Monkey See, Monkey Do

[llh]

Hi Trader:

Bottom Line Up Front! "Trading on the FOREX is, next to my wife, my greatest passion."

ABOUT ME: I'm an active duty Soldier (Master Sergeant/E-8) stationed in South Korea; 50 years old - born March 21, 1956 (yep! pretty old to be in the Army) retiring from the military in about a year. Plan on retiring in Korea and working as a US civilian in a government service position and making my fortune by FOREX trading. For eight years I owned and operated a web site where members paid me a low membership fee for information on rolling stocks. It was RollingStock100.com. May it rest in peace

I pulled the plug on the site about one month ago. For it had became too time consuming now that I'm looking at retirement and job searching for a second career. The site amounted to an accumulation of stock related information that I would compile and present to my members. It worked well. My members thought I was a smart, wonderful guy. I had a lot of members. Many of them had been with me since the beginning. Didn't break my heart, but definitely put a noticeable crack in it when I shut the site down.

MY SYSTEM: Monkey See, Monkey Do. What this name means; I trade what I see others trading, whom have proven to be successful in their FOREX trades. Why recreate the wheel, or try to learn everything there is to learn about FOREX trading when it's already been done umteen times over and over by others? I collect information from others who have shown that they are making successful trades and simply trade off their daily recommendations. I get this daily information from multiple reliable sources all for FREE. I compare what each plans on trading for that day and when I see that most are planning on trading the same thing in the same direction - that's the trend I follow for that day. It's almost always correct, because it's not from just one proven reliable source. It really works, it's really easy and it really makes a lot of sense.

As you can see I'm a no nonsense, logical (and yes, relatively lazy) person who just wants to get rich. That's all I'm really asking for - profound wealth.

About six months ago I learned of FOREX trading, mostly through BabyPips.com. I had a lot of money and made and lost a lot of money through FOREX trading. Once I realized that all I had to do was the ol' "Monkey See, Monkey Do" act to succeed on the FOREX, my trades turned much more towards the positive. I began steadily making more money.

At first I tried to make money by learning everything a trader needs to know in order to fly solo. Then it occurred to me that all I was doing was attempting to create my own little empire of knowledge, which in turn brought me to the realization of two things;

1. Don't pay anyone for trading information. If they were really that good, they wouldn't bother trying to make money off membership fees, instead they would concentrate on making money off their trades and live a wealthy life without the bother of an online membership following.

I know this because I realize that's what I was doing with my web site business. Why didn't I just trade stocks and generate great wealth on my own without any members paying me? Probably, because I didn't trust my own ability to fly solo. The whole situation crept up on me over the years and sort of formed itself. Now that I'm out of the stock related web site business I can clearly see what I was doing.

2. Monkey See, Monkey Do. There is so much information hovering about the Internet. By doing a bit of studying one can find several people or companies sending FREE trading plans out on a daily basis. Just by reading the forum and the blog portions of babypips alone you have multiple sources of reliable information. Add to that a few other outfits sending their trading plan to you via email, FOR FREE, on a daily basis and you find yourself looking at a collectively reliable source of trading information.

Remember, I said COLLECTIVELY, meaning that anyone of these sources left to stand on their own is nothing more than you or I training ourselves up to learn everything we can to make up our daily trading plan, so as a result we may fly solo. Personally, I believe that almost everyone is already doing what I've described here on this tread - Monkey See, Monkey Do. If you're into following the news/world events you are into fundamental trading. Trading fundamentally means that you're going to try to profit by entering your trade the exact same way you hope that everyone else does (because of the newly learned news,) which is by doing what has been historically proven profitable.

If you are into analysis, you are into reading charts. The charts show the history of its subject's PAST performance and just like with the folks who are into fundamental trading you are hoping that history will repeat itself, thus igniting a profit for you. A trading pair's performance occurs because of two things; 1) other people reading the same chart you're reading and buying or selling according to that information just like you are doing in hopes that everyone else is doing the same thing at that same time so they may profit from their trade; 2) when news hits the public most traders are going to make an attempt to make the same trade everyone else is expected to shoot for, all in the hopes of making a profit.

We all exercise the Monkey See, Monkey Do process to some some degree. I just happen to be the guy who is willing to admit he's doing it and says so out loud. Therefore, my plan is to post what I intend to trade on this tread each trading day. I'm in Korea so my clock is 13 hours ahead of US Eastern Day Light Savings Time. That doesn't really make too much of a difference since I'm not a day trader. I do use charts; 1H, 4H and Daily; indicators; RSI, MACD and Stochastics; News, sure, of course I try to keep up as I don't like to walk around blind even though I rely heavily on the information provided FREE by kind strangers that I in essense stalk through cyber space.

Please feel free to post your thoughts on this tread. If you think I'm a horrible person you certainly may say so, it's okay - my skin is quite thick. Hopefully you won't think my head is as well.

[llh]

Hi Trader:

I'm posting this late in the game, but if you haven't heard shorting GBD/USD WAS the choice trade for today. I missed the grand slam, but did collect a reasonable number of pips. At the time of this writing it's at about 1.9300. I think the most exciting part of the ride is over now.

I'll be turning in (13 hours later here.)

[swordofrue]

Do not have too much fun in Seoul!
Anyways, I would agree that we all pretty much do a monkey see monkey do type of thing. However, I do not think any type of signal is going to work for me. Personally I will take someones system and then make it my own. So yes I am just doing what someone else may be doing, but it is my interpretation of their system and then my interpretation of how their system will interpret the market. Really starting to believe that the search for the holy grail is a search within one's self. I am looking forward to this journey!

[topchess]

llh,
I jumped in only to say that your posts are very rich and very informative. Ofcourse, I will keep an eye on this thread. Your ideas are professional and well arranged, keep posting!

[topgun]

Nice post. It's a shame that so many people are trying to buy someone else's system/methods because their to lazy to develop their own. I agree with you that if someone is trying to push off their 90-95% success rate system than why the hell don't they just trade for themselves and retire. To me it's such an obvious scam but I guess if someone is gullible enough they would buy anything. Good luck to you!

[n_aftab]

totally agree with that comment, they tend to target the newbies that have started off on a loosing streak, forex is much more fun to learn if you give it time and commitment, just like at college those who put the time and effort in reap the rewards with the good grades, those that wish to buy the exam paper and cheat only cheat themselves as they learn nothing.

I'm not saying trading courses are all a rip off or anything that far fetched, i think it would be better for people that are new top forex not to be so qucik to jump in take their time to learn and alos enjoy what they are learning.

regards

[PipDiddy]

Long quality posts always catch my eye. I'm curious to see what the monkeys will see and do next.

[llh]

Hi Trader:

Here's my plan for Wednesday...

First choice: Short GBP/USD Enter @1.9425, Exit @1.9350 or hopefully all the way down to 1.9300

Second choice: Short EUR/CAD Enter @ 1.5325, Exit @1.5275 or hopefully all the down to 1.5250

These are from two separate sources Babypips' Pick of the Day and Elang's post. You may want to personally read what these two gents have written. Possibly you'll come up with a conclusion different from mine.

[llh]

Hi Trader:

By the way, if you happen to know of any email lists, web sites or self proclaimed FOREX wizards that offer free advice regarding which pair(s) to trade please post that information here. The preference is to find the free (even a free one week or so trial is helpful) one's that send you an email each trading day. Afterall that's what Monkey See, Monkey Do is based on.

[rhodytrader]

Originally Posted by topgun_68

Nice post. It's a shame that so many people are trying to buy someone else's system/methods because their to lazy to develop their own. I agree with you that if someone is trying to push off their 90-95% success rate system than why the hell don't they just trade for themselves and retire. To me it's such an obvious scam but I guess if someone is gullible enough they would buy anything. Good luck to you!

I hear these comments all the time and they bother me a lot. It represents the inherent distrustfulness that so many market participants have. Certainly, skepticism is good and healthy, but I would really love to see traders act more cooperatively than they do.

How do you know that these system vendors aren't actually trading their own systems? Maybe they are. Or maybe selling the system is a way to build trading funds. There's also the system developer who is good at coming up with good strategies and methods, but is a poor trader when it comes to execution. There are plenty of folks like that. My point is, system vendors are not necessarily greedy folks just out to make a quick buck - though I'm sure there are some of them in the business too.

That all said, the biggest problem with this whole game of folks buying systems and whatnot is that they go into the thing completely blind. They don't know what they should be looking for, or even if they should be looking at all.

For example, there are tons of day trading systems out there, but how many people really have the ability (or inclination) to be day traders? That a disconnect. There are tons of forex systems, but many people are better off in stocks.

Even if a trader isn't going to actually develop their own trading system/method, they should still go through an assessment process as if they were. That will allow them to at get an understanding of which direction they should go.