Trial Basis 2

There's still no fiber internet here, though work crews have been clearing all the brush and trees between power poles. It's gone like this. First, they cleared brush and small trees. Second, they cleared low tree limbs. Yesterday, they cut branches high up in the trees. Next to power poles in the area, I've seen some more of the green broadband utility boxes for fiber internet that I've mentioned before. There's still not one at my pole yet, but maybe now that the tree guys seem to be done, it'll happen. Hopefully soon, because I need a solid internet connection.

The sales job that I'm on a trial basis for is trading Forex. That's why it's taken so long to get going with it. It's a complicated field that requires a certain amount of study and preparation. I didn't jump into it. I had to study a lot first, and I still need to study a lot. Also, I've successfully dabbled at trading stocks in the past, so I was already familiar with the fundamentals. You can see why I haven't mentioned it before. It's one of those things that people fail hard at. If it didn't look like it was going to work, I was going to sweep it under the rug.

So, last week was a good week. This week was a bad week. I'm down from where I started. Remember how I have 4G LTE internet that is not "always on" the way DSL is? For ordinary internet, I usually can't tell the difference. However, when hundredths of a second count, I can. I placed this one trade, and somehow I was immediately $100 below where the price should have been. I didn't handle it the way I "should have" and ended up in a hole. I made nervous mistakes. That was near the start of the week. I've been slowly recovering ever since. Since that LTE glitch, like the first week, I'm on an upward trend. I've had other glitches, but fortunately, those were paper trades. I desperately need always on internet.

Whether I can reach the price target(details mentioned previously) I'm supposed to is now in doubt. Even though I'm recovering from the glitch, it's been slow going. Part of the problem is I'm being forced to use free Metatrader 4, which is user unfriendly because they make their money selling automated software tools for it. Before this, I was paper trading with the free version of TradingView, which is so streamlined and friendly compared to MT4.

With MT4 you have to input all the pricing numbers manually. With TradingView you can input dollar amounts(pips) and let the software input the pricing numbers for you. So, I have price signals that I wait for, and then I make a trade. The problem is that the signals don't always work. I wait to make sure the price is going the right direction then hit the buy or sell button. With TradingView, it's automatic. With MT4 I'm missing hundreds of dollars in trades because the price moves too fast for me to manually input more than one trade. While I'm dithering waiting to make sure the setup is right or finding the price numbers, trades are getting away from me. For example, I missed about $200 today on two trades when I got an "invalid parameter" error when I hit the buy button. By the time I fairly quickly diagnosed the problem and changed the numbers, the trades were gone. I think what happened was that, when I set the trade up ahead of time trying to be faster, the price moved too far from my original numbers too fast. In TradingView I can make 3 or more trades for every one in MT4. I'm hoping that I'll get faster over time after I've been using the software longer and get more experience.

Another problem this week has been psychological. After that glitch, I've had to be super cautious, and that's making me miss trades, too. I find myself afraid to commit to trades. I overthink trades and setups. As my balance has crept up, I've calmed down. Next week should be better.

The good news is that I'm getting better over time. Honestly, I should have paper traded a week or two longer for the practice. Nevertheless, I'm getting the experience now. I haven't blown the account or dropped low enough to fail the challenge. I've learned another trade setup, although it doesn't always work. I have until the last week of the month to hit my price target. Next week should be a pivotal week that will tell me how it's going to turn out.

If I hit the price target in this phase, I'll move on the phase 2, which is a lot easier. I've also started a demo account with a broker that works with TradingView. I haven't started trading on it yet, but I will next week. If I can be successful with that, I'll almost certainly open a real account. It would be small, but it would work with TradingView.

Have a great weekend.