I started coding trading bots at the university (back in 2004) but didn't become profitable until recently. Sounds worse than it is, i had a 7 year break, but still. There is a lesson here. thread incoming. 1/9

A friend got me into the financial world and i had a theoretical go on everything. Started with futures (motivated by the turtles system) and later moved to FOREX. I tried to learn all the indicators, all the strategies, applied and combined every indicator i could find. 2/9

(mathematician: i love systems and theories) But with low budget i basically never really traded. All systems where backtested (and curvefitted) to the max. Sometimes even ran in forwardtests (on paper accounts), but they never made it to a live system. 3/9

They just never fulfilled my performance and risk goals in the forward tests. and i wasn't in a position to "just risk it".
IMHO one of the main things you need to start trading: "fuck it"-money for your first trading accounts. Because lets face it: you will burn them. 4/9

And you need the mentality to "just risk it". You need to be fine with "investing" that trading account into your education. If you get profitable before its gone: perfect. But if not, your reaction must be "i learned definitly more than i lost, so thats fine". 5/9

OTOH, not risking real money back then made me learn a lot about trading, the theory and the markets without actually losing money. By backtesting hundreds of strategies you see how different models of riskmanagement, moneymanagement and performance numbers behave. 6/9

I even wrote my own exchange with matching-engine and market-maker to get some deeper understanding of it all. And still, with all that knowledge and experience: when i started trading real money i burned it. 7/9

Still risk averse as fuck, so not much in absolute numbers. but more than 1 account. I would def have lost far more if i didn't know the importance (and ways) of RM. But without putting money on the line, without knowing the man in the mirror, your knowledge is worthless. 8/9

So if you think about going that road: read all you can. learn the basics (specially riskmanagement) that make the difference between gambling and trading. And then make a plan, put money on the line and get your feet wet. there is no way around it. 9/9

If ppl like this thread, i will tell you how i made my plan, how it failed and then worked out. how i got profitable and whatever you wanna know about it. just leave a comment.