It seems to me that scalping takes significantly more knowledge and time to put into practice compared to the others.
Am I wrong by thinking that day/position trading is easier for a beginner trader because the flow of the market is generally going into one direction? It seems like you need to know more to scalp.
You are right that scalping is more difficult.
Here’s the thing- different time frames have their own nuances. Day and 4 hr charts tend to have cleaner signals because they are aggregating a much larger body of information so you wind up with less overall noise to wade through. Day or 4 hr charts are a very good choice for a new trader.
However.
The right answer is going to largely depend on what you want to get out of it. If you choose to scalp, you have to dedicate a few hours to studying charts to find your optimal entry criteria. Trading on 4 hr and daily charts is far more friendly to people who have a regular job they are trying to work and family. I trade on Daily and 4 hr charts which I settled on after going through the same process that you are right now. I wanted to start as a scalper but I came to realize that was a terrible idea and did not jive with working my regular job and my overall goals. Trading on daily and 4 hr charts was a better fit for me.
Once you identify what time frame, do yourself a favor and jump down to the Free Trading Systems sub-forum and find an already established system that will work on your chosen time frame. Not all of them are interchangeable between time frames. I really recommend choosing an already established system because you can bounce things off of other traders and learn from the mistakes and experience of others. Again, took me a year of trying to piece one together to figure that out. It’s impossible to take the huge body of knowledge that is forex and cobble together a decent system without having at least a passing understanding and some experience of how things work.
As mentioned above, it depends on what you want. There is no right or wrong place to start. In the end you trade according to your personality so you need to figure out where to start.
Actually I would suggest doing a 4-6 week rotation of each. Try scalping for 6 weeks, then swing trading, then day trading etc. get a feel for each and see what you like. TBH i suggest starting at the lower end of the time frame and working your way up and feel were you are comfortable. This is because you get a lot more signals lower so you can actually grind out a lot more “practice” trades. If you say started on a daily TF you might only take 5-10 trades over that 6 week period, but you might get 10 trades an hour scalping. obviously don’t do it with real money but i think its an exploratory thing, this is where demo comes in handy.
May be you should avoid too common thoughts.
Trading styles ?
You should master them all because the market dictates conditions., not you !
Preferred time frame ?
You don’t have to be limited by Metatrader. What about a 3 mns chart or 45 mns, 2 hours, 8 hours , …
By observing prices through multiple views, you may understand more aspects concerning market timing
Hi mate, I’m new here too. Honestly, as I see it, it depends entirely on your attention span/character and how much time you can give. If you can only give a couple of hours a week, look long term. If you can’t stop thinking about something once you start but get bored quick, probably a short term trade kinda guy. If you are happy to sit back and let things happen without staring at the screen as they do, you can try longer term. If you have every single morning free for any reason, you could trade daily. I don’t think there are any hard and fast rules, except that you should have a solid plan in place before you start any type of trading be it daily or yearly and stick to it!
That makes sense too, but with the lower time scales wouldn’t you have more false signals and ultimately as a novice you’d have a tough time figuring out where you went right/wrong? Or is that some bull??
I am glad you stated these facts. Do you really use this trading method or have you used them before? I agree with you on the demo part, I think its better to see how it really works before risking your money. Thanks
Correct me if I’m wrong, but is it way easier to lose money as a beginner when you’re scalping because it requires a decent bit of knowledge to know when to enter a trade?
Seems like the margin of error for a beginner shrinks as the time frame expands because the direction of the market is pretty easy to spot, compared to scalping opportunities.
Yeah, you are correct on both accounts. Bigger time frames are easier to trade successfully for a new trader. You just need to have the patience to wait for the right set ups to come. It’s definitely very easy to lose money as a novice as a scalper. I honestly don’t know of any long-term successful scalpers. There may be some, just saying I don’t know of any.
The thing that I notice is that the more I trade on 1h charts, hoping to sell the same day, the more I lose. When I hold positions where I think the currency is heading, they almost always go in my favor. It’s “more fun” to lock in profits instead of looking at -200 a few hours after you put in your order, but overnight it shifted and I made another 1% of my account.
Not sure if this is luck, or is attributed to me holding onto traders longer, but for a clueless beginner, scalping seems pretty intimidating, as I don’t really know when to enter and when to exit. The only thing I grasp a little bit is the direction of the currency, and if my order is confirmed by a 200 period moving average.
On lower time scales the amount of noise is greater this is true. However price is fractal. I actually did a study a long time ago on the quantified personality of eur/usd. you can see there the amount of noise gained at each level is not as much as people assume.
The reason I say this is because its about repetition and getting in screen time at this point. Assuming its a novice, how much are they able to self correct at this point anyway. For me its about finding what fits, the profits during this exercise are not important at this time. Its just a few weeks of time, you wont have learned enough to be able to completely self correct and analyze your stats due to probably a small sample size anyway.
Yes I am familiar with these trading methods and have used them before. Honestly I am not clear on the full question.
Ahhhhhhhhhh*Sighin
If you scalp, you must use tight Stops, in the equal range of your assumed takeProfit…
If you scalp, you should first master Candle structure, Candle meaning, channels, and Zones…
Just my opinion, those are the most important. I firmly believe If i could go back to the first week I started, (27months) and followed that outline, I would be light years ahead of where I am at this very moment…
CHANNELS CHANNELS CHANNELS
ZONES OR AREAS
There is no definite end point, find a zone of running candles, put a line thru them to form the channel.
Im a pretty good scalper, but Im a horrible MoneyManagement follower…
Ahhhhh, yeah, another sigh
Man, scalping is intense, and you really must be in a flowing state of mind with the chart…
And its more of an intellectual feeding more then anything… I want to be in the game…
AND ITS FREAKIN SAD!!!
SAD I TELL YA
I WAS UP 5.6% YET ONCE AGAIN FOR THE DAY, JUST TO PI$$ IT AWAY!!!
*Bangs Head On Desk
Bro, you realllyy want to scalp???
Its the point of no return, because once you get hooked, its harder to stop then smoking cigs, and I know, because I have been smoke free for 5 months, 11 days, 21 hours and 21 minutes.
Stories like these make me want to stray away from scalping. It’s a bigger work load, high stress environment that doesn’t really provide any more profits compared to a relaxed daily/weekly trading strategy.
That’s why you should pick a strategy which you are comfortable with.
I have seen many good and many bad stories about scalping.BUt in my personal experience,scalping is very good specially for begineer.I too started trading using scalping although i was lucky enough to have BJF Trading Group scalping strategies to help me out and till now they are helping me.
So,I will suggest you to try the scalping.
If you want to start then start with swing trading on daily time frame. On higher time frames it is less noise and less false signals. You also don’t have to sit in front of the charts all day long.
“noise” such as many other ideas (for example gaps) does not exist.
The same behaviors happen again and again, at any level, 30 seconds or monthly chart.
Did you notice that you may experience some emotions during 1 minute or several days depending on the strength of an event that occurred. This is the same at trading.
i totally disagree that noise does not exist. It does, there is definitely a noise in the markets vs signal. otherwise markets would be strong form efficient, which they are not. Also gaps do exist, they can be created on the weekend.