How difficult is to actually make money trading? For somebody like me, who actually lives of trading and trading related activities, that question is of paramount importance. And not for me only, I'm sure. There are legions of people with aspirations and dreams of making it big trading currencies or any other financial vehicle for that matter.
It's not easy. To achieve some kind consistency takes a lot of time trading. It's difficult to say precisely how long and even to define what consistent profits are. But at least few hundred trades, long enough to go through a number of market behavior phases and prove to oneself that it's profitable.
Barclay, the British financial powerhouse, compiles numerous indexes which track performance of managed programs and hedge funds trading financial markets. One of them is Barclay Currency Traders Index. This one is the broadest one, I think they compile 6-7 other currency indexes. Right now, this tracking tool, is a weighted composite of 114 currency trading programs. The results are not awe inspiring. Since 2000 there was only one year (2003) when the returns were over 10% (11.08%). Last 2 years were loosing years and 2007 to date is up 0.89%. That's right, less than 1%. The funds being tracked represent some of the best money managers, banks and hedge funds.
Hmm, maybe it's not that easy to make money from trading after all? At least not as simple as TV commercials make it sound. Rather sobering statistic.

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http://www.spectrumforex.com/weeklycomments/09092007.html

Here is my own trading last week. Focus was, as usually of late, on JPY pairs. On balance decent results, although not identical from cross to cross.