Investor, trader, player. Greed is bad. Sergei Riazantsev

absolutely real task – if desired. Fifty books a year (well, let it be twenty, or at least ten) is already a serious theoretical basis. One hundred books read are already expert level. Your capital, which is always with you.

      – Set yourself real goals: first, survival in the market. If you don’t lose money for three months, it’s not bad. The first, the most important and difficult step, you have made. Stability in the long term is of critical importance. By analogy with chess, a child can also take someone else’s pawn. But winning the whole game is quite another matter. It’s the same in trading: to accidentally catch a powerful trend and take 10% of the deposit is about nothing. It is much more difficult to consistently show a result of 2% profit on a monthly basis.

      A few words about brokers

      Any advertising is characterized by aggressiveness and exaggeration.

      “Drink Coca-Cola!”.

      Drink and don’t think. Don’t you see in the ads that those who drink this soda are insanely happy surrounded by cheerful friends? Having calmly judged at least a couple of seconds, it is obvious that a can of lemonade will not make us happy. And this drink also does not have the property of attracting new friends. And that’s for sure. Therefore, a person needs to be emotionally “stunned”: to throw into the consciousness and subconscious attractive images that are not always connected with reality.

      We will talk about advertising financial services.

      A familiar advertising image: a sad depositor is not satisfied with the amount of interest offered by banks. But then – oh, a miracle! – kind and generous brokerage companies are rushing to help. You are offered to install the application on your smartphone and immediately start trading stocks, bonds, currencies, oil and other financial instruments. Do I need to explain that money should immediately fall from the sky, in bundles of dollars or euros, who likes what? It’s a small matter – you just need to open a brokerage account and poke the buttons in your smartphone. Arbitrarily.

      And now let’s get back to real life.

      Brokerage companies (hereinafter referred to as brokers) are intermediaries between a person and financial markets. Trading on exchanges is conducted in lots, for example, one standard lot for the EURUSD currency pair is $ 100,000. It is clear that the vast majority of private traders do not have such free money, which means that the road to the exchange is closed for them. Brokers earn money on this by offering a person so-called leverage or margin trading. A person opens a relatively small account, say, $ 1,000. The broker sets the leverage of 1: 100, there are options more or less in the account settings. And a person can trade one lot of $100,000 on the exchanges.

      The question is that the broker does not cease to be just an intermediary. Which is not responsible for the results of your trading, does not guarantee profit, does not protect against losses. This is not a bank, although large banks often combine banking activities with brokerage. This is not a bank that is responsible for the safety of your money, although large banks often combine banking activities with brokerage. But a brokerage account is by definition an account for independent trading. It is simply stated in the smallest letters in the contract or public offer, in legal documents that few people read and understand.

      Therefore, do not try to be someone who you are not yet.

      If this morning you are not an investor or a trader – this is not bad and not good – it’s just a fact. You may also not be a neurosurgeon or a translator from Chinese. And it doesn’t matter how much money surgeons or translators receive, you just don’t have that competence yet.

      “Wanting a lot of money” is not a profession.

      This is a desire.

      Which in itself does not bring money.

      It is important to understand that without proper preparation, you will get lost with a scalpel in the operating room or in front of a stack of pages with Chinese text. You will also get confused on the stock exchange, where prices change every second and most often do not go where you would like. Trading is generally one of the most highly competitive professions in the world, according to statistics, only about 2% of participants earn steadily on the exchange.

      In conclusion, we will say about those cases when the broker has an offshore registration. You will not be informed about this in advertising, you need to read the notes typed in microscopic text yourself, on the website or in the contract. If you see any Virgin Islands or Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (often the English text is not translated to impress the client with solidity, to present yourself as an international financial company), know that this broker is outside the jurisdiction of your country. You will not be able to apply to the court of your country, they will not accept a statement of claim from you, or they will refuse later.

      Therefore, double-check the selected brokerage company according to these criteria, it may save you a lot of time and money.

      Skill levels

      Unconscious incompetence

      The ancient Greeks said:

      The beginning is half of everything.

      Indeed, the importance of starting in any business can hardly be overestimated, and trading is no exception. Let’s try to figure out what these first steps should be.

      From personal experience – I am a private trader in the Forex – I will say this: the first step should start with the truth. In the first place, you should put the correspondence of the chosen type of activity (in our case, trading) to your personality, your character. If we are going to engage in trading professionally (at least – to earn, and not to lose money; at most – to get rich), then let’s think about whether this profession is suitable for us at all.

      The question is not as simple as it seems at first glance.

      This apparent simplicity (I thought a little, saw a trend, pressed the “buy” or “sell” button, opened a deal, closed a deal, withdrew a profit) is deceptive. Rarely anyone writes about the “dark side of the Moon”, about the strict requirements for the profession of a trader. Most likely, you will not see this in the advertising company. For example: “Put a hundred dollars in the account, get a bonus, buy a trading robot and don’t worry about anything else”. You will not read about this in numerous self-help books on trading, with titles in the spirit of “How to make a million lying on the couch” or “It’s easy to play on the stock exchange”.

      It’s easy to play – it’s hard to earn money.

      There are a great many professions in the world, but not all are suitable for you. Let’s consider for example three of them: a doctor (surgeon) and an athlete (boxer) and a sniper.

      Not every one of us will be able to become a surgeon. Six years of intense study. The study of complex disciplines (Latin, etc.), anatomy lessons in the morgue. And the prospect of cutting a living person (even under anesthesia) and performing some manipulations in his body will not suit everyone. There are also adults who faint from one type of blood – and the surgeon must work for hours in a blood-filled incision… If you don’t squeeze an inconspicuous blood vessel in time, the patient will die, and the doctor will answer. In trading, it is about the same – you will not stop losses in time – the matter will end with the drain of your deposit. Your money. According to statistics, this is exactly what happens to 98% of traders, during the first three to six months of trading.

      Or the craft of a boxer. With all the attractiveness of championship belts and high fees – not every person, by nature, will agree to earn a living like this. To stay in the hospital for a long time after concussions and many other injuries. Spit out broken teeth into the boxing ring. To train when you don’t want to. Continue the fight when you can hardly stand on your feet. There is something similar in trading – if a person is not