FROM $2,000
AND A DREAM.

Mid 2021. Post-pandemic. I heard about forex somewhere on the internet and went looking. Limited capital. No knowledge. I was pressing buy and sell with no direction — pure gambling. But I couldn't stop. I needed this to work. Credit debt. Living expenses. The pressure was real.

I found the gold trading gurus — furus, as we call them. Free signals on TikTok. I'm not saying they were pros or that I needed to follow them forever. But I noticed something. Every time a signal dropped, price moved — 40 to 50 pips. Before the signal, it was ranging 10 to 20. Then boom. Whether it hit TP or SL, the move was real and fast.

That pattern stuck in my head. Something was behind it. It wasn't random. There was knowledge driving those decisions — knowledge I didn't have yet.

I gave myself one last deposit — $2,000. My final venture. If this money was gone, I was done with forex. Forever.

I stopped clicking. Started reading — technical books, YouTube, anything I could find. S/R levels. Fibonacci. Market structure. RSI. Slowly I learned the fundamentals and began applying them.

Then it clicked. Those rapid price moves I saw from the furus' signals? After gaining more knowledge, I realised those moves were often driven by RSI — visible in the lower timeframes. When RSI was stretched or reversing on M15 or M30, price reacted fast. That's what I was seeing all along and didn't understand.

Not saying RSI works all the time. No indicator does. But the knowledge has to be there. Understanding why price moves is what separates trading from gambling.

I built from that $2,000. Then ventured into prop trading — low cost entry, far better reward potential. CFD prop first, then futures prop. There were hard lessons along the way — prop firm shutdowns, denied payouts. The industry has its shadows. But the rewards, when earned right, were real.

I didn't want to spend too much time on charts. Every session — 5 tabs open. Price on one screen. Calendar on another. News somewhere else. S/R levels drawn manually. I had all the knowledge, but the workflow was slow. So I built a personal dashboard to hook all the information into one place. Then I added more. Then AI. Then I thought — do other XAU/USD traders face the same problem?