What happens in your first month trading the Nikkei

We are not going to give you a number

The question in most people's heads before they start is: will I make money in my first month?

We are not answering that one. Not with any number at all.

Not out of politeness — nobody knows. What the market looks like in your particular month is not something anyone can see, and anyone quoting you a figure made it up.

There is a different question we can answer: what you will run into in that first month.

That part follows a pattern, and it is much the same for everyone. Knowing it in advance means that when it happens, you will not think you have been singled out.

Three things that will almost certainly happen

One: you will lose, and probably right at the start

Some people get a good first trade. Not many. For most, it opens with one loss, then another, and then doubt about the whole undertaking.

Two things need separating here — losing money, and getting it wrong.

You entered by the rules, you exited by the rules, and it still lost. That is this thing working normally. No method is right on every trade.

You entered outside the rules, or you did not get out when you should have, and it lost. That is getting it wrong.

What the first month is really measuring is not how much you lost. It is whether you followed the rules while you were losing.

Two: you will want to change method

Three losses in a row and the first thought is always the same one: this does not work.

The thought is strong, because it makes you feel there is still something you can do.

But changing method here costs you the one thing you came for: your own data.

Switch after three trades and you will always be holding three trades' worth of record. Three trades show nothing — you cannot tell an unsuitable method from an ordinary run of bad days.

The more often you switch, the more often the clock starts again.

Three: the time is harder to find than you expected

The windows are real. The Nikkei has sessions worth trading in the morning, the afternoon and the evening, Malaysian time.

So are the meetings, the school run and the evening that overruns.

The common problem in month one is not that the chart is unreadable. It is that you were not there for it.

You can work this out before you begin: how many hours a week you can actually find shapes the first month more than most people expect.

The first month you imagine, and the one you get

What you expect	What it is
Learning to read the chart	Learning what you do while losing
Month one should show results	Month one should produce a record
A loss means the method is wrong	A loss means check whether you followed it
The time should be there	Time is the first thing that stops you
More trades, faster learning	More scattered trades, less to learn from

One person's opening worth reading first

Weng Yee is a full-time engineer on a nine-to-five.

In her first two trades, the account lost half of itself.

She did not change method, and she did not size up to win it back. She went back to how an engineer works: look at the data, look at the probabilities, follow the rules.

We include this not so you expect the same outcome. We include it because what she did after those two trades is exactly the first and second things above — she lost, and she did not treat that as a reason to switch.

This is one student's own result and does not mean others will see the same. The account above is what the student described in a filmed interview. We do not guarantee returns and we do not trade on anyone's behalf. Markets carry the risk of loss.

All three stories in full: Student stories

So what should the first month look like

One index only

Do not watch the Nikkei and a US index at the same time. They move to different rhythms, and you will spend your time switching rather than judging.

One session only

Enter in the same window each time. The same chart looks different at different hours, and if you keep moving, nothing you see can be compared with anything else. Pick the session you are actually present for — not the best one, the one you can sit down for.

Write down every trade

Why you entered, why you exited, what happened. Three lines is enough. This is the one thing the first month has to leave you with — without a record, the month is indistinguishable from having done nothing.

Common questions

How much money do I need for the first month?

The answer is not an amount. It is whether losing it would affect your life. Trading with money that hurts distorts your judgement. The full working is here: How much capital do you need to trade the Nikkei?

If I lose in month one, am I not cut out for this?

There is no way to tell. A month is too few trades to separate an unsuitable method from an ordinary run of bad days. To see whether this suits you, you need three months of the same method — below that, the sample is too small and what you are looking at is luck.

How much time does the first month take?

More than most people expect, but not all day. The real question is not hours per day, it is whether you can show up in the same window consistently. Consistent beats long.

At the end of the first month, most people check what is left in the account. The thing worth checking is something else: whether you are holding a record of your own. With one, month two has something to work on. Without one, month two is another round of guessing.

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We do not guarantee returns. We do not trade on anyone's behalf. This is market education, not personal investment advice. Working through this properly takes at least three months of sustained effort. Markets carry the risk of loss — decide what you can afford to risk before you begin.

What actually happens in your first month trading the Nikkei