I'll start off this post by saying a big thank you to everyone who supported my previous post, where I outlined my journey from 0BTC to 0.1BTC for free online. You can see the post here if you missed it.

That post made it to over 1.5k views, a first for me. I honestly didn't expect those numbers, and I wish to say a big thank you to everyone who read that post.

Following in the footsteps of that post, I thought that you might like to know how I became a professional trader. So I decided to tell another one if my stories. I hope you enjoy this one too.

Once again, thank you for the amazing support. Let's keep this going!

Let's get started.

So, if you read my previous post, you'd recall my name. If you didn't, my name is Max.

I'm an Electrical Engineering student at the University of Liverpool. I'm almost done with my regular degree, and will move on to pursue a master's in my course of study.

I was in my freshman year at school when I discovered this thing called the "Foreign Exchange" or Forex. I didn't have any friends, as it was the first day of school. My parents had just moved from California, and I left all my friends and whole entire life behind. I had to start a new one here.

The way I got to know about Forex was pretty absurd though. I was just fine seeing my counselor, and as I was walking down the hallway, I saw a group of girls watching a video all together. They were all taking notes down furiously, so I thought they were seniors doing some project.

As I passed by them, I heard the man in the computer say the words "Forex market". Now, I had never heard of this market before, and it intrigued me.

Being a very shy fellow, I couldn't talk to any of those girls to find out what this Forex was all about. I was genuinely interested in it, because off the sheer amount of attention these girls were paying to what he was saying.

So I typed the words down in my phone's notes app, and headed for my dorm.

Once I got there, I booted up my computer( a 2015 MacBook which I worked odd jobs during my free time to get) and started searching for what this market could be.

I found an article from a very famous site now(it wasn't as famous back then). The site was BabyPips.com.

The way Babypips was designed back then wasn't the best. They had a lot of educational content, but it was all hidden behind news articles and strategy testing.

I eventually navigated the site and found out what all the Forex talk was about.

I realised that it was a market where currencies were traded against each other, and traders bet on one currency appreciating over the other.

After getting the basics down, I read a line that included the words "technical analysis".

What could that be? 

Seeing as BabyPips didn't have any content on TA, I headed to the obvious place I could get tutorials on it for free: YouTube.

I downloaded as many YouTube videos as I could from various publishers.

The trick I used to find an all in one course on TA was simple. I simply typed "Technical analysis playlist" into the search bar, and I got some courses pop up in the search results.

I downloaded the one with the nices thumbnails, and saved them on a hard drive. The whole course was about 5 hours long, with 34 videos in total.

I began to watch the videos, starting with the basics. I watched each video about two times, because I wanted to be as serious as those girls I saw.

I however fell asleep on my computer, and as fate would have it, I drooled all over the keyboard. That damaged some things in the keyboard, so I had to hit my parents up for some money to get it fixed. It wasn't a good experience at all, because I hadn't bought Apple care. It cost me about $150 to get the keyboard faults smoothened out.

This out me out if my learning game for about a week. Naturally, classes had started, and electrical engineering classes can't really be mixed with other forms of learning. You can't serve two masters here.

I was getting into the groove of school when I was called to come and pick up my computer. 

After school, I headed over to the Apple store around me, and picked it up. Then that night, I continued my video watching.

I watched the videos for about 2 weeks, watching and researching each one to make sure I fully got the gist.

By the end of two weeks, I had completely understood the basics of how markets move, what moves prices and chart patterns and schmatterns.

Needless to say, the course was a very good one. I have looked up that course today, but it seems the owner took it down after realising the value. Bummer.(I still have those videos on my hard drive though.)

Now I was ready to make my fortune in the financial markets.

But the guy in the videos had said specifically that I would need about a month of practice to get my feet wet in the ways of Forex.

But of course, a month was too long.

After practicing for two weeks, around which time I had saved up £100 by absolutely starving myself to death, I was "ready" for the markets.

I sent my £100 to my MT4 account, used 5x leverage(the guy in the video said to never go above 5x) and started my journey.

What happened next, I will never forget as long as I live.

I made my first trade, and was profitable within 5 minutes of making it.

I saw my £100 become £120, within the space of a few minutes. My leverage made that £20 profit £100, so I had doubled my account in less than 10 minutes of getting started.

I immediately closed my position and kept staring at the computer. This couldn't be real.

I processed a withdrawal of the profits immediately. Someone had to be pulling my legs.

And sure enough, a few hours later, the money was in my account.

I couldn't believe my eyes(or fingers, which got me to this point). It was like magic.

With my initial deposit in my account, I did what any normal human would do. I went out to get a good meal, because I was starving.

After my meal, I decided to up my ante by depositing more money (a really dumb move as you'll see).

So I worked and traded for the next few weeks. I found a job at some supermart, and I worked there for 5 hours everyday after school. I made some profits here and there, and never let any loss go lower than 1%. My stop losses were very tight, and I hardly lost any money because of this.

After about a month if working, I had saved up £100 again, which I instantly deposited into my now £150 account. This made my equity £250.

Now, I got greedy. Very greedy.

I turned my leverage all the way up to 10x. And opened smaller positions over multiple pairs, so much that I couldn't keep track.

Most of these pairs made me some money, but ultimately I blew my account to smithereens

Left with no money to continue my Forex dreams, and no money to have a proper meal, I genuinely became scared.

Luckily, payday at the mart was in 3 days from that time. I had to get by on £50 for three days. If you've ever lived in London, you'd know how impossible that is.

I decided to retrace a little. Find out where I made my errors.

And it became clear. Beginners luck had the best of me. I had no practice, and I disobeyed all what my tutor had said because of greed.

I went back to the drawing board, and this time I practiced for 3 weeks. Around this time was our freshman exams.

After the exams, I continued to practice for an extra two weeks. I now had 5 weeks of practice.

I had saved up some more money again but this time, I had the minimum deposit of £50.

I used 2x leverage this time. No more jokes. Then I made sure I traded only 1 currency pair, and focused on it. And I started becoming profitable slowly.

I made a loss here and there, but overall I became profitable.

During my 5 weeks of study, I had created a trading plan (I have shared this plan on this blog) and backtested  it and found that it was profitable.

And that was how my journey started.

I would however go on to find out about cryptocurrencies 2 years later, but not before I had consistently become profitable, and grown my £50 account to £1000 without any more deposits.

I now had two years of experience, and I had become a "professional trader".

That's my story guys! I really hope you enjoyed it.

Thanks for reading.