Beginners ForumThinking you might want to try trading? Want to ask a question but worried about saying something silly on the main boards? This is the place where you can take the first few steps in safety.
I just opened a forex demo account at forex.com and am a complete newbie in the forex market. I wonder what strategies you guys use to improve your chances of making money in this market? I have learned some lessons with one day of trading. Half of my demo account was wiped out because I didn't know you couldn't keep losing positions over the weekend. I also learned not to put all the money in the account at risk, since your account can be wiped out if your margin goes negative. I wonder what else I should be worrying about. Are there any news services that you guys recommend that I watch. So far I have just followed the crowd and invested that way, but that seems like a losing proposition since I don't really know how to get out on time. Also, what other services would you recommend, besides forex.com, for trading. I didn't know some of their margin policies and received a rather rude awaking. Also, are there services that charge less pips per trade, like 3, or less, without commissions?
Btw, I am from New York and I opened my account on Friday 1:00 AM EST. This is my second day trying this out. Btw, I would like a USA account. Thanks again.
A lot to learn buddy. A LOT TO LEARN. It has taken me almost a year to get to be consistently winning - and thats trading every morning and night, after reading 10 books on trading, and after reading every forum, and after doing thousands of backtests using backtesting software.
Keep going mate, but you have to love it. Get Marcel Link - High Probability Trading, and Mark Douglas - Trading in the Zone. Keep a journal of all your trades.
Take the time and research this forum. Especially the Beginners Forum, General Trading Forum and the Due Diligence Forum. This will give you a indication of what to expect, where to concentrate and what pitfalls you might encounter.
This will not make you a succesful trader per se, but will most definately assist in your learning process and there after.
The best advice I could give you is to find a mentor / coach. The Market Technicians Association (www.mta.org) is a great place to start.
Keep in mind, trading a demo account is much different than trading with real money. The element of discipline and emotion is perhaps the single most difficult task to master - in fact, I've been trading S&P & stocks for years (FX for less than a year) and have only begun to discipline myself.
Make sure you NEVER enter an entry without a stop loss(!) and profit objective. You are going to lose at this game - understand that - the best traders understand when, how, and why to cut their losses and don't hesitate to do so.
I also like the Market Wizards books by Jack Schwager and the Candlestick Course by Nison. Look for a mentor (may I suggest Rob Booker, www.robbooker.com)!
1. Set some goals for your trading keeping in mind your lifestyle and desires. Don't fall prey to the easy goal of "I want a million dollars" or "I want to make a lot of money" Put down how much money you need to live the way you want and get what you want and write it down and write a timeline for acheiving it. You must realize (barring the luck factor rags-to-riches story) that your monetary goal with trading will be directly proportional to the amount of time/work you put into it. So, if you want to be the next Warren Buffet or George Soros or Richard Dennis you will have to put in the 16 hour days 7 days a week the way they did. If however you want to travel around the world and live in different places on a reasonable budget (it's cheaper than you'd think) and don't need a lamborgini or Versaci suit, then don't kill yourself. If you are not congruent with your goal and amount of dedication to trading (or anything) you will end up very unhappy and unsuccessful, you will also lose any sense of balance in your life. Imbalance is fine if you are doing something bigger and better than yourself, all quantum growth requires transitory imbalance, but you must decide this for yourself.
2. Read, Trade, Talk, Read Trade Talk. I love to read. I don't live anywhere for a long time so I don't get to create relationships with other traders too often, so I think that reading is more fruitful for me, but I would like to have more experienced trader friends/mentors as a sound board. But just find a way to get new info and input (then your job is filtering thru it). But do NOT fall into Analysis Paralysis = just reading and demoing, and never risking anything. You will get bored, and not be able to jump on an opportunity that presents itself. But you must also be Patient = don't trade just to trade, if you are impatient, you will find a trade every microsecond (based on different TA ideas) this will kill you. You must figure out the balance between these two forces too Patient = failure, too Impatient=failure.
3. Have fun. If it's not fun you will not keep going. Money is a good motivator, but if you don't like research and studying, you willl not like this job. Also if you get pissed (and oh how easy that is) you will mess up and learn to hate trading.
4. Get some good software. Don't depend on freebies. You get what you pay for. If you are serious about trading get good software and data. This is a personal choice and you will decide which you like thru Trial and Error. I like Tradestation and Metastock, but I also extensively use MS Excel.
5. Forex.com is fine, in fact you should demo all the brokers you can. They are all so very different. Forex.com has a wireless trading platform that I like, although there is no charting thru it. I like Metatrader CE for wireless charts, although I haven't tested it's reliability too much. FXCM is good if you have High Speed internet and live in the USA. They answer the phone faster than any other company I deal with and if you can get to the right people, they know a lot. But being a big company they have a good share of imbeciles, but no more than any other broker... actually come to think of it, a lot less (that's why despite my whining I stay with them) CMS is beautiful in theory, horrible in practice. They crash, which = death in trading. And they're software claims greatness but is really just a bug-ridden joke. They have taken ideas from Metastock and Tradestation that are agreat, but it just doesn't work.
Read 1 book on TA
Read 1 book on Money Management
Read 1 book on successful traders or a biography
Read 1 book on Fundamentals / Global Economics
Read 1 book on Systems
Get some software and read it's manual cover to cover and then do some testing and programming in it.
good luck
davidgareau@verizon.net
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There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those who understand binary and those that don't.
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