What I lost in FX was not money, but "five years of time"

Right after I stopped FX, the most obvious loss was money.

When I looked at my account balance, I could tell how much I had decreased.

The amount of loss could be confirmed in numbers.

But what felt heavier as time passed was something else.

Time.

I wasn’t trading for five years straight

Of course, I wasn’t just watching charts for five years.

I was working, and I was living normally.

Still, I spent a considerable amount of time on FX.

Looking at charts.

Researching methods.

Reading books.

Backtesting.

Changing the conditions and testing again.

When a trade ended,

we would think about

“Why did I win?”

“Why did I lose?”

Even after closing the screen,

I would think, “What would happen if I changed that condition?”

At that time, I didn’t think it was a waste.

Rather,

the time I’m using now will become future technology

I thought.

I thought, “An hour today is an investment in the future”

It takes time to acquire something.

If you quit just because you don’t see results immediately, you won’t learn anything.

I think this is a quite natural way of thinking for ordinary work or study.

So I also

today’s testing.

today’s loss.

today’s failure.

All of them, I believed, would become experiences for the future.

If you continue for five years,

your ability to read markets will accumulate.

your trading skills will improve.

That skill would eventually generate a steady income.

That’s what I believed.

What I thought after quitting

After I quit FX, I suddenly wondered.

What did these five years become?

The title of the book would be,

“I studied FX for five years and nothing accumulated.”

It’s not that literally nothing remained.

I thought about probabilities.

I learned what my emotions were when I held losses.

How I would think when I won.

How I would explain when I lost.

Those kinds of experiences also remained.

The fact that I can write like this now is because of those experiences.

Still,

the form I had hoped to accumulate did not materialize.

When I quit FX, many things lost their place

The chart patterns I had learned over five years.

Entry conditions.

The methods I had adjusted for hours.

Many of them

lost their place the moment I quit FX.

Here, my standard for how I use time changed.

Of course,

“In work, effort surely pays off”

is not what I want to say.

Work also has failures.

Businesses run in the red.

What you studied may not become income.

Even so,

in work or business, there are things that remain even if you don’t succeed.

Knowledge.

Skills.

Experience.

Connections with people.

Credit.

Things you created.

Track records.

Not everything remains.

But there is a possibility that something remains that you can take to another place.

I didn’t want FX itself

This was also important.

I didn’t especially love currency itself.

I didn’t want to devote my life to watching charts.

What I wanted was much simpler.

I wanted to make money.

If possible, I wanted to earn income without being tied to place or time, using my own abilities.

That’s why, after quitting, one question remained.

If the purpose was to earn money, did the five years really have to be FX?

It isn’t possible to say I’d have been successful doing something else

Here,

“If I’d done a business instead of FX, I’d have been successful”

“If I’d obtained a qualification, I’d have done well”

“If I’d done a side business, I’d have profited”

is not what I want to say.

Even if I’d done something else, I could have failed.

Maybe my writing wouldn’t have been read.

Maybe learning a business skill wouldn’t have helped.

Maybe starting a business would have failed bigger.

You can’t rewrite the past to fit your needs.

So now, what I look at is

not only whether I will succeed.

What remains when you fail

When you spend time on something now,

not only, “how much can I earn,”

but also,

“what remains if it doesn’t go well.”

I started thinking about this as well.

Money can be earned again, but five years cannot be recovered

Money can be lost and earned again.

But,

the five years cannot be returned.

So now, I think about not only,

“how much can I earn with this method,”

but also,

“what remains after spending that time.”

I’ve started to look at that.

I don’t think the five years spent on FX were completely wasted.

Because of that experience, I can think like this now.

But back then, I was mostly looking at only “whether I could win.”

If I could, I’d look at one more thing now.

What remains from that time when I lost.

I don’t think this is only about FX.

In a side business.

In studying.

In starting a new thing,

not only, “what will I gain if I succeed,”

but also,

“what remains if I fail.”

After using five years, I finally began to have that perspective.