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“Going Solo” From Demo to a Live Account: Lessons from the Air

In this video:

00:26   From a demo account to a live account
02:23   Flew a helicopter solo for the very first time
04:59   4.3% net gain out of five trades

Are you ready to go solo in your FOREX trading? Maybe you are already flying solo. Let me share more with you right now.

Hi, traders! It’s Andrew Mitchem here, the FOREX Trading Coach – and today, is Friday, the 4th of July. So, for all of you in the States, Happy Independence Day, and I hope you’re having a fantastic holiday.

And I want to talk about “going solo.” Now, what I mean by that is that in FOREX trading, going solo really means going from a demo account to a live account. And it’s a question I get asked so many times. People say to me, “Hey, Andrew, look – when’s a good time to go from a demo to a live account? When will I know?”

And I suppose it’s different for everybody. But some of the main points would be: 

• You would know. You’ve got to be comfortable when you go live.  It depends on how much maybe education you have, how much knowledge around trading, how long you’ve been trading, the results you’ve been achieving — and how dedicated you are to your trading because the dedication is a really important aspect of FOREX trading. 

• Take your trading seriously. When you are on demo, it’s very, very easy to become very blasé about your trading and just say, “Oh, it doesn’t matter if I lose that trade,” or, “The trade can stay open over the weekend. It doesn’t matter it’s not real money.” And having that whole – not gambling approach – but that sort of Monopoly, “it’s not real” type of approach. And it’s very, very dangerous.

• Demo the amount you’ll trade. Another thing I’ve talked about so many times is that so many people open an account on a demo with a huge sum of money – let’s say a $100,000 account – knowing full well that when they go live for the first time, their account may be let’s say $1,000 or $5,000.  It’s very dangerous, in my opinion, to open up a huge demo account – because it makes FOREX trading and making money potentially look too easy. My advice would be, if you know that you’re going to start with, say, a $5,000 account when you go live (and you have $5,000 saved up to put into that account), what you should do is when you still on demo make sure you trade the $5,000 demo account. Because then, when you make the transition to live, there’s nothing you need to do differently.

• Trust yourself and don’t give up. Now, for me, I did the demo to live thing years ago – like, 10 years ago. But yesterday, I flew a helicopter solo for the very first time. It’s a great achievement — and I feel very proud to have done that. But, much like the trading, it’s taken a lot of dedication, a lot of heartache, and almost giving up: “Can I do this? Can I not? Can I actually master this skill of control of this flying this helicopter?”. So, there’s been some self doubt along the way. 

• Find great teachers. Also, there’s been the need to seek good education. You know, I’ve gone to the very best instructors that I could find – I’ve got a fantastic instructor. He’s given me a hard time, and he’s pushed me and pushed me, and given me lots of extra work to do.  Having said that, he’s also shown me the right way to do things. 

• Do nothing different.When I went solo yesterday, yes, I was slightly nervous —  in the machine by myself, having to take off, hover, take off, do a circuit, etc. –by myself.  I had some guidance with him on the radio talking through, making sure that I was safe during the first couple of circuits. But, ultimately, it was up to me. And yet, I wasn’t too worried about it because I knew I could do it. Because I’d done it in practice mode. In other words, with him sitting next to me, in dual controls. So all I had to do was concentrate on doing nothing different. And as I was flying, I was thinking – believe or not – I was actually thinking about trading. 

That’s why I came up with this video and podcast today. Because I was thinking, “This is no different from demo  account to live.” Yes, it’s a little bit more nervy, but if you do nothing    different, it will all be fine. And so I did exactly the same in the two circuits I flew myself in the helicopter for the first time. Because I thought, “Well I’ve been taught how to do this properly. If I do nothing differently, I should be able to do this circuit and land without either injuring myself or killing myself or damaging the machine.” And, luckily, I did none of those, and I managed to do the circuits fine.

So, it’s a very good analogy to use – the live and demo account with flying a machine as opposed to dual controls. So, I wanted to put that out there and share that with you.

• Believe in your own success.  The other thing I also wanted to also share is that I had 5 trades close on the weekly charts overnight (Thursday night into Friday), during the European and U.S. sessions. Those trades have been open only one week, while some have been over several weeks. But, I had 2 trades that lost and 3 trades that closed for profit. But, I made a net gain of 4.3% out of those 5 trades, with only risking 0.5% risk over each of the 5! That’s 4.3% net.  So, it just goes to show the importance of high return trading or high-rewards, small risk.  And it just shows what can be done.

• Consider longer trades.  So those trades were on weekly charts and they were put on and just left until they hit their profit targets or their stop-losses. And it’s no different to trading, let’s say, 1-minute or 5-minute charts, in terms of the setup. It just takes a little bit longer, and you need to have the belief and confidence in your system to allow them to stay in the market slightly longer. And again, it’s not for everybody. Likewise, the very short timeframe chart, scalping system is not for everybody. But the great thing that I believe about the way that I trade is that the technical setups and the patterns will work across all timeframes. It really depends on what suits you as an individual trader. 

• Check Out Andrew’s First Solo Flight!  Lastly I just mentioned about the solo flight. If you’d like to see it, I’ve got a very short clip on my Facebook page. Just go to Facebook and type in “Andrew Mitchem FOREX” and you’ll see it there. It was taken by my instructor just on his mobile phone, just as he was talking me through my first take-off. 

So, if you want a bit of a laugh and to watch a wobbly helicopter and me trying to get up in the air, go to Andrew Mitchem FOREX on Facebook.

 So that’s it for now. Have yourself a fantastic weekend and I look forward to bringing more information about the fantastic world of FOREX trading this time next week. Bye for now. 

This is Andrew Mitchem from The FOREX Trading Coach.