I am a funded FTMO trader that has been trading full time since 2020.

My journey trading has changed my life and gave me an appreciation for money and finances in general, I never understood until I started trading.

The early years… Started with the Bitcoin boom in 2017. I jumped on the bandwagon and purchased Bitcoin and learned the ins and out of cryptocurrencies as well mining and investing. I bought my first Bitcoin in 2017 and started mining crypto in 2018.

Unfortunately, much of my investments in 2018 went into service providers. As the mining cost was unsustainable by these service providers, I ended up losing alot of money. In parallel, I purchased mining rigs at home, which I used for mining alt coins but after a year and $1k monthly electricity costs, I had to give that up too.

Which led me to the next stage of my journey, which was trading. At first I didn’t have a clue what I was doing and ended up with some wins but mostly losses. But these early experiences encouraged me to learn and study trading. At first, I got caught up with algo trading. I had alot of success trading various algos. But in the end, lost several bitcoin worth of investments on high risk grid trading bots.

While I was learning and using algo bots, I also learned the basics of trading. I took several online courses, and used many free resources to gain further knowledge and experience. But after the big losses in algo trading, I decided to trade further my education so I could trade by myself.

At first, I was trading purely crypto but one of the courses I signed up for focused on Forex instead of Crypto. This mentor suggested that I didn’t limit myself to just trading crypto and to give Forex a chance as there were just as many opportunities. These words, open my eyes to a whole new world that changed my life forever.

This was a game changer for me and the start of my real trading journey. From 2020, I furthered my education signing up for many different courses, most of them being a waste of money… But I did learn a few profitable strategies and adjusted many of them to make them my own.

Although I started trading relying on indicators and patterns, I learned to focus on price action along with fundamentals for my trading strategies. Having all the basic knowledge is very useful as I still use them for my analysis. But when I enter trades, it is purely based on momentum, price action and fundamentals.

As I was gaining more consistency and profits over the last year, it was clearly not enough to survive off of. And that is when I started looking into funded trading programs. In terms of contract structure, FTMO seemed to be the best at the time, and I chose them as proprietary trading platform that I wanted to trade for. Although I am still a beginner trader, I was able to successfully complete the challenge and verification stages of FTMO and become a funded trader. Which is where I am today.

As a side note, during my journey, I became redundant by my employer of 20+ years. I had a very promising career working for a large financial institution as a senior IT manager, managing regional teams, where many people looked up to me. It was a very humbling experience to say the least. Although I was making good money over the years, the environment I was living in as well as the lifestyle I was living, created awful money management and I was not left with much when I left my job. This experience taught me alot about myself and life in general. I started to understand the true meaning of capitalism and how people are just pawns in the rat race. Although I continued to interview and look for new career opportunities, my true passion became trading and the thought of getting out of this rat race and being able to survive independently. Which is why I focused my attention 150% to become a successful trader. I recently turned down a job opportunity as a project manager, for a company that I had relationships with, from my prior job experience, so I could continue trading full time.

I have built this website so I can share my experience and hopefully influence those wanting to become a successful trader in a positive way. Although my thoughts may not be so useful today, I expect them to become more useful over time as I gain more experience and more profits trading. So join me as I share these learning experiences in my trading journey.