from losing even more than that.

Keep in mind, everyone trades in their own way, and this is simply my way. I trade what I see, not what I think.

So let’s sum this article up by saying that my account is now growing at a consistent rate, and I couldn’t be more proud of everything I’ve learned. I love what I do, and I do what I love. Trading has opened my life up to a whole new world, and I truly can’t imagine where I would be without it. I’m not ashamed to share my losses, and I’m proud to share my wins. All of that will come in the near future, more than likely starting with these articles soon:

1. Why Trading is Important to Me
2. Why I Chose FX over Stocks
3. My Biggest Day
4. My Worst Day
5. How I Cut My Emotions from Trading

I hope to open NicAndPatrick.com up to a whole new audience, and I hope you all enjoy this series. If you have any questions, please feel free to let me know. I’d be happy to address them the best way possible. I’m not ashamed of my losses, and I’m proud of wins. I don’t always feel comfortable with giving out specific numbers, but I’m more than happy to share percentages.

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