Day Trading w/ ZERO Experience!

In this video, I attempt to trade Forex for two weeks with absolutely zero experience to see if it's something the average person should try out to secure some bags.

If you’re anything like me, you probably have heard of Forex mainly in spammy comments on YouTube or on Instagram profiles of bros in front of luxury cars with “entrepreneur” in their bios.

It seems that the main way people make money with Forex is by selling courses or indicators or signals to other people… and not by actually trading it.

So, I’m going to try to find out if it’s legitimate or not by spending this week researching, studying, getting setup with a brokerage and, then, finally making some trades.

What is Forex

Okay, so I spent the last few days learning as much as I can about Forex, and while I still find it kind of confusing, here’s the basics.

If you have no idea what forex is, it’s basically the foreign currency exchange. Currencies trade against each other in pairs, like the Euro and the US Dollar. You’ll see them on a chart or trade together where it will say something like EUR slash USD. In this instance, EUR is the Euro, which is the base currency. Then, USD (the US Dollar) is the counter currency, known as the quote currency. So, if you think the US economy will weaken, which would be bad for the US dollar, you might buy an order of EUR/USD.

The markets run 24 hours a day, 5 and a half days a week, with markets in major financial hubs across the globe in different time zones. Pretty much when the trading day here in the US ends, the forex market begins in Tokyo and Hong Kong.

I found a site called Babypips.com which has a huge, free course on the basics of Forex. And, while I’ve only completed 39 of the 351 lessons available, the way my personality is, I’m just champing at the bit to dive in and learn by doing.

But – if you do want to learn about Forex, definitely check out Babypips – they’re not a sponsor and it’s 100% free to learn, so it’s a really solid resource.

I also created a demo account with the platform it seems most Forex Traders use – and that’s MetaTrader 4. Most people recommend trading with a demo account for a month before using real money, but I don’t have time for that. With 11% of my Babypips education complete, I dove in with a test trade.

my first test trade

Obviously, I’m a natural-born Forex guru, so it’s time to use some real money.

When it comes to brokers, there’s nuances I still don’t really understand, and some are sketchy and some are legit, so do some research before you use real money. But, I went with Forex.com and deposited $1,000 via debit card. It was instantly deposited into my account and now I’m good to go.

With Forex, you always want to manage your risk. When you place a trade – either buying or selling – you want to set your stop loss – which will trigger the order to close so you don’t lose more money than you want to risk – and you want to set your take profit level, which will close your position if the currency moves in your favor.

Just like with stock option trading, you want to have a favorable risk/reward ratio. So, to simplify it – you might set your stop loss so that if the trade goes against you, you’d only lose a dollar. You may set your take profit level to close the trade when you’ve made $3. That way you manage your risk, which will keep you from blowing up your account.

Charting

One other aspect to trading is charting. In order to better predict price movements, you can use technical analysis to look for patterns and points of support and resistance. While I’m not super good at technical analysis, I do use it when trading stock options, so I’m familiar with the basics.

I opened a free trial on Trading View which is the site that just about everyone uses for charting. I’ll use Trading View to look up currency pairs, and, then, I’ll use MetaTrader 4 through Forex.com to execute the trades. If that all sounds confusing, it is. It just is.

But basically, the more indicators you have confirming where you think price is going to go – the better. There is no magic indicator or anything like that, but when you have multiple indicators all pointing to the same thing – that can help you be more confident in a trade.

A Few Trades Later

Well, alright, I guess I’m not the guru I thought I was. With three losing trades, I feel a bit aimless and just forcing trades for the sake of it.

I can see why this niche is so prone to gurus selling you their courses or signals because getting started is rather difficult. Even with a little background with trading in the stock market, I find myself super confused when trying to trade Forex.

I’m gonna have to watch some YouTube videos to see if I can get a little more guidance.

A Few Signal Services Later

Alright, so I strongly advise you don’t spend any money if you’re getting into Forex – but I did decide to try out some VIP group from a Forex YouTuber. The group is $40 per month and has a few training videos and puts out signals. So, I’ll go through his videos and then see if I can enter some trades based off the signals.

Practice

Alright, I watched the videos and they broke down simple methods to look for potential trades. Basically, I’m going to start by looking at different currency pairs on the 4 hour time frame. This means each candlestick represents 4 hours of trading, so it gives you a big picture of the price movement of the currency pair. Once you identify if it’s in an uptrend, downtrend, or just moving sideways, you can identify support and resistance levels and move into smaller timeframes to find an entry for a trade.

So, I went through a lot of currency pairs practicing my charting to try and get a solid grasp on the concepts… and I do feel a little bit more confident in trading Forex, but it really comes down to if I can do it profitably.

I’m not sure when or how often I’ll get signals – I joined a few other free Forex signal groups as well – so I’ll let you know how it goes.

I may even look for setups myself and try to enter some more trades on my own.

Thursday

Alright, so I’m currently trading stock options in my main brokerage account, my retirement account, and my Robinhood account for my $100k challenge video, AND I am trying to get a dropshipping experiment off the ground, so needless to say, I’m spread pretty thin.

So last night, I decided to try and get as many Forex signals as possible because so far, the groups I joined haven’t pushed out any signals while I’ve been awake. I found a seller on Fiverr offering signals and bought them for about $35.

This morning, I looked on Telegram where these signal groups are and saw one from the Fiverr seller. They weren’t typical signals – just broad suggestions to buy a few different pairs.

I pulled up the chart for USD/JPY, and it looked bullish, so I decided to buy USDJPY. I set my take profit and stop loss... and then it actually start going up.

As I watched the price go up, I would occasionally adjust my stop-loss so that it would close my position at higher and higher levels. Once the price increased enough, I placed my stop-loss higher than my entry point, where I bought the pair. This way, it’s pretty much guaranteeing me that I don’t lose money.

I ended up closing that trade for a profit of $12.68. Alright, finally getting on the right track here!

With my newfound confidence, I decided to enter a couple of trades on my own. I clicked through the different currency pairs and looked for strong direction.

I entered a GBPJPY trade with a buy and ended up selling for $1.15 profit. I then entered a EURNZD buy and watched the price move around before finally going up. I closed this trade out for $1.97 profit.

My account is now at $1,009.69. And, I know you didn’t read this blog to find me struggle my way to a 1% return on my money, so it’s time to go bigger.

The way to increase your position size and make more money, is by increasing your lot size.

So, I’ll do that and wait for a signal or a good setup.

Friday

Okay, I still liked the chart for GBPJPY, so I entered a buy order. Unfortunately, my stop-loss was set a little too tight, so when it took a little dip, it closed my position for an $8.74 loss. I immediately re-entered the position and lowered my stop-loss a little farther down.

I got stopped out of trade again for a loss of $16.23. Clearly, I need more practice.

I also signed up for a free trial of a service called Agora Algo, which is supposed to help you find potential trades by analyzing price action and marking the charts with buy and sell signals. I joined their Discord group and got an alert for AUD USD, so I entered the trade.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t really paying attention and the market closed for the weekend, with me stuck in the trade.

I ended up closing out of the trade on Monday for a loss of $9.50.

Finally, I caught a trade from the YouTuber’s VIP group. I bought USDJPY – first buying a micro lot, but since I wanted to up the stakes, I bought a mini lot to put more money on the line.

I actually made a profit of $11.30 on this trade, which was pretty good.

Final Update

What I’ve found is that a lot of these signal groups I joined don’t post a lot of signals – at least compared to stock options groups I’ve been in. I think in the case of Forex, the markets are super efficient – which means the market fully reflects all of the available information, making it near impossible for retail traders like myself to make a profit.

So, it seems the main strategy is to be patient and look for the right opportunities to execute with a good risk-to-reward ratio.

The problem is when you’re starting out, it’s hard to identify these opportunities, which is why so many people rely on signals. The problem here is you never actually learn yourself and you can’t analyze a potential play that’s given to you, which makes it hard to progress as a trader and become successful long-term.

Over the past week-and-a-half, I’ve tried to enter as many trades as I could when alerted and tried to find opportunities myself. Here’s how that went.

My biggest profit was from selling AUDCHF which was signaled from that group I joined via Fiverr, on which I made $42.95.

My biggest loser was from the YouTuber’s VIP group on which I lost $65.90.

Now, let’s break down my trades based on the source.

From the Fiverr group I joined, I made $53.10 off of the trades. The group cost $35 to join, so I’m left with about $18 in net profit.

Next, there is Agora Algo. I was on a free trial, so it didn’t cost me anything to join, which is good because I lost $19.79.

Then, on the Youtuber’s VIP group – which was $40 – I lost $82.91. According to him, I joined in on his first losing trade after 20 winners, but I can’t really verify that. He also said December is a tough month to trade Forex, which again – I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it sure seems like it.

For my own trades, I lost $31.18.

So, just like learning any other type of trading, you shouldn’t really expect to be profitable after two weeks. There are some aspects to Forex that I liked – it’s heavy on the technicals, and you can just get your take profit and stop loss levels set, and you don’t have to keep watching it obsessively like you may do with stock options. When you make a profitable trade, it feels like easy money… but just as easily your next trade can go against you and make you feel like you have no idea what you’re doing.

So, here’s the thing: I don’t think Forex is good for the average person to get into. For one, it’s hard to learn. At least, I had a hard time trying to learn the intricacies involved with it. Whenever you have a niche that seems like it’s mostly just people selling you their training or signals, that should be a warning sign.

Theoretically, if you have a winning “system” you should be able to scale that up with the size of your entries and simply make more money. That’s not to say people don’t make money trading Forex – I just think it’s probably difficult to do long-term. In this YouTuber’s VIP group I joined, there are over 2,000 members paying $40 per month, so this guy is making $80 grand a month without having to make a single trade.

Of course, you could assume that if his signals aren’t good, people will leave the group, but if you can keep attracting new members every month, you can still make a lot of money.

Now, I entered 31 trades in about two weeks, so it is a small sample size and by no means definitive, but I think the most important takeaway of this video should be to avoid falling for anyone trying to sell you signals or training for Forex unless it’s something you really want to pursue. And, even then, you’ll have to learn how to trade on your own and not rely on signals.

But really, no one has a bulletproof system and you should probably keep your money in your own pocket.

For me, it seems far easier to lose your entire bankroll than it is to make any significant return. I’d rather invest in something I understand a little better and can find better opportunities. I prefer stocks and options, because I’d rather invest in a company than exchange rates between currencies.

If you do want me to keep trading Forex and give you an update on my progress in a month or two, I will – just let me know in the comments. Otherwise I’ll move on to something else like trading futures or crypto.