Forex and Crypto Trader, Perpetual Traveller and Anarcho-Capitalist Singing In!
Hello Steemit! I'm John, a forex and crypto trader. I first discovered trading back in 2005. Initially trading was supposed to be a way for me to make money and fuel that into my 'real' business. But like many before me, I fell in love with it. For the first few years I spent countless hours reading trading books and watching charts. I was obsessed with trading. I spent every walking moment either backtesting systems or reading something trading related.
None of it helped though and I kept losing money. I then took a break for a year and tried poker. I failed to make any serious money there too. With no resume or marketable skills, I was back to trading. Forex was challenging but I was becoming more of a breakeven trader.
Being an anarcho-capitalist, I knew about Bitcoin early on but didn’t get involved. Bitcoin trading was easy, especially in the first few years. The problem back then was how to get money on the exchanges. I got my first 0.25 bitcoins by trading a small amount of pokerstars money for them.
In the turmoil that followed the MtGox fiasco I multiplied my capital several-fold and first crossed the $1,000 mark. Then I slowly built this up over $10,000 and beyond. This month I lost the most money I ever have in crypto after Bitfinex decided to apply a 36% 'haircut' to all accounts. But more on this at another time :)
Forex continues to be challenging this year. I'm trying other markets as well. Diversification is one of the few 'free lunches' in trading and I intent to exploit this to the fullest.
I'm also a perpetual traveler. I travel mostly long-term, meaning I rent an apartment and stay at a place for several months at a time. I've been on this journey for almost two years now.
My top 4 places I've been to are:
The Azure Window on Gozo Island, right next to the main island of Malta. Absolutely breath-taking. Try to catch a sunset here if you can. A staging ground for many movies and TV series, including ‘Game of Thrones’.
Venice is amazing, a must visit. Expensive but absolutely worth it for a 3-4 days stay.
The Walls of Dubrovnik. Take a walk on top the walls of Dubrovnik. Lovely views of the old town below and the surrounding sea.
Climbing to the top of Kotor Fortress (also called Castle of St John). A forty-five minute climb is all that separates you from the best view in Montenegro. The bay and the old city of Kotor is on full display from the top. Try to get there early around 7-8 AM. The tall mountain completely covers the small city below, casting a shadow for the first few hours. After the sun gets sufficiently high and crosses about the mountain, it lights up the whole valley below. It has a very ‘Lord of the Rings’ feel to it.
I have more amazing photos from my travels, will share in later posts if there’s interest. My plan to post trading analysis about various crypto-currencies, mostly majors like BTC, ETH, LTC. Maybe some forex analysis as well, I don't see much of that around here. Now tell me Steemit what would you like to see from me in the future? Any questions about trading, travelling?
This guy followed us on our long climb to Kotor Fortress then just chilled there.
Welcome to steemit
thanks man :)
Hi mate, nice to meet you
Short well presented trading lessons around the fundamentals would interest me. I'd like to learn how to choose, access and research interesting markets.
My limited understanding is Forex is exchanging fiat currencies, and Comex is commodities. Then the crypto which I understand a lot better have various exchanges like coinbase, polinex, bitfinex bittylicious etc.
Working with that limited paradigm I have a bunch of questions you could consider answering as you start to post: Firstly is anything analogous to the Crypto exchanges in the fiat/commodities world (like alternatives to forex). Now I guess you can buy precious metals and oil on Comex but I have no idea what else (could you get Avacados and grain?). Is there an advantage to trading metals on Comex rather than say BullionVault? and would they be allocated?
The underlying rules and pitfalls to both markets would also be interesting. When you trade on Forex, is there any kind of fractional reserve system in play? Same for Comex? Thats why I'm buying out of fiat in the first place!
Anything based around that kinda stuff would certainly keep me reading!
Best
Forex is a decentralized market, so exchanges like in crypto don't exist. There are large pools of liquidity (ECNs) that you could say are similar to exchanges though.
In terms of what markets to trade, I would suggest to go with liquid markets first. Obvious choices would be Gold, Oil, Wheat, Corn, Silver etc...First to try are the big two, Gold and Oil. Once your start to go down the rabbit hole are all sorts of things you can trade on futures markets like Azuki beans for examples.
There is no fractional reserve afaik, the money in your broker account is supposed to be segregated. In practice we know that's not always the case :)
Hey glad to have you here.
And refreshing to hear someone be honest about trading losses.
As primarily a long trend fundamental focused forex trader, I'd encourage you to post analysis under the forex tag. You may not find as many upvotes there, due to most folks around here being focused on cryptos, but in my experience you'll find more serious/experienced traders who are eager to discuss and learn from eachother.
Liked and followed,
cheers.
thanks mate
Great post, thanks for sharing. Nice to see some other forex traders here on Steemit. Cheers!
Simply Great Information and Presentation
You are repeating yourself @alaynaspop. Twice on the one post again.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@brendio/fighting-a-spambot
Simply Great Information and Presentation
Tnx, glad u like it
@alaynaspop appears to be a bot that posts this same comment on multiple posts without also upvoting to support the compliment and adding nothing to the conversation. See my post here: https://steemit.com/steemit/@brendio/fighting-a-spambot