I have been trading Forex online since 2006, using a variety of trading techniques and brokers. It's amazing what a few years of trading experience will do--looking back at my first month of live trading I realize what a terrible trader I was. Of course, back then I thought I had it all figured out...
My very first broker was ForexWebTrader.com. They were offering a free $25 (don't laugh) to anyone who opened a real money account. I signed up, and 3 days later my account was credited with the money. At this point, I had never even demo traded Forex before. I had no trading system. I was armed with just very basic Forex knowledge and sheer determination.
My first trade was a quick scalp of 5 pips. I was pretty nervous-even though I was only trading .10/pip. I placed another long before I went to bed, and when I woke up 8 hours later I was up +100 pips. Over the course of the next 2 weeks or so, I ran my account up to a little more than $175, trading USD/JPY exclusively. The more money I made, the more I would "invest" per pip. I know at one point I was trading .50/pip (on a $175 account). Needless to say, eventually I suffered a losing trade, then another, and another...I remember feeling absolutely sick when I got down to $56, even though this was double my original account (in the span of a month). This is when I started researching Forex, beyond just the basics at least.
When my account dropped down to $12, I almost gave up completely. The only reason I didn't is because I had picked a winning trade, but a price spike stopped me out before a +150 pip move to exactly where I had predicted. This is when I started studying technical analysis. I also switched brokers, because ForexWebTrader software sucked big time, and I really wanted a broker that supported Metatrader.
My next account was at IBFX, they had actually sent me a promo in the mail for a free $50. So in March of 2007,I wired them an additional $200, giving me a decent amount of money to test their platform with. I immediately fell in love with Metatrader-it made charting so much easier! I was trading part time (I had a full time job as well), but would spend all my free time looking at charts and setups. At work I would wonder what the market was doing, even if I wasn't involved in any trades. I was still risky and impatient--often I would "force" a trade, just to be in the market. My account balance bounced around quite a bit, between $200-400. I really wanted to be able to trade full time, but I just wasn't consistent at all. I was also starting to burn out staring at charts all the time, and began to look for longer term trading methods.
I bought Avi Frister's Price Driven Forex Trading System, I think it cost me $75 or so. But it exposed me to a new trading style (price action) and allowed me to stop spending all day staring at charts. The concepts in this book really cliqued with me, although the systems (there are 3 in the book) were all a bit too conservative for me. They were winners though, and I finally broke $500 in June 2007. I continued to study price action, support, and resistance. I also started channel trading A TON-every opportunity I came across-and had huge success with it. By December of 2007 my account at IBFX was slightly over $2000. I withdrew $1000 for Christmas presents and left $1100 in my trading account.
2008 was another great year for my trading account. I opened a new account at FXCM with $5000 and set up a correlated hedge with it, earned me about $200 a week with minimal upkeep and risk. I also tried to take $100 to $1,000,000 using 400:1 leverage. I got the account up to $3500 in about 3 days before I gave up and couldn't stomach the risk. Add in my normal trading account, and I made over $25,000 trading part time, from an initial investment of $6,200.
2009 started off strong. I pulled all my money out of the market except for $2000 and paid cash(well check, really) for a brand new Chevy Impala. I didn't make near as much money as 2008, but enough that I took a 4 month "leave of absence" from my full time job. I returned to work only on a part time basis (20 hours per week), using Forex money to supplement my income. During my leave, I got interested in breakout trading methods, as well as Fibonacci trading. I traded the London open almost every day (which sucks because I'm on Eastern Standard time)--but only in the direction of the overall trend, and I paid attention near Fibonacci lines. This was simple and profitable enough that I'd wake up at 3AM, draw break lines, place limit orders, and be back asleep by 3:05AM. Trading this way was 70% successful, with a 2:1 risk to reward ratio--not bad for basically an autopilot system. I made $22,000, and I traded almost every single day.
For 2010--I really wanna focus on saving money for retirement (I am 31 years old currently). I'd like to retire in 9 years, with at least $1,000,000 in the bank--but short of hitting the lottery I don't think I'm gonna make it. I'm still trading my breakout method, though not every day cause I'm lazy. I've also incorporated the US market open into my strategy, for days when I miss the London open. It's not as volatile, but still hits at 65-70%. These days, I target about 40 pips a day, and currently trading $2.50/pip. I'm on pace for another $25,000 year-but I think I can roll over $30,000 next year to start to compound my earnings a bit more. We'll see.
UPDATE 7/2010--I've started trading full time and really dedicated myself to filtering out all the noise in the market. Needless to say, I've had the best year of my trading career, and it's only halfway over. I should easily break $40,000 - probably within the next month. I'm shooting for $60,000, at which point I will withdraw half of it and re-invest the other half. This should be enough to crack $75,000 next year...only time will tell though!