eToro – Forex Trading Forum

[djsheckie]

It seems that new traders often have unrealistic expectations when it comes to the amounts they can expect to earn. When a traders don’t make the amount they expect they can often become discouraged and start trying to make foolish trades in order to hit the amount they expected. So, how can a trader create reasonable profit expectations and incorporate that in his trading? All too often traders start by opening trading accounts with balances of $10,000 or less and expecting to make enough money to support themselves from their trading profits full time within a short period of time.

[djsheckie]

Of course, with all of the hype out there surrounding most of the trading education programs, signal services, etc. it really is no wonder that people think that not only is this a reasonable goal, but one they can attain over the short term. However, it simply isn’t true. As most any truly successful trader will tell you, the stock market has averaged somewhere in the neighborhood of 10% a year over the last 100 years. What this basically means is that if you would have invested in the 30 stocks that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the index which is designed to represent the overall market, you would have earned about 10% on your money on average over the last 100 years.