A life change

Hi all,

Thought id just say hi and let you know how i ended up here! A friend of mine had heard about forex and introduced me to the very basics. I was fascinated and something clicked inside me, it all felt so familiar and that was really hard to explain. We set about learning as much as we possibly could but life was getting in the way. I am an electrician by trade and was spending most nights away from home in hotels, limited only to theory work and reading. I was sick of my life to be honest, and my girlfriend was getting pretty fed up with hers. One saturday we walked into a shop and spent 3000 pounds on flights to Thailand and beyond. .....

A few months later I realised that it was time to have a serious think about where my life was going, and more importantly where would I like to see it go...

Forex was buzzing around my head the whole time, I tried to push it back but the subject was constantly on the forefront of my mind. I was worried really, its the first time iv ever really felt such passion for something and I didnt want to pin my hopes and future dreams on something that some people wouldnt take seriously. And what if it didnt work out, I would be back to square one. I made the decision, if i am to do it I would do it properly. No shortcuts, im giving myself the best possible chance to succeed.

Here we are now, I have been home 3 months. One months ago I started an intense year long course 'Access to University', it is designed for mature students like myself(age 27) and for those without the standard grades recognised by University's. I am taking units in Business, Statistics and Higher Pure Mathematics. I am currently applying to study a 3 year degree in Economics and Finance and have secured a place at one of the top universities in the country, (grades dependent) via a special scheme that waives all course tuition fees and awards the student a yearly bursary.

Anyway enough about me, I look forward to chatting to some of you soon.

Most of the people who trade Forex (or anything else) think they are smarter than the others. That is why they trade.

Still, statistically 95% of traders end up losing consistently or at once everything and they stop trading within 6-9 months. 95%....! I bet none of the people who end up in the 95% start like: 'I will belong to the 95%.' Still 95% end up there.

Of course, there is the 5% (mostly banks and funds) who happily take the monies from the 95%. Trading does not produce real value: we all BET against each other. If we BUY, there is always someone else who is on the other side with the solid conviction to SELL and vice versa. So in its core nature trading is gambling (we BET, don't we...?). Of course trading is not gambling for the 5%, it is gambling only for 95% against the 5%.

BOTTOM LINE 1: You cannot learn SUCCESSFUL trading from someone else. Why would anybody - in his right mind - teach his/her edge (i.e. his/her 'ATM code' to financial freedom) to anybody, even for a fee? It would only weaken his own chances to get the good entries and exits, risking the saturation of the strategy until it dies.

BOTTOM LINE 2: You need to find your OWN EDGE to become successful and financially free through trading, OR you need to find a successful guru and subscribe to his signals for a monthly fee.

BOTTOM LINE 3: 80% of trading is psychology and 20% technical knowledge. So when you have mastered the technical part, you are still up to mastering the 80%...

I cloud not agree more about the fact that many traders (both winners and losers) think they are smarter than others.

The psychology part would be the first bottom line to me. Accepting the drawdown on a serious balance (one that you rely on to live) will be the toughest part, trust me. I am still young and have a hard time watching DD which is why I chose scalping EAs for now. Which is fine, all you need is to find a style of trading that fit your emotions and practice in order to have good track records to start live.

Good luck to you in your new project!

FxMasterGuru posted:
Most of the people who trade Forex (or anything else) think they are smarter than the others. That is why they trade.

Still, statistically 95% of traders end up losing consistently or at once everything and they stop trading within 6-9 months. 95%....! I bet none of the people who end up in the 95% start like: 'I will belong to the 95%.' Still 95% end up there.

Of course, there is the 5% (mostly banks and funds) who happily take the monies from the 95%. Trading does not produce real value: we all BET against each other. If we BUY, there is always someone else who is on the other side with the solid conviction to SELL and vice versa. So in its core nature trading is gambling (we BET, don't we...?). Of course trading is not gambling for the 5%, it is gambling only for 95% against the 5%.

BOTTOM LINE 1: You cannot learn SUCCESSFUL trading from someone else. Why would anybody - in his right mind - teach his/her edge (i.e. his/her 'ATM code' to financial freedom) to anybody, even for a fee? It would only weaken his own chances to get the good entries and exits, risking the saturation of the strategy until it dies.

BOTTOM LINE 2: You need to find your OWN EDGE to become successful and financially free through trading, OR you need to find a successful guru and subscribe to his signals for a monthly fee.

BOTTOM LINE 3: 80% of trading is psychology and 20% technical knowledge. So when you have mastered the technical part, you are still up to mastering the 80%...

Thanks for the generic reply?!

Hi Sheldon,

First of all, each and every trader has to find the trading style which fits his/her personality the best, as Thalantas put it very well. It is the foundation to make the 'psychology' part (i.e. the 80%) easier. Again, it is only a foundation. I suggest reading a couple of books about trading psychology first:

1. https://www.amazon.com/The-Disciplined-Trader-Developing-Attitudes/dp/0132157578
(you can find a free PDF version of this book if you Google it)
2. https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Trading-Techniques-Minding-Markets/dp/0471267619/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381764145&sr=1-1&keywords=trading+psychology
3. https://www.amazon.com/Trading-Zone-Confidence-Discipline-Attitude/dp/0735201447/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381764145&sr=1-2&keywords=trading+psychology

Personally I cannot handle the stress of trading, especially the DDs. I had to admit it to myself. Even the above books did not help me. But I still love trading. It may sound like 'I love tennis, but hate the racket, the ball and the net.' 😄

Like Thalantus, I have chosen the path of algorithmic scalping solving my 'personal issues' with trading. So no more stress. I rent a very reliable VPS and I am running my scalping bots on it 24/5. I check my VPS and accounts twice a day, otherwise I live a normal life (which I could not live while being a nerve wreck manual trader). In other words, I have found my 'trading niche'.

Will I ever advertise or sell my EA's? No way... Why would I create competition for the limited liquidity my EA's need for scalping with relatively large lot sizes? (Why would anybody in his right mind sell or lease a profitable EA?) On the other hand I have a few friends/clients and I let them follow my EAs' trades with a few milliseconds delay. They are happy and I am even happier...

Thank you all for your replies and advice. Obviously im at the very beginning of my trading career right now, and to be honest more than anything im worried about developing bad habits. As my studies are so intense I am not actually putting too much emphasis on actually trading at the moment. Instead I just dip in and out of the graphs each day, trying to identify any trends or potential opportunities. I try to experiment with the technical indicators as well when I get a chance. The way I see it is theres no rush!

To make a STABLE living from trading is next to impossible, but still, it is possible. One just has to be smarter than the other 95%... And by the way the other 95% is not stupid either. So there is a fine line between to be smart or smarter. And this fine line makes the whole difference between getting stuck in the 'rat race' or becoming financially free.

Trading is a definite challenge, but in fact it is the beauty of trading, i.e. the constant challenges of an ever-changing market. Never a dull moment while being in a trade. 😀 By the way, we can learn a LOT about ourselves, too.

One more advice: Try to shorten the DEMO phase of the learning period as much as possible, as demo trading completely misses the psychological challenges. Losses are the best teaching points and losses should hurt (to some degree) for their lessons to sink in, or better: to BURN IN.

I would disagree that trading is gambling, it's more of a guestimate.

My wife and I both trade, she is trading manually and I (not having much time) have started testing automated trading.

Some point's you may want to consider;

What type of trader to you want to be Technical, Fundamental or a combination of both. IMHO, being a fundamental trader is far to expensive in time and learning curve Unless you focus primarily on 1 currency. Technical trading is much easier to learn and coming up with a strategy that fits your personality is less time consuming.

There are no new ideas in trading regardless of what anyone says, but a wide variety of ways to interpret the same data. I have never been able to follow someone else's trading plan/strategy. It's their plan/strategy they will always see certain elements of the trade that you/I always miss. You can how ever adapt trading plans to your own style, I have done this with much success.

Don't Discount any Idea Until you've tried it;

That may sound like a no brainer but sometimes the oddest idea may prove profitable. I once tested a trend following strategy (Ichimoku) with some really nice results. What was interesting is the strategy was only allowed to trade at Midnight...for 1 minute. It was profitable in more than 50% of the pairs I tested. Any idea is a good idea until proven otherwise.

Avoiding bad habits;

There is only one bad habit I can think of that will hurt you in the end. The high of losing. Rarely talked about because nobody wants to admit they get a rush from watching their account slowly melt away. But it's there, everyday someone falls victim to the rush.

Ways to avoid this;

If you have absolute conviction in a trade, Do Not Take the trade you will most likely hold on until the bitter end.

SL, I have struggled with the SL ? of where should it be, in one of the interviews in Jack D Schwager Market Wizard series books the trader refers to stops as far enough away to prevent stop hunters from getting to them but close enough to avoid account failure ( something along those lines) the trader uses mental stops OR until the market proved he was wrong.

Enter trades when your supposed to based on your plan/strategy and exit when the market proves your plan/strategy wrong. The first time you start using words like 'I think' it's going....get out Now. A good Plan/Strategy has no room for thinking just executing.


If you can find it Hector Deville Learn Forex Live, was/is the most complete technical trading course I ever downloaded. Long and boring he covered all the basic trading stuff for trading based on price action i.e. no indicators so to speak.

Before you ever begin trading ask yourself this;

If you were given a strategy that made 10pips 90% of the time on one trade a day, could you take that one trade and walk away?

Best of Trading


 

Wise words, thanks for this post ;-)

hi there! i'm a beginner in trading and i know how it's hard sometimes! so when i just started i practiced a lot with games and other app, here one of them https://forex-game.net/forex-trading-game i hope that it will be useful for you

grey909 posted:
hi there! i'm a beginner in trading and i know how it's hard sometimes! so when i just started i practiced a lot with games and other app, here one of them https://forex-game.net/forex-trading-game i hope that it will be useful for you

Seriously, don't do that, this is really useless and the graphs are very poor. Just try on real demo accounts. If you want to backtest your manual system, simply scroll back and see what would have happened.

Thalantas posted:
I cloud not agree more about the fact that many traders (both winners and losers) think they are smarter than others.

I would even say, that losers often think that they are smarter than everyone else, while winners consider themselves as learners, and simply try to get as much educated as they can.

I suggest you start with demo account. Not with these games. Just saying :)

G'day
'Smarter than the rest'
The proverbial driver survey ... when asked how good a driver are they? 90% reply saying they are above average. 😉
Food luck.
Z.

Sunday_Man posted:

Thalantas posted:
I cloud not agree more about the fact that many traders (both winners and losers) think they are smarter than others.

I would even say, that losers often think that they are smarter than everyone else, while winners consider themselves as learners, and simply try to get as much educated as they can.

It's not about outsmarting others, it's about outsmarting yourself. I have been trading for three years and I'm still learning... every so often getting the 'Ah-ha' moments.

I think the biggest 'secret' to success in Forex trading is to start with small amounts of money (if you have $1000.00, open an account and only use $200 of it, that gives you 5 chances rather than one big margin call), and secondly, stick with it. Many times I thought of giving up because it felt like I was throwing my money away, but made my losses back this year.

My biggest hurdle is greed... I get over confident, get greedy, and then the market brings me (and my profits) back down to earth... the largest battle is not with other traders or the market, but with yourself. Now, if I feel I'm getting over-excited, I walk away for a few minutes before I do something stupid.

Am I good enough to trade Forex profitably? Yes. Am I good enough to live off Forex? No. Do I think I know everything about Forex trading after 3 years? No, in fact, never will, one thing I have learned is that the market is changing constantly, every year has it's own curve balls.

Always remember, even the pro's get it wrong MOST of the time... they aren't 'good' at making perfect positions, they are good at risk management and self control.

In Forex you are your worst enemy.

Good luck to all... and keep trading :- )

My answer to all of that, xgavinc, would be EAs :-)

Thalantas posted:
My answer to all of that, xgavinc, would be EAs :-)

Exactly what I use... : -)

Problem is, every so often your fingers itch and you want to add some manual trades... or you want to 'correct' or 'assist' the EA (it closes trades well, but you feel it's not opening enough trades for example)... or you see movement in the market that you feel the EA hasn't picked up and so you try to catch the opportunity, unfortunately the EA knows best, and before long you have chewed up margin... then you try to correct your 'mistake' by adding more trades (either opposite positions or same position to grab pips so you can have more margin)... this snowballs into a margin call...

I've faced this scenario many times, so I'm sure a few traders will get a smile on their face when they read this, as I'm sure they have too.

Instead of trying to correct what they have caused, they should walk away and see if the EA can recover their position.

xgavinc posted:

Thalantas posted:
My answer to all of that, xgavinc, would be EAs :-)

Exactly what I use... : -)

Problem is, every so often your fingers itch and you want to add some manual trades... or you want to 'correct' or 'assist' the EA (it closes trades well, but you feel it's not opening enough trades for example)... or you see movement in the market that you feel the EA hasn't picked up and so you try to catch the opportunity, unfortunately the EA knows best, and before long you have chewed up margin... then you try to correct your 'mistake' by adding more trades (either opposite positions or same position to grab pips so you can have more margin)... this snowballs into a margin call...

I've faced this scenario many times, so I'm sure a few traders will get a smile on their face when they read this, as I'm sure they have too.

Instead of trying to correct what they have caused, they should walk away and see if the EA can recover their position.

Can you share the name of those eas you use? pls ty