My first month trading a live Forex account

Hi Steemit, I just came to the end of my first month trading a live forex account and I'd like to share my experience.

I've been trading forex on demo accounts for the last seven months or so. At first I was primarily interested in trading shares, being inspired by my Dad who is really good at it. I started reading up and listening to podcasts about trading, and decided to try a forex demo account for fun and experience. I really enjoyed it. As you can imagine, I did really really badly at first. I blew up so many demo accounts it isn't even funny! But eventually, things clicked for me and I started learning how to do technical analysis and manage my money instead of basically just wildly pressing buttons based on what I thought might happen.

As I learned and practiced more, I really came to love forex and determined that this is a path I'm going to stick to, and become a really good trader no matter how long it takes.

After several months of trading profitably on my demo accounts, at the start of June I decided it was time to try trading with real money. I spent a couple of days picking out a broker, then took the plunge and opened a very small live account.
Although I felt I'd prepared myself quite well, I was a bit nervous. Everyone knows that more than 90% of new traders lose all their money fairly quickly, so I firmly resolved to do my very best not to become a statistic. When I've had serious losses on my demo accounts, it has just about always been because for some reason I did something stupid, which I totally know better than to do. I promised myself I won't let myself do anything really stupid. Hopefully I can keep that promise!

So trading my live account, I found it to be like and unlike trading on a demo account at the same time. I spent a lot more time second guessing myself because I had something real on the line this time, and at times it was hard to tear my eyes away from the charts. Most of my trades lasted a few hours, but some went on for a couple of days. There were a few times when I struggled to keep myself from doing stupid things like revenge trading after a loss or just taking positions that were too big.

As the month went on, I started adjusting to live trading better. I realised that in my excitement to be trading with real money, I had been taking just about every opportunity I saw, and that the less great ones often weren't working out, and that I wasn't managing my money as well as I should have been, and struggling with things like where to place my stop loss, when to take profits etc. So I tried to be more patient and just wait for opportunities that were really good and I could feel very confident would work out. I focused more tightly on my money management and thought more about things like how bad a worst case scenario would make me feel before opening a trade. This lead to a few less trades and some smaller positions, but to more confidence and good feelings and profits.

Overall, I have to say I really had so much fun! I wake up excited to see whats happened on the charts and looking forward to trading. In the end, I came to the end of my first month with a 15% profit, which I am super proud of and happy with. It feels really great to have not failed! I'm excited to keep trading, and keep learning and getting better at it!

Thanks for reading! I know there are quite a few experienced traders on steemit as well as novices like myself, I'd be really happy to hear everyone's experiences and advice.