Let Me Get A #9 With Extra BullSxit
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We live in an age where garbage information is at an all time high. The amounts of misinformation spread across the internet is absurd. It took medical researchers almost two centuries to finally realize that vaccines cause autism and numerous other mental and health disorders. Now people are just beginning to "wake up" and realize this themselves.
Take the news as another example, it is extreamly easy to produce attention getting headlines that draws on the crowds emotions and create a buzz on that specific story for the next several months, which then proves to be false information just to produce an audience and revenue for the media outlets, compared to simply telling the truth from the beginning and avoiding mass hysteria and misconception.

Forex Trading Is Becoming More Imbalanced As Time Goes On

Online marketers do this all the time. They produce BS articles on trading information and nothing on the actual application of trading. You see, there is a significant difference between knowing and understanding. 
You can know as much of a subject as possible but still not understand what you are reading/learning. That's pretty much how modern day education systems teach students.
If you go online and do a simple GOOGLE search for " How to trade" or "FOREX education", you will find millions of articles pretty much repeating the same information, it becomes pretty redundant after searching through the first 100,000 pages on a search engine.
So why does this happen? 
Forex marketers and false trading coaches/gurus find it easier to produce articles on complicated information and theoretical concepts to raise their audience because they know that these search engine algorithms will make them more of an authority on the subject if they can produce as much BS information on the topic as possible and gain as many "likes" and "subscriber counts". You see it on social media (Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter) and the inconvenient truth is that it has been going on since the birth of this industry when trading gurus didn't have an online platform to market their theoretical concepts so they wrote "books" and mass distributed them to the general public on Amazon, Ebay, and the most notorious of them all, book stores such as Barnes & Noble.  Don't believe me, click on the hyperlinks on one of the names in this article and you'll go down the rabbit hole into a world of nonsense and redundancy. Online Marketers have plagued Instagram by posting rented luxury cars and buying likes using third party software. The next time you are on Instagram and come across a post with someone covering license plates wearing a club outfit and posting luxury quotes at the bottom of the image, just take a second and think to yourself "what are they trying to sell me?". I used to have hundreds of photos on my personal Instagram showing my real life and the realities of being a day-trader, but took them down due to the ever growing environment of internet marketers and entrepreneurs. Now you will only see one post that I haven't updated in years. I may start posting again as the economy crashes and people become more desperate for attention with less and less props. As I once said in one of my past blogs and also on the home page of this website, "The marketers of today will not be around in the next 5-10 years, so don't rush to the finish line as trading is a marathon not a sprint".

Well, What Can A Prospective Trader Do To Learn How To Trade The Right Way?

Just like the media outlets and celebrities, trading gurus/educators have found a method to attract the masses and spread misinformation without any validity to the topic they are talking about. They do not have any track record from a verifiable source nor any financial proof that they have earned a living solely from trading. It's ironic that many traders you see on social media only show the right side of their screens or blatantly show only screenshots of winning trades with none or very little amount of losses.
​My advice is to either keep trading on your own, learning from your mistakes, stop trading all together, or find a reliable resourceful trader that has years of real live trading under their belt. I suggest you check out my FOREX Academy to get help from me if you have found my blogs and other free content on this site helpful. And when you do become a consistently successful trader, please do something great for the community and pay it forward.

Have you ever lost a trade and became so upset that you felt like a complete idiot afterwards?
Did that one loss affect how your future trading activity would play out?
Well, if you did you're not alone. In fact most people come across the same instinct, it is human nature to want to always be a winner. No one enjoys losing.
We were brought up always seeing the winner being rewarded and the loser being mocked or eliminated from a competition so we bring that same thought into the trading world believing that if you take one loss you may as well stop trading. A series of losses may traumatize a trader forever. 
This is where proper money and risk management come into play. 

Taking Losses

Trading is a business. Your trading account is your physical business. You are exchanging wins and losses for gains and forfeiture. 
The goal is to build your account to the largest amount overtime so you must think long term.
The problem is you're afraid of taking a loss. Most retail traders are afraid of closing out a loss because they do not understand why they took the trade in the first place, they just focused on the positive outcome of winning that they ignored their defense.
"The single most important thing in trading is becoming a master of losing. Don't focus on making money, focus on protecting what you have." - Baja Pips
You must lose and become extremely good at it. The more you lose the less afraid you'll be of taking a loss in the future. When you build the habit of taking losses on the regular, that's when you'll start to see winning opportunities more frequently.
Your mind will become configured to accepting the loss and moving on, that's when great trades will start to appear.
Holding losses also eats up your available margin which will be a restriction on you when the time comes to open a potential winner.

Money Management 

I'd like to share with you a real example of improper money management and how i had screwed up on a single trade that cost me a huge portion of my account. I will then explain the importance of trading with a large enough amount of capital as opposed to a small trading account.

As you can see in the photo above, this specific account has over -20% drawdown at the time of typing this blog. I run a few live accounts because I test out different strategies and compile what I've learned into one complete algorithm. Many of my trading accounts are actually "training accounts". I deposit a small amount into them and run them as if they were the same as my main account, this is called "forward testing". On this particular account I was winning and actually at a positive net gain a few days ago simply by closing out my losers and taking small winners over time. One day I saw a great trading opportunity and took it and forgot to assess my risk which ended up hitting my stop loss and wiping out all of my previous gains and more. Was I emotional? Nope! 

I did use proper money management, because that could have been my entire account on the line had I not used a stop loss. But I did adhere to my risk management. 

Risk management would have warned me that the trade I was taking was a more volatile pair, therefore I must reduce my lot size to be able to take a loss but only lose a smaller percentage of my trading account if a loss were to occur. Mistakes happen and this is the importance of making sure that a loss is of a substantial amount that would have little to no impact on you're total capital. I am grateful that this was just a training account and not my actual main account. I took the loss and instead of becoming emotional over it I simply took note and learned a valuable lesson that I will carry on into all of my future trades.

The Importance Of A Large Enough Trading Account

You may have heard that you can start trading with as little as a few hundred dollars. In fact, it is marketed on many offshore brokerage websites, some would even give you a deposit bonus or match! That sounds almost too good to be true! Don't you ever think it actually may be so?








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What these brokerages and even trading con-artist/con-groups are not telling you is that you have a high percentage chance of either blowing your small account or taking enough losses that you run out of margin to take another trade and must deposit more to stay in the game. 
You also cannot adhere to proper risk management neither. You may have every other rule down and completely ignore the risk management factor. Like my example above, if you are trading on a small trading account you may be forced to take a specific lot size and end up losing that trade forcing you to take a bigger overall hit. If you are trading with a few hundred like these dodgy brokerages promote for example, you may only be able to trade up to a few pennies before reaching your maximum margin, as a result you'll be forced to open trades on more volatile pairs resulting in a significant large portion of your trading capital.
When you have a large enough trading account ($50,000 USD minimum) you can avoid this outcome because you'll have enough margin to reduce your lot sizes small enough to take as many loss in pips and still only lose the same amount of overall capital as your other trades. Why do you think most DEMO accounts have the default standard at $50,000+?

Well I hope you learned something from this blog. That's all I have to write this week.
I try to write a blog a week to help the public out for free as I do believe in paying it forward for nothing in return.
I wish I could help everyone become a consistently profitable trader, unfortunately I do not have the time on my schedule to walk everyone through the process which is why I have created my FOREX Academy to help people on a more personal vantage point who are ready to take their trading to a higher level.

There is often a misconception of trading failure and success. It goes something like this; 

• If you trade with a huge stop loss, then you will eventually blow your account or lose much more equity than you profit.
• If you use a too short of a stop loss, then you will be stopped out too frequently which will make you a consistent loser over time.
• If your take-profit target is too large, then you will rarely close out winners.
• If your profit target is too close, then you will not have substantial profits to build your account and cover your losses.
• If you do not have an edge, then it is inevitable that you will eventually lose on a contingent basis.
• If your lot size is too big, then no matter how profitable you are, you will eventually blow your account in an unfortunate event.
• If your lot size is too small, then your profits will be worthless and not be worth the endeavor.
• If you are not disciplined and can't follow your trading principles, then you will eventually lose everything.
• If you do not know when to modify your trading plan and optimize your principles, then one black swan event can blow your trading account.
• If you do not notice when the market environment is changing, then your profitable system will eventually become unprofitable since you haven't made essential changes for it to adapt to the new market environment.
• ETC. ETC. ETC.

Failure Entails A Sole Feeble Point

So, with an unlimited amount of ways to lose in trading, the general end result is, failure.
Success is the deviation, not the standard.

How Does One Become Consistently Profitable?

You become consistently profitable by failing soo often that you become a sovereign of failure.
You fail soo many times that there are no other ways to fail.
As soon as you figure out all of the different ways to fail, the only routes left are the ways to win.

Trading can be a long but enjoyable journey if you get the proper start. Many traders fail and quit too soon so they never get to the point where the light bulb clicks and they start to see the way towards a life-long success. The issue is that most retail traders were attracted by a con-artist posing online as a successful trader and lured people in using fancy lifestyle pictures and rented cars and properties. Another way many get introduced into this field is if they were approached by someone similar who may have been apart of a "trading group", often a pyramid scheme, who promised guaranteed returns if they followed their easy money system. The truth is that trading is not simple, it is very complex and requires an understanding beyond conventional knowledge and you must learn from someone who has been in the field for many years and have legitimate proof of their success (live track record, transparency, etc.). Do your due-diligence and avoid these characters at all cost. If you become attracted to the wrong thing (fast cars and lifestyle, quick money, "quit your 9 to 5 in a few months" schemes etc.), then you must take a step back and ask yourself trading is really for you. I will cover this in a future post. Feel free to browse my website and see if my trading philosophy fits what you are looking for and if so then feel free to join my Forex Academy. I cut out the bull and get straight to the shit. 

It's been a while since my last blog post. I have been traveling the world and have had limited time to focus on blogging. I have took time to myself and to reflect on life and the way I react towards my environment. I am currently on my 13th month abroad. Everything in my life has changed since I first took on the challenge to live in other cultures. Even though most of my life has changed, there are still some things that have remained the same such as my daily trading routine and who I really am from an external perspective. In this blog I will highlight some of the most important lessons I have learned while traveling and trading and how I have adapted to new and unfamiliar environments and trading conditions and do a comparison between life on and off the charts.
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Same Species But Not The Same 

Before traveling abroad, I have been living in the United States for most of my life. I've lived on almost every coast of America from east to west, north to south. I've lived in Connecticut, Vermont, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, Georgia, Florida, Arizona, California, just to name a few domestic states I've lived in and country-wise, I've lived in America, Mexico, South Africa, Thailand, China, Jamaica, UAE and more, but I will keep the list short for the sake of this blog. I have observed the way numerous cultures interact with each other and with me. Depending on where I go I have noticed; the language or slang is different, the way people dress, the jobs, the local food and activities, belief systems, friendliness, etc. is just.. different. No one really has a universal default standard of living. City to city, state to state, country to country, it is all different. Human beings are all the same species, but our minds operate different. There is the crowd mentality and the universal standard of "normal", but there is no one specific example of the term "normal". Here is one thing I'd like for you to take note of before continuing to read this blog, we are all one species living on the same soil but have unlimited ways of living this life we all share. I can go in depth on more detailed examples of what I have experienced in each culture, but that would take too long and I'd like this blog to be short and straight to the point. ​

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What Has Changed

Since the beginning of mankind the human race has learned how to survive by adapting and evolving. We have learned how to; hunt, mate, build, protect and defend, communicate, punish, reward and grow together in communities. We have started from a mold and have been conditioned to our environment that we have been brought up in. So in a sense, yes we all are similar. We have eyes to see, noses to smell through, mouths to eat with, feet to walk on, arms to hold objects, brains to think with, organs to process and break essential nutrients down with. But at some point in time the paths have divided. As we became more intelligent we have begun making our own rational decisions on how we would like to do things. One group may have wanted to live up north in the cold while another wanted to migrate south towards the equator where it is warmer while another migrated east and the other migrated west. One group may have found different animals to hunt and vegetation to harvest depending on the landscape of the newly discovered areas they have migrated to. A group may have found land near water and developed the idea of building ships to get across it and lines and poles to fish with. Eventually we as a species have strayed so far away from the original "norm", that we now look at each other as unique and alienate anyone who deems a threat to the society or may seem so different that they are not accepted within the culture and therefore outcast, now we have passports and governments and ID's and soon to be digital QR and barcodes.

Where Is Civilization Headed?

Some may say we are headed towards the stars, some may believe we are doomed for extinction due to the corrupt lifestyles that certain people have been living, some may just think life will carry on like it always have. I have my own thoughts on what I believe and I will share with you ideas that are statistically backed up by facts and numbers to keep away from subjectivity. 

Lets start by eliminating the obvious. We are not all going to die or become enslaved by an alien race or "Illuminati" type cult, save those thoughts for the next sci-fi movie. There is no "global warming", the world is too large for a single species to have such a major impact on this space we all share. We still haven't even explored all the depths of the Earth yet so there is no real evidence that our planet is "dying".  Donald Trump will be elected president again whether you love him or hate him and the United States will still be around long after his presidency. The corona virus is a global pandemic but like all other mass hysteria, it will subside and people will begin living their normal lives again. The Stock Market is going to crash but will never disappear, FOREX will be around in the next 10-50 years. Stay away from the mainstream news and social media organizations. These statements can be backed up by doing a GOOGLE search and some thorough research. Stay away from emotional decisions and only operate from a rational point of view.

The Individual VS. The Crowd

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In this section I will tie my experiences from traveling and my previous sections on the general idealism. At this point I have covered how we are the same species but operate on different levels of understanding depending on the environment we have been brought up in. Here I would like to get the main point now that I have your attention. 

In order to successfully navigate in the markets and trade on a rational level to gain consistent outcomes you must separate yourself from the general population and gain a sense of self-actualization. There is no one way to trade successfully, just like the many different ways to live on this planet, there are numerous different methods to accomplish your goal in becoming a profitable trader. Unfortunately, most people fail because they follow a belief that by doing one thing a certain way that may have succeeded in the past, it will work for them the same way it had worked for the person explaining it. WRONG! Most retail traders fail because of this exact belief. It is not completely your fault for not understanding this though because you were conditioned to only know so much. In every corner of the Earth that I have traveled to I have noticed this nescience. You cannot really blame others for not knowing. Ignorance is a bliss, but this doesn't work well in trading however. The market is not mystical and the people who understand it are not magicians or wizards, we are regular people that just have a higher understanding of mass thinking and civilization. Most people read the same books about the same topics and chart patterns explained a thousand different ways that lead to the same result. Most people are irrational beings who do things in a certain manner that truly believes that the way they are doing things is the correct and only way to do it without searching for further meaning or taking a step back and observing it from a third person point of view. It is just human nature. This all results to a collective hive mentality that is easily predictable to the observer that over-stands the situation. The market is not a monster out to steal your money, the big players in the game just understand your strengths and weaknesses and how far to push your emotional buttons. If more people understood this then we would live in a world where there is one government and our species as a whole would evolve much quicker which may actually bring us closer to the stars sooner. 

To conclude this blog post, I would like to say that traveling and trading has allowed me to have a bigger understanding of the human race as a whole and where I stand as an individual. This has lead me to modify my trading systems and algorithms to an advanced level of automation with zero subjectivity. I am always looking for newer ways to optimize my systems and automate my daily activities and will continue to update those of you that wish to follow my journey. If you are ever interested in getting started on trading the right way then I can help you with that anytime, just register for my FOREX Academy here. I do not promote my academy on social media because I'd like you to determine for yourself if trading is worth getting into and you truly believe in my philosophy. I enjoy helping people who passionately want to make a change in their lives and walk an unusual path towards uncertainty. You will not find any of my course material online nor in any other promoted trading group on social media as it is my content coming from my mind through experience and wisdom, not conventional wisdom. 

I hope you were able to take some knowledge from this post and it helps you in life. 
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- Baja Pips