MY FOREX TRADING JOURNEY; A KENYAN ODYSSEY

MY FOREX TRADING JOURNEY; A KENYAN ODYSSEY

The beginning.

The year is 2014, a recently employed young man stumbles upon forex trading information. Ever interacted with a young ambitious Kenyan? You can feel the eagerness almost reckless drive and desire to `make money’. I was no exception. Quickly I signed up for a demo trading account with Windsor Brokers and practiced barely for 3 months. With 300 dollars saved up, I opened an account with Alpari Brokers (notice the shift). With my little experience, my style was heavily reliant on technical indicators, particularly Relative Strength Indicator otherwise known as RSI.  For beginners, I promise to write an article on why I don’t use technical indicators. My trading rules centered on a  daily profit target of 10 dollars and NO trading on Fridays. My first trading day was on a Thursday, I went short on USDJPY. By the close of the day, I had made my 10 dollars profit, I was now a forex trader, or so I thought.

Mistakes and lessons

I get up one early Friday morning, against all wisdom,  I decide to trade.  After all,  who doesn’t want an extra 10 dollars. By noon I was down 170 dollars, by evening I had lost 300 dollars, all that was left in my account was 10 dollars. At this point I feel the need to tell people that once forex breaks your heart, nothing can ever come close, you are immune. I took a short hiatus to deal with my pain. Close family members and a friend lent me 500 dollars; I was back in the market. This time I promised myself to be cautious and I did make some money using RSI. Initial profits had me thinking, this is easy, how wrong I was. I had made myself a second promise not to ever trade on my phone. One Easter morning I got on my MT4 app on my phone (second mistake) and went short on USDCHF . Later in the day I am down by 225 dollars, then it dawns on me, I had traded 1 lot instead of 0.01 lot. You can imagine how this particular story ends.

Ignorance and Greed

The year is 2018, after 4 years of nursing my wounds, I am back, armed with knowledge on forex patterns and 1,000 dollars capital to boot. I would proceed to make approximately 50 dollars a week for two months and my capital grew to approximately 1,300 dollars. I traded all forex pairs I could think of in pursuit of maximum profit, recall the reckless desire to make money? In summary I blew the account and yours truly was now 1,600 dollars poorer since 2014.

Hard decisions

At this juncture, you have two options, quit or persevere. In 2019, I decided to move away from currencies to synthetic indices. The decision was as adventurous as it was expensive. I deposited 500 dollars and proceeded in my journey. My main motivation for trading indices was that the market never closed, automatically it meant more opportunities, lets phrase it correctly; greed. Within the first week of trading, I was up by 300 dollars, truly, this was the best decision I thought. By the following week, I had added 300 dollars capital to cover my negative position, you can guess what happened. I lost it all.

I came to once conclusion, I can make money but I cannot keep it. Common sense would dictate I focus on acquiring additional or even different knowledge to stem further losses. Common sense did not prevail, instead I took part of my school fees and deposited as my trading capital. Luckily, I was able to make some profit and withdrew the school fees. My account grew from 800 dollars to 3,000 dollars. I was teeming with confidence or was it pride? I blew that too.

False Competence and confidence

Mid 2020, I liquidated an asset and deposited 3,000 dollars and went back. I believe I was displaying signs of addiction and if you judged me so, I would understand. I managed to trade successfully from 3,000 dollars to 14,000 dollars and then to 20,000 dollars. In Kenyan currency, I was a millionaire on paper. If you have ever tried the aforementioned synthetic indices you know they make crazy moves engineered by a computer simulation, not real market conditions. I woke up one morning and all my capital was gone, the entire 20,000 dollars. I was numb. At this point, my entire trading career has amounted to losses of 25,000 dollars.  It was time to admit, whatever knowledge I though I had was useless. It was time to go back to the drawing board.

Recovery and growth

Prior to my last loss, I kept interacting with traders who kept mentioning smart money concepts and supply and demand. Evidently, they seemed to know what they were doing. I decided it was time to study a new concept from the beginning. For 9 months in 2021 I studied and traded my demo account with EGM securities. Gradually my competence and confidence improved.

The Bible, Hosea 4:6 is fit for my journey “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge…..”. Right knowledge is freedom. September 2021, I deposited money in to my account and went back to trading, having learnt my lessons.

As I write this, I am consistently building my portfolio with HF Markets, FXTM and Windsor Brokers. In October 2024, I shall clock one year as a strategy provider with Windsor Brokers, and 2 years with HF Markets. I see progress, gradual consistent progress. Check out my performance Windsor Brokers profile

Have I seen growth and maturity as a trader? definitely. Has my mental orientation and approach changed? You bet. Have I made it to the top, not even close, I am making progress. I make it a habit to always share my journey as the first content I cover in my course.

In conclusion, my journey to recovery and growth is on course, stick around, I will share it with you.