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 #7 - Live Trading Results, The Butterfly Effect

Date

November 8th, 2025

Written by

Daniel Griffiths

Hello Traders!

Another great week with a step in the right direction.

It was a very testing week but I managed to finish with strong profits!

That being said, I still made some mistakes.

(Tools I have used this week are featured at the bottom of the blog, including discounts!)

Trading Performance

Monday – No trades

Tuesday – 1 loss, 1 win

Wednesday – 1 win

Thursday – Afraid of giving back profits but “saved” me from 2 losses

Friday – 1 loss, 2 no-tags

Let’s address the elephant in the room of “saved” from 2 losses.

I didn’t take the 2 valid trades on Thursday because I was afraid of giving back the profit that I had made so far in the week.

Sure I have kept profit and my FTMO challenge is currently looking quite healthy but the thing that gets me the most about missing these 2 trades is, what if they were both winners?

Of course we don’t want to think in an outcome based way but at the end of the day they were both 2 valid trades, they could have been winners and by me not taking these trades automatically alters the expected result from what the strategy could likely achieve.

It’s a butterfly effect (small changes can lead to largely altered outcomes, making the future incredibly difficult to predict)

If this continues then there is a high probability that I don’t pass my funded account challenge anytime soon or make any meaningful profits.

In the long term, I am paying an opportunity cost – to satisfy my fear of losing profits, I risk not making any.

Backtesting Progression

I have not achieved any backtesting this week and that’s okay.

Since live trading is taking up a lot of my mental capital, I am finding it tricky to sum up the energy to sit and go through more charts.

I did try and say to myself, “just one day tested is enough” but even that was too much.

I may do some this weekend as I am only 17 trades away from my 100 trades tested goal so perhaps for now I will keep it as a Sunday thing – unless as time goes on, live trading takes up less mental capacity.

Mindset

Despite the mistakes that I made this week and not executing my plan 100%, overall it was pretty solid.

Of course not executing my plan for one day of the week is pretty good going and I can see myself stopping this as time goes on, but it may take a few more days like this before it fully gets out of my system.
On Wednesday, I almost moved my stop loss to break-even on one of my trades but fortunately, because I never tested that, I was mentally strong enough to resist this urge and I let the trade run.
I am also finding myself cutting my session short by 30/45 minutes. It’s hard to tell if this is a fear thing or genuine thinking because it’s unlikely a trade will appear. Being totally honest with you, I think it’s the former.

Let’s talk about the positives

I didn’t let my phone distract me this week
Focus and execution (aside from Thursday and a little bit on Friday) was very strong
I let my trades run, I did not let fear or greed move my stop loss to break-even or reduce my profit target

A good week for sure, if I achieve the same next week but with 100% execution then that’s a perfect week – just a good week this time 🙃

Key Takeaway for the Week

Despite the fact I had a strong finishing profit this week, I would have still been in profit had I stuck to my backtesting mindset in the live market, and that’s much more important than trying to save paper profits – especially when I have great risk management!

The butterfly effect is the best way I can describe this. Because we do not know the outcome of our trades (which is also out of our control), we should only focus on what we can control and that is the execution of your plan exactly how you tested it.

Forget refining trades, low or high probability, just take the trade. You will thank yourself in the long run.

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If you enjoyed this Weekly Overview, make sure you share it by copying the website URL, or by taking a screenshot.

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!