Today, I found a great video that I thought I would share with you.  Big shout out to John for finding the video and sharing it on Google+.  It is an interview with Trader and Trading Coach Denise Shull.  She focuses on the psychological aspects of becoming a professional trader and shares her experiences.  Although she talks about markets other than Forex, the concepts that she discusses apply to any market.

There are a lot of different topics that are covered in this video.  The ones that I found most interesting were:

• How to create an effective trading journal
• Why most of the trading advice out there is rubbish
• How long it will take the average person to become a professional trader
• The Perfect Indicator
• Why you should never try to control your emotions
• The one biggest piece of advice that Denise gives to beginning traders
• Why traditional trading psychology is broken
• And much more!

I found this video insightful and I hope it helps you gain a better understanding of the psychology of successful trading.  The most interesting thing that I learned from this video is that there is a lot of conventional wisdom that we learn from trading books and we readily accept that information as gospel.  However, sometimes when we stop to think about what we are actually doing when we are trading well, we are really doing something entirely different.

What did you learn from this video?  Did you agree with what she said?

So after a lot of thought and research, I have decided to make Kiva the official partner charity of Trading Heroes.  There are several reasons for this decision.  Here they are in no particular order:

• They have an excellent rating on Charity Navigator, an independent charity evaluator
• Kiva makes loans to micro businesses in developing countries.  That means we are supporting people who are creating products, services and jobs.  I feel that this will go much further in ending world poverty than just donating money.
• They have a 98.88% repayment rate at the time of this writing
• Each loan is only $25, not a huge risk

Loans That Change Lives

How it works

• Choose a borrower from the list
• Loan $25 to their project
• When the total amount that the person wishes to borrow is fulfilled, the loan is given out
• They repay you according to the terms of the loan
• Do it again!

The risks

• These are unsecured loans, so you could lose all of your investment.  Luckily it is a small amount.
• There is no return on the loan, you do not receive any interest

How I will support them

I will donate 5% of all proceeds from the sale of Trading Heroes products and affiliate sales to Kiva and I will blog about the loans.  Trading is all about learning to create an income by educating yourself to trade in order to live The Trading Lifestyle.  By supporting people in developing countries that want to help themselves, I believe that we can make a difference and help them to live a better lifestyle too.

Are there any charities that you support that you want to us to know about?  Leave a comment below and tell about it any why you support that charity.

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Jessica Peletier, Full-Time Trader

Hello Traders…Today, I’m proud to present the next interview in my series called The Trading Lifestyle Podcast.  My first interview with Pro Trader Haji Warithu went well and I hope you enjoy this interview because it was a lot of fun.

Jessica Peletier is a full-time trader who lives in Western Australia.  I discovered her through Twitter and have followed her Tweets and her blog posts for awhile now.  She always has insightful commentary about what it means to be a full-time trader.

As Jessica readily admits in the interview, she does not depend solely on her trading income to make a living because her husband has a full-time job.  However, her trading income does provide a nice supplement and keeps her from having to do some jobs that she has had in the past (and didn’t like).

This allows her to live The Trading Lifestyle and spend a lot of time with her family.  She primarily trades currencies and CFDs.

What I enjoyed the most about speaking with her is her enthusiasm for trading.  Follow her on Twitter or check out her blog at RogueTraderette.com.  If you have any questions for Jessica, feel free to leave a question below.

We discussed some interesting topics in this interview…

In this episode:

• How she got into trading
• What she was doing before trading
• Who Jessica learned to trade from
• How to gently let your spouse/partner get used to the fact that trading involves wins and losses
• What CFDs are and why are they just might be the best thing to trade ever (and why you might not be able to trade them)!
• How Jessica tests her trades
• What she does in her free time to enjoy the Trading Lifestyle

Right-click here to download the MP3

Click here to subscribe to Trading Heroes YouTube channel

Click here to subscribe via iTunes

Click here to subscribe via RSS (non-iTunes feed)

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First, I want to prove that this system works with real money in live market conditions.  Although some people may argue that this is almost like trading a demo account, I disagree.  Even having a small amount of money on the line is way more realistic than trading any demo account.

Second, I want to prove that beginners can start with a very small amount of money and only add more money when they are successful with the small account first.  This was Haji’s recommendation to beginners when I interviewed him and I think that it is very sound advice.  Starting small will be an integral part of my message on this blog.

Anyway, on the results.  It was a pretty good month…

January 2012 Results

The final result was +5.39% on the month. Yes, this will not make me rich, but it is a great start.  If you want to see all of my trades in this account in (almost) real time, check out my online Trading Report on MyFxBook.

I feel that I did a really good job of being patient and letting the trades come to me.  On the other hand, I did miss a couple of trade setups that would have been profitable.  But overall, I’m happy with the performance.

How was your trading in January?  Feel free to leave links to your trading reports on MyFxBook/MT4i, your YouTube trade reviews or your blog posts.  Let me know in the comments below…

I already have enough Viagra, thank you very much…I don’t need those links.

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I met Haji Warithu through a Forex trading course that we both went through and until this interview, I had only contacted him via email.  We have kept in touch here and there over the years and in a pretty short amount of time, he has managed to become a professional independent Forex Trader.

Before becoming a pro trader, Haji worked on an LNG (liquified natural gas) ship and was out to sea for months at a time.  Like many independent traders, he wanted to spend more time with has family and have more control of his life.

Haji lives in Brunei, so I had to be up a little early in the morning to get this interview, but it was totally worth it.  Haji will be coming out with a book on how to become a successful Forex Trader, so keep an eye out for that.  I will review it here as soon as it becomes available.

Many thanks to Haji to taking the time out to speak with me.  If you want to see what he is trading, check out his blog.

This is my first podcast and I already have a few more pro traders lined up, so stay tuned for the next episodes! I did this interview on Skype and the connection wasn’t the best, so there are pauses at times, but it is a great look at what it takes to trade for a living.

Let me know what you think.  If you know of a professional independent trader that you would like to see interviewed, please let me know in the comments below.

In this episode:

• The mentor that Haji attributes most of his success to.
• How he much money he believes you need to get started in Forex.
• What to look for when choosing an Islamic broker.
• The routine that he goes through to start his trading day.
• What Haji does while he is waiting for his trades to setup that prevents him from taking bad trades.
• His experience with teaching students and why he doesn’t do it anymore.
• We talk a little about his upcoming book and how he manages to find time to write it.

Right-click here to download the MP3

Click here to subscribe to Trading Heroes YouTube channel

Click here to subscribe via iTunes

Click here to subscribe via RSS (non-iTunes feed)

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Since I was on the freeway, I could not turn around.  I had to keep going.

Combine that with the speed and the fact that I was on a motorcycle and that made it almost impossible to take a picture of…it was elusive.  Eventually, I saw it enough times that I had to get a picture of it, just because it was so weird.   So I stalked it and here is the picture:

It looks a lot bigger in real life!

Consistent trading profits are also elusive.  Yes, that is a huge stretch…trying to connect a giant stuffed panda to Forex trading.  But I’m trying…

Anyway, here is the trade:

The final result was a +0.61% on this trade.  To see all of my trades in (almost) real time, check out my trading log and click on the full report.

There is a lot of confusion out there amongst beginners not only about risk, but how leverage and interest factor into the calculation.

Needless to say, these forum posts end up being super long threads about how to calculate your leverage, then how to calculate your risk and some people even throw in an interest rollover calculation into the mix just to show you how smart they are.

Quite frankly, it isn’t that complicated.  I feel bad for the beginners who have to read through these long, drawn out forum posts when the solution is very simple.  If you are just getting started in Forex, here is how to calculate risk in Forex.

Easy, right?  I’m all about making things as simple as possible.

I’m using Oanda as an example because they are my broker, I do not get paid to promote them.  Check to see if your broker has a similar risk calculation on the order screen.  If not, you may consider switching to a broker that does.

The great thing is that you can try out demo accounts from almost all of the brokers out there and see how you like their platform.  So before you switch or even before you deposit real money, start demo trading and figure out which broker works best for you.

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If you have never heard of this movie, I would highly recommend that you check it out on Netflix.  I mentioned it before, but I never posted the video.  Or if you like to kick it old school, get the DVD.  I don’t find it inspirational because I want to do something crazy like this.  I find it inspirational because it shows us how far you can really take your passion.

Check out the trailer:

How far can we take our trading?  What is really possible?

Well, I was definitely walking the tightrope on this trade.  Here is the analysis:

The final result was a +1.03% gain on the trade.  As always, this was a strategy that was backtested and demo tested before ever risking real money.  You can check out the history of the process here.  The price action looked good and I should have let the final position run!  As I write this, I would have been up 252 pips, if I held on.

Oh well, this is why this blog is not called “Duh, Winning”.

But that’s not the right way to think.  I’m not going to should all over myself.  Lesson learned…bring on that next trade!

Hope you are trading well!

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Photo Credit