Active traders Poll

Hehe... hi...

these are my success.. like it ? comment on it...

srikandifx,
malaysia.

When you start to do something that a lot of people fail to do, you come to the point that understanding why so many people fail (and actually try to do the opposite) can be in itself an hedge.It is a very competitive market, where the only thing you need is an hedge.

I'm just going to talk about one thing cause i don't plan to write a book, hoping that it will help some of you:

Everybody wants to avoid losers, but hey, you don't like them: STAY AWAY FROM TRADING, because losing is part of being a trader.
Win/ loss ratio is a myth. Every beginner will look for the best win/loss ratio out there. Don't. When i meet some traders and the first question they ask me is what is my win/loss ratio, i already know that they have no clue of what trading is. A better question to ask and one that will make you be a proficient trader is: what is your risk/reward ratio. How much money you risk to how much reward you get on average. Therefore, a trader should look for a system which tells him where to get in, where to place your stop loss and more important where to get out. Before entering your trade, you will compare the money you risk, to the money you can win. a good risk reward ratio is R2 and R3. It means that before i take the trade and risk my money, i want to make sure that if i risk 40 pips i want at least to be able to make 80 or 120 pips at a minimum. With this in mind, you will understand that you can have 7 losers in a raw and just 3 winners and still make money. (that is a 30% win/loss ratio) Experiencing on your live account, these 7 losers to 3 winners and still being able to make money, will give you the confidence and make you realize that you are on the safe side of trading.

I use a combination of a couple of things that works well. Firstly, I've tried all the indicators under the sun over a two year "practice" period and I wasn't that happy with the results. Hey, they all lag behind price action. Now I trade simply with no indicators - just a candlestick chart. (When I want to practice now, I use my live account and trade with 1000 units so I only lose say $1. The dummy practice accounts are next to useless - they don't teach you about losing money).

I practiced again and again to recognise support/resistance (S/R), place those lines on my chart and trade breaks of those with a SL at the other side of the channel. However, as the potential profit is the same as the range difference, I was getting a risk/reward of around 1:1 or just less. So I learned about recognising candlesticks, looking for turnaround candles - those that suggest a move in the other direction.

So imagine - you've got a resistance at the top, a support at the bottom. Previously I traded the break at the top to go long. Now I'm looking at the bottom of the range for a candle that suggests it's going up and I will open a long trade on the close of that candle. (If you want to check indicators, perhaps a stochastic can help here a bit). That means my SL can be placed a minimal distance away - perhaps 7 to 15 pips, then watch the price rise to the top. I'll watch the candles again at the top - if it looks like it will come down again, I'll exit the trade. Normally I'll move the SL to breakeven +2 pips when in profit. Sometimes I will exit half my position at the resistance point and watch what happens. If it breaks through, then I add the range of the channel to the resistance to get my target.

By doing it this way, I've improved my risk reward from around 1:1 to around 1:2 or more sometimes. How can you do this? Just look at candle charts with no indicators and look for the supports and resistances. Draw them on - practice. Look up candlestick training on Google.

To help I also opened a dummy account with Alpari (I trade live with Oanda currently). As the Alpari platform is MQL4, I can add certain things to it. To help identify S/R I searched on Google and downloaded a Support Resistance indicator onto the platform. That helped me heaps in the beginning. I could copy lines onto Oanda at first until I could do them myself.

Most important part I found over the time I've been doing it - money mgt. Yes boring, but it saved me from myself. Now I have a spreadsheet that calculates it for me that I did myself. I enter my max risk (for me it's 3% per trade)and pot size - that gives me a figure to work with, eg a $10k account gives you a 3% risk of $300. Then I enter how many pips to a stop loss (I normally add a few just to be safe) - let's say 15 pips. Your $300 divided by the 15 pips = $20. This figure is how many $ per pip you can risk, i.e. if the trade goes against you, you will lose $20 x 15pips = $300 or the 3% of your account. Then I look at how many units I can buy that gives me $20 per pip. At the time of writing the aud/usd is quoted as being 9074 units to equal $1 per pip. Take the 9074 and multiply by 20 to get how many units I can buy = 181,480.

This money mgt has been the most important thing I've learned by far. Learn it first!

Quick note on Stop Losses - always use them no matter what. I read sometimes about people not using them sometimes. Yes you may do well for 999 times out of 1000, but then you lose big. And the causes are things you can't imagine - for example 9/11, an earthquake, China cancelling all trade with the USA - and heaps more wacky ideas I can't think of. But each will decimate your account, so use a SL everytime.

I suppose the above may be useful for newbies. Hope so anyway. I lost money big time early on because I didn't learn about money mgt, didn't know enough about breakouts, pivots, candlestick formations. It's taken just over 2 years of learning and studying to finally feel like I'm getting somewhere. Hey, it's like a forex diploma - you don't get a diploma in 2 months!

Forex robots and Expert Advisors? I don't use them. Forex trading is part art, part science. How I trade would nearly be impossible to code into a robot. A lot of it relies on your experience with recognising patterns, candles, looking at what news is coming up that will impact your trading pair/s. But I find trading breakouts the easiest way to make money now and with candlestick recognition, you can make heaps of pips every day.

Good luck to all for this new year 2010 - let's make a squillion!

Cheers
Phil

Every beginner goes through this, so it is a normal learning process.

1. You should try to see and analyse what's real, instead of just hoping.
What I mean is: you saw that the market started to dip at some point, this is where you should have closed half of your position and tighten the stop for the remaining part. This way you trade what you see, instead of trying to picture your future profits.

2. You should stop trying to capture the whole market move, e.g. get all the pips from top to bottom - this looks possible when you look back at historical charts, but things become different when you start trading in real time. So, just trade real and take what you reasonably can take without giving back profits in exchange for a hope.

3. Finally, even if the market continues to move in your favor after you've closed your position, learn to never be sorry about not making more pips on this trade - there will be plenty of other trades and plenty of profit opportunities; and if you are no longer greedy, you'll collect steady profits every time, which will contribute more to your overall success than taking chances and being a winner one day and a loser the other day.

Hope this helps,
Happy trading!

Edward

I am a newbie. My biggest problem is greedy I dont know when to take my profit. An example I had USD#35 within six hours I had it up to 143. Fine I closed trade and start again I had it up to 531 nad I sat there thinking it would go to 700 when I would close. It dipped and I still thought it would rebound. I ended up with only USD7 remaining in my account. I really felt badly, I had 531 and lost it all because of greedy. I cant seem to get over this hurdle, how do I get over this? What should I do? I need help.

my idea about forex is treat it with respect and it will reward you a thousand fold.
do you become a doctor after 3 months in the clinic.demo trade till you know u are ready.
how do you know you are ready--------ask a trainee doctor when did he think he was ready to see his first sick person. forex can make you more money than doctors so think. are you ready to make $500 a day--------- ask edison and he will say I want to learn more.

Chameleon trader

Hi everyone,the real cause of failure in forex is the fact that we don't want to lose,look free you mind and have fun trading forex, but that wouldn't be if the fund you're using is for bills paying and all what not. STICK to a plan and trade the plan, you sure would succeed believe me, and stop looking for that all perfect strategy, a simple one would do.May the trade be with you.

Egudu

forex is very easy i started with 1000$ i have now 17.300 (4 months).
because i know what i do and i have own system ( my mind ),everyone can do same..

I've been trading Forex for about a year. I've been profitable - not making the huge bucks, but doing alright. I agree that using a very simple system and STAYING with it is the key to success. You can always test other systems or tweak the one you have, but do it on downtime and stay with your system during trading hours. It takes a world of discipline and patience, but the results are worth it. Get over the fact that you won't always have a winning trade.

dave m

This forex trading has got me interested , curious & I am going to find out how it is played successfully. I have been reading about George Soros and he was very bad at arithmetic at School, but he got something right in playing forex trading when he won a billion dollars on one day, sounds incredible.
I will keep trying before I actually PLAY , so if anyone has some helpful hints for a real amateur, I would really appreciate them.
Best wishes Neil = palmerboxing[at]yahoo.com.au
+++++

This one?
http://forex-strategies-revealed.com/teodosi-simple-system

Hi, Iam looking for a strategy that was put on the simple strategy section a couple of weeks ago. It was in relation to trading one pair maybe gbp/usd or gbp/jpy. It claimed to be profiting 1500 pips/week day trading that one pair.
Does anyone know where it is?
Steve

you guys should all pay attention on SMA 100 period especially you REZA and try too see with higher time frame daily for instant and you zoom it till it can't be zoomed again if SMA 100 is going down dont ever think about putting a buy order it goes for the other way around and dont forget to put your macd and william
fellow looser

Hi, Reza what were you thinkin. you have to try de demo for at least 3 months before yu start the real one be patien men youw have to beat yourself before beaten the forex.
fellow looser

To be a successful trader of any kind, remember this...learn from your failure and let your failure be your real master.
Famous inventor Eddison discovered the way to make a bulb work through hundreds of failure in trying out everything he could.
His famous words is, "Only by experiment with so many failures that i manage to find the only answer to how to make a bulb work."Failure is the mother of success!