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How many of you trade as a profession?

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Well MT4 is what we use. It has its limitations and is 'old' technology but has a huge amount of code written and a good community of coders and developers throwing ideas around. With some manipulation of the MT4 itself you can get over some of the issues it inherently has.

Ideally I'd love to use http://www.deltixlab.com/ . However the cost of a license runs into the multiple tens of thousands.
 
Part time profession!! A good secondary income anyway and I personally like the ability to trade from anywhere in the world..
 
I would like to trade as a profession, but I'm not quite there yet. Maybe someday and maybe sooner than what I was expecting.
 
I run a personal training and exercise therapy buisiness, which is wonderful for being out and about interacting with people. As such while I love the share mkt and staying very current/up to date on domestic and international affairs (political and economic), I just couldn't imagine trading for a living.

I do trade as a side line through an investment account and do pretty well. I also run my own SMSF and have really done well not just in making money, but also in creating tax losses to offset profits. Miles and miles ahead of where I would have been letting someone else do it.

I do love the spec side and researching the wonderful little companies out there. Some fail and others roar. For example I killed the mkt with very cheap entries on SDL, WDR, but struggling with FML, MYG for example. It is enormous fun and I bore my partner on a regular basis talking about it!

The changes to the tipping comp I suggested are making excellent reading for those like me who like to flirt with speccies. Great entries guys!
 
Curious to see who use indicators among the professional traders and who use price action?

MT4 for me because it is not resource intensive and robust and the added bonus of having code written for almost anything I can't think of.
 
For manual trading - price action on the 4 hour charts (and small/thin bars to get a broad historical view of the movement). Humans can process price action, judge support and resistance, weigh up fundamental news and have 'gut feel'.

When developing automated traders, indicators need to be used. What manual trading lacks automated trading is strong in (unemotional, strict rule adherance, historical testing, 24/5 operation) and what autotrading lacks manual trading is strong in (whole view, complex price action patterns which humans can view with experience easily, fundamental news influence, gut feeling).

One is not better than the other, but one may be better for you. I/we trade almost exclusively automated. My weakness is emotion. For others who have the manual trading gift, it is the opposite. Manual trading requires a lot of self training in not only reading graphs but coping with the emotions of trading. Automated trading requires a lot of system development (training).

Each requires a lot of effort to do successfully. 95% of forex traders lose money. It is said 10,000 hours of practice is required to become an expert. Neither is easy. If you're one of the 5% congratulations
 
Thank you for that wonderful insight to the mind of a professional trader.
I think I fall into the manual camp for the lack of programming skills required for algo trading. I use the less is more attitude on larger time frame, 4H/daily purely price action, S/R lines simple stuff. Love to be consistently in the 5%

Would love to hear what others are also doing and how they do it.
 

- perfect description, and I can so relate to auto/manual trading tradeoffs as you outline
 
I trade forex on daily basis and it contributes about 50% of my irregular income. I don't know whether that qualifies me as trading for a profession.

I didn't mean to start trading full time so soon but circumstances forced me. I had to drop my full time job and I couldn't get a new full time job because I have to be glued to the screen from 1-5 pm & 9-12 pm Perth time.

It was scary at that time, because I was using my life savings and my 2 options were either: be successful or visit the nearest Centerlink office. But one thing I learned about human potential is that you only get to develop it to the max when there is a sense of urgency to call it out. So when I was cornered, I burnt my bridges and I was surprised on how quick I became profitable.

I'd be lying if I say I didn't lose, and lose big. But if your aim is to humbly understand the market and trade with it, instead of putting your own thinking on it, you'll make it.

Most traders do not understand why price moves and behaves in certain way that it leaves the trace on the chart as candlestick patterns. They get into a trade and HOPE price will go their way. Whereas successful traders get into a trade and UNDERSTAND that price will most likely go the market's way.
 
WestCoastWizard, I take it from your brief description that you use candlestick patterns or price action. Do you use any other tools to help with your setup? Looking at your trading times, seems you trade the London and NY open so are you scalping on opening momentums? I am always curious how others are doing it.

Cheers,

AJ
 
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