Can I trade if I have a full-time job?

Yes! There are many approaches for how an individual trades depending on their circumstances. It will take you longer than others who have more time to invest in learning but it's not impossible.

How much money can I make?

Potential returns from trading are a factor of just 2 things: 1) Your individual skill set, 2) Your trading account balance. The output of that equation is practically unlimited.

How long will it take to be profitable?

This is down to you, there isn't a set time-frame or 10,000 hours invested and you will achieve profitability, it's about embracing the work, learning from your mistakes, and keep moving forward. Then, one day, it will click, but without action and reflection, you'll be stuck in a loop of drawdown.

Do I need a lot of money to start trading?

No. It's best to invest money you have into education and tools. However, that can get quite costly but this is one of the main reasons I created Meteor Trading, everything you need is here so you can easily total up how much everything will cost you.

Do I need to be good at maths to trade?

Absolutely not. Any maths you do (such as calculating your position size in order to risk 1% per trade) can be done by Magic Keys on your trading platform.

What markets can I trade as a beginner?

Any market. However, I would recommend the most commonly traded forex markets such as EURUSD or GBPUSD due to their low spreads and high volume.

How much time should I spend learning each week?

This is down to your time limits. My ethos is that even if you put in 0.01% you are still making progress. The key is steady practice with quality, not random bursts of quantity with the risk of burnout.

Without an edge, yes. Once you develop an edge, however, trading becomes more like running a casino than playing in one. A casino isn't worried about one lucky spin of the roulette wheel because it knows the odds are stacked in its favour over time. Through the course I recommend, you'll learn how to build that edge. When you combine this with the law of large numbers, risk management, and consistent execution of your trading plan, short-term wins and losses don't matter. Over the long run, the probabilities work in your favour. In other words, you stop being the gambler and become the casino.

What tools do I need to start?

The obvious answer is a computer, good internet connection, and a trading platform. The next step beyond that can be found in the Tools page.

Weekly Overview #20 - Recency Bias + Execution Addiction

Date

February 21st, 2026

Written by

Daniel Griffiths

Hello Traders!

I hope you have had a great week.

Mine has not been as great as I had hoped but it led me to a lesson that backtesting could never teach me – recency bias & execution addiction.

Let’s dive deeper!

(Tools I have used this week will be featured at the bottom of the blog – including discounts!)

Live Trading Info

EURUSD

London Session

FTMO Funded account start balance = $50,000

Risk per trade = 0.5% of account balance (x)

Take profit target = 3.3x risk per trade (y)

Risk:Reward ratio = x:y

Trading Performance

Monday – US Bank Holiday = no trade day

Simple as it can be. Volume is lower during US bank holidays (even during London session) and we were also still stuck in the range that NFP (Non-farm Payrolls) had created.

Price moved practically nowhere so I saved time not being active in this session.

Tuesday – Price still stuck in NFP range so I did not trade

Still stuck in the range so I opted out.

There were signs of it breaking out but I am still sceptical as it could just be a liquidity sweep.

Wednesday – 2 losses

These 2 trades were really low probability and I was executing them out of boredom / wanting to be involved and spending too much time analysing my lower time frame execution chart.

Thursday – 2 losses

Very similar to the day prior as I got way too involved in my execution time frame rather than my strategies immediate direction time frame.

The trades themselves were low probability but did have some chance of playing out. However, I did not register the context of the higher time frames so the chances of them playing out were extremely low / should have been avoided.

I had a pretty bad mental attitude after these 2 losses, and from the day prior too. It got to the level where I felt like quitting and regretting ever starting this journey. However, I wrote down how I was feeling, reminded myself that these trades were still valid in the eyes of backtesting, and that I was just in the midst of the law of large numbers playing out.

Friday – No trade day due to data gathered from news happening

EUR/GBP/USD Flash Manufacturing PMI is not as high impact news even like NFP or CPI, but backtesting has shown that the days when this news comes around it’s in my best interest to avoid trading.

I did and looking back, there were no trade opportunities anyway which positively correlates to the backtesting data I have.

FTMOlive5 liveaccountgraph6

Recency Bias & Execution Addiction

What is recency bias?

Recency bias is the tendency to be disproportionately influenced by recent occurrences when evaluating or making a decision about something.

In the context of my trading, I was influenced by the information I was receiving on my execution time frame (2-minute chart) rather than my immediate directional bias time frame (15-minute chart).

As you can see it was quite detrimental to the performance of this week.

Yes, the 4 trades I took can still be logged under valid trades when it comes to execution. However, the fact of the matter is, in relevance to my immediate bias chart, these trades should be a no-go when they appear.

This leads me to execution addiction.

What is execution addiction?

In trading, it’s when we become compulsively obsessed with the act of buying and selling (executing trades) rather than focusing on profit, strategy, or risk management.

This is the problem with the backtesting mindset when it comes to trading. Even though in that environment I would have executed these trades, I have the data to support that these trades do not need to be taken in a live market in order to preserve capital.

Recency bias & execution addiction go very much hand-in-hand.

Key Takeaway for the Week

In my journal, I wrote down all that I could to understand recency bias/execution addiction and how to overcome it. My outcome was to be really stern about my execution time frame.

Analysis of liquidity sweeps, lower time frame POIs, order flow direction, etc is to all be banned.

The goal is to embrace the immediate bias time frame and really make sure I have checked every box when it comes to understanding the current likely objective that price will fulfill today.

This is what backtesting could never teach me….

UPDATE: Winddown routine

This is helping but I still need to have a full-week of doing this since it slipped once again due to the US bank holiday, NFP range, and Flash PMI but I will keep you in the loop!

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If you enjoyed this Weekly Overview, please share it by copying the website URL, or by taking a screenshot and sending it to your friends!

As promised, here are the tools I have used this week and a discount code for Magic Keys:

Magic Keys (for 25% off, use code: MKMETEORTRADINGFX)
TradingView
FTMO (funded account challenge)

Check out the Tools page for more info

Thank you for taking the time to read this blog post, it means a lot to me.

See you next week and happy trading!