I’ve been learning forex and demoing for the past few months on a forex demo account and I have been winning 90% of the time.
I recently had what I thought was a good idea for a new trading strategy. I visually backtested it half-assedly and decided to give it a go this week.
I deposited $10,000 into my account and tried playing the live forex market.
Lost all six trades in a row and 45% of the account
I wasn’t using any strategy as such, just taking trades based on levels I worked out or read about, or following what other people were doing but without their discipline or precision. I flailed around a lot, buying and selling EUR/JPY, especially about 10-15 times a day. Every time I bought, it would immediately drop 30 pips. If I sold, it would rally.
Granted, six trades in a week is not a proper sample, but I’ve decided to scrap the idea after going 0-6 and go back to what was previously working for me.
Some of it was bad luck, and some of it was that the market conditions had changed. Volatility had increased dramatically and the fundamental landscape was changing, but I was too green to recognize this. I was also taking macro fundamental themes and assuming they would apply to my 1hr charts.
I was also stubbornly USD bullish, during a time when it was doing really badly. Although I called myself a trend trader, I just kept buying USD when it was trending downward, convinced that the top had come in EUR/USD or AUD/USD or whatever.
Guess doing it on a demo forex account is very different from the real one as the money is mine.