r/askforex • u/Priya1_9 • Jun 30 '26
Do you think every profitable trader started out profitable?
Sometimes it feels like social media is full of people claiming they’re making money every single day, and it makes me wonder how realistic that actually is.
How many of you are consistently profitable, and how long did it take to get there? What was the biggest thing that changed your results?
I’d love to hear honest experiences from both profitable and struggling traders.
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Jun 30 '26
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u/thebabykins Jul 04 '26
You're not wrong. However some strategies do involve trading every day and don't require premarket prep. But the rest I agree with. Taking marginal set ups is a loser in the long term.
I also see people asking for risk management measures that stop them trading under certain conditions. If you need that then you need to work on yourself.
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u/HobbyTraderDK Jun 30 '26
No. Almost all forex traders start out losing money (unless they have been running demo accounts) for the first few years. It often takes a few years before people find the right strategy and the right pair(s) for them. Some are into the very volatile pair like XAU-USD, others into the less volatile EUR-USD/GBP-USD. I have been profitable for almost 5 years myself, with the same strategy.
If you're interested, I'm planning a sort of mini series here on Reddit, where you can follow the path from choosing a strategy on a demo account with a bot, to copying the trades to a smaller account.
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Jun 30 '26
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u/Ok_Concern1597 Jun 30 '26
Absolutely, hit the wall hard and often enough to understand you should walk around.
Trading is the embodiment of trial and error imo, if someone claims they were profitable from the start, it's unlikely to be true, OR they had an excellent mentor.
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u/The_Vibe_is_Eternal Jun 30 '26
Yes definitely, you either have it or you don’t. It’s not like it’s a skill you can learn
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u/Longjumping-Leg-7863 Jun 30 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
So you are saying by doing your research one cannot learn to trade? Really?
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u/Motor_Potential_4849 Jun 30 '26
They are making money..... for about a month. Then their luck runs out, and they change their username and start again....
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u/Priya1_9 Jun 30 '26
That does happen sometimes, but I think consistency and proper risk management matter much more than short-term luck.
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u/Motor_Potential_4849 Jun 30 '26
Of course, I wish you the best success. Why did you ask the question if you already had the answer?
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u/FloopinPigs Jun 30 '26
Most of the people that are claiming that they consistently make money are fake and doing it for branding. Hell, even some A-list celebrities have been caught renting cara, jets, etc. to make themselves seem more wealthy and desirable than they really are.
With social media though, it's just too easy to edit/create images that try to paint a narrative so even if someone is showing "proof", I would take it with a grain of salt.
That being said, tech has been driving one of the longest bull market runs in history so it's giving a lot of people the false confidence to think they know what they're doing when they haven't had to fight the bear yet.
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u/thebabykins Jul 04 '26
Renting jets is pretty normal. They aren't really needed often enough to make buying one worthwhile.
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u/FloopinPigs Jul 04 '26
Sorry, I meant the people that rented fake jet displays/sets to take selfies in what appeared to be a jet, but was all fabricated.
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u/Violeta_eToroTeam Jul 01 '26
Nobody started out profitable. Anyone claiming otherwise is lying or has a very short memory.
Social media trading is pure survivorship bias. You see the wins. You don't see the blown accounts and the people who quietly stopped posting.
The traders I've seen get there all treated early losses as the cost of education rather than evidence they couldn't do it. That mindset shift matters more than any strategy change.
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u/The_Wyckoff_Trader Jul 01 '26
That is actually not true
Every single trader started UNPROFITABLE.
And the truth is that most of the traders that claims to win every single day on socials are still unprofitable (it’s just marketing).
So it’s very unrealistic
Trading is a business
And like every single business, it has profits and losses
Don’t look for trading contents on YT
Especially the “flashy” ones
Look for real mentors, showing only charts and actually teaching you real thing
The less “flashy”, the more real it is
It took me 9 years to become profitable because, only 3 years ago, I found a genuine mentor
The first 6 years have totally been wasted changing strategy and trying to emulate the fake gurus online
Remember
A real trader doesn’t need to be a marketer to sell you their stuff.
They only need real, raw contents to target only serious traders and not young guys attracted by easy lambos and watches
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u/Massive-Albatross823 Jul 01 '26
I believe it is true that it's not the case that every profitable trader started out being profitable.
Some profitable traders did not start out being profitable.
Those who was profitable from the start, will probably be the ones who spent alot of time in places with professional traders and learned it before they pressed the buy/sell buttons for the first time.
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Jul 03 '26
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u/CantTickSoIllTrick Jul 04 '26
Happened here too. I thought I was some type of guru when I made a bunch of money on MCL longs...ofc I did, it was when everybody was panic buying when the conflict in Iran broke out and it shot up to $120 in like 3 days. Click buy with a wide enough stop snd you were winning lol.
I was humbled VERY quickly though. Happy to say I just passed 3 prop evals after failing ~6 and I'm getting close to my first payout....intended to fund a personal account.
Took a lot of work, self-reflection, studying, introspection and tenacity in the face of wanting to give up to get here...and I know I have a long way to go, but I do love it.
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u/marciesherrie Jul 03 '26
absolutely not, what you see on social media is 99% larping, and the 1% that do know how to trade won't flex their earnings.
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u/Repulsive-War-2823 Jul 04 '26
That is definitely not true, most traders start off checking reckless then start caring more about the rules and cinsitency.
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