So this is my first thread here at babypips, it is going to be about me making the transition from demo to live trading
Now a little about myself:
I’m based in London and am 28 years old, I have been trading forex on and off for roughly 18 months. i started around January 2012 and made the stupid mistake of opening a live account after about 2 weeks of demo trading and blowing that account in about 2 weeks!! It wasn’t massive but the loss made me give up on fx before i had even really got started. I didn’t even look at a chart for about 9 months, then i decided that i would give it another go and before even opening another demo i went through babypips school properly.
About my approach to the market:
I have now been trading on demo since February of this year and had a terrible first couple of months. After a brief stint, as I’m sure all newbies have, with about a thousand indicators on my charts i found a PA thread here and really liked the simplicity of the strategy. I still believe if you have very little time pure price action on the higher timeframes is the way to go as its simple to grasp and when executed properly can be a very good, high probability system with little drawdown. However, personally i like to trade more often then PA, based just on support and resistance and candle stick formations, allows so i started looking at other threads. I happened to come across one on Harmonics and one on VSA trading, the thing i liked about both of these systems is that they still relate to price action. things like support and resistance, trend lines, Fibonacci and candlesticks without the need for a lot of indicators (I use volume for VSA but thats it). I also personally believe that you limit yourself by only sticking to one strict strategy. That approach doesn’t allow you to be flexible and adaptive to market conditions.
My progress so far:
By no means am i saying i have mastered any of these strategies, I’m still learning about all of them and will continue to enhance my understanding of them at any opportunity. i would say that i have the basics of each system but beyond that i will let you guys be the judge. I am still in the process of writing my trading plan and will not go live until this is completed. I’m not sure how traditional the plan is as i have multiple entry and exit rules, I am however very strict about capital preservation, risk management and money management. I never exceed 3% risk per trade (and the full 3% only when i believe the trade to be very high probability with multiple confluences) or 12% total risk to my account split over open positions. As it stands writing this my most recent demo account (i have had to close several due to the broker only allowing them to be open for 1 month) was opened with IBFX 2 weeks ago and my overall gain in that period is 13.96%, my previous pepperstone account that was active for 1 month was up 23% at the time it finished. The account before that was also profitable so if my IBFX account is profitable at the end of the month i will have been consistently profitable for 3 months.
What this thread is about:
As the title states i am going to post as many of my trades, both prior, during and after they happen as my time constraints allow, I would also really like it if others got involved and posted their analysis and ideas and also commented on mine. No offence will be taken to any criticism of my methods, I still consider myself a newbie with much to learn and hope this thread will make me more disciplined and controlled in my trading and allow the sharing of ideas with traders of a similar mindset to my own.
I wish everyone who joins this thread good luck and safe trading
