Krugman25: The Programmer

Thankyou Krugman25 for your wise words :slight_smile:

How much capital would you recommend for a beginner to have to start trading forex??

thanks you Krugman,

you give me more confident in this market.

If you an absolute beginner and are primarily trading to see if you are profitable and trying to learn the foundation of a trading strategy, you should start off with as little as possible. When trading to test and learn a strategy your focus isn’t making big profits, it simply testing a method to see if you are profitable. In that case there is no reason to risk more than you need. If you can find a broker that lets you trade micro lots then in the US you would need around $100(50:1 leverage max), or 50$ outside the us(200-400:1 max leverage). You just need enough lots to execute and test your strategy.
If you are have your method down and believe it is profitable and want to start trading for profits, I would suggest trading around $1000. If you are risking 1-3% of your total capital, the winnings will be sizable enough to make it worth your time, and it is large enough that you can compound your profits and grow that amount fairly quickly.

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I greatly appreciate all of your kinds words!

[B][I]“The most important habit that has helped me is not getting emotional.”[/I][/B]
Sometimes this is happening to me when I looked at the chart all the time after opening position.
Krugman25, any tips on how to manage emotion during the trade?

Thank you

In my experience there are 2 major ways to reduce emotion in trading, and it will work very quickly. The first is to risk less of your account. Traders know they have a finite amount of money to trade with, and when you lose a large chunk of it quickly you know you just took one big step towards account ruin. As you risk more % of your account in single trades, you become more emotionally vested into those trades because now it isn’t just about making money but it’s about making sure your account doesn’t blow up. If you are use to risking 3-5% or more of your account per trade then drop it down to a more comfortable 0.5 -1%, and you will find that you are far less emotionally vested in your trade and each individual trade won’t feel like life or death. When your trades are so big that each one is life or death for your account it triggers the “fight or flight” emotionally response in your body and you will find yourself emotionally wore out from trading.

The second thing to help is to trade higher time frames. The more your are watching your trades and prices the more you are exposing your emotions to the market. By simply trading higher time frames you will be looking at the price charts less often and exposing your emotions to the Forex market less. You may need to just trade the daily or the weekly charts. The nice thing about trading these higher time frames is you have larger stoploss and profit targets, so you will not need to check on your trades very often(maybe once or twice a day for a few minutes).

If you lower your risk % and increase the time frames you are trading you will see enormous difference in how emotional you get while trading.

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Thank you for the reply…
Appreciate it very much :slight_smile:

Great interview! Especially love to hear how much knowledge the internet provided, not least babypips of course which makes trading fun. Also read with interest your thoughts on how much capital to risk and what difference it makes. I like the 1% idea, and will start with that.

Also while I am all about the shorter time frames at the moment, it definitely takes so much watching. Have to think hard about the benefit versus the longer periods.

Many thanks !

Hi Krugman25,

Thanks for your reply! You’re a champion :smiley:

Do you use any indicators like Fibonacci Retracement indicators or anything else??

Hey Markulet, thanks for the kind words! As far as indicators go I will use a few EMA’s off of the daily chart. I like to use the phrase “if it matters to the market, it matters to me”. The reason certain parts of the market are predictable is because there are certain areas on the chart the matters to the market, and you will see a majority of the market react predictably to these levels. I have found what the market reacts to the strongest is horizontal and trend line support and resistance lines. But because of the popularity of things like EMAs and Fib, you will find the market reacting to these levels. I do use fib, although fib isn’t an indicator, rather it is a measurement tool. Again the market reacts predictably to certain fib levels in the right type of setups, so I include them in my analysis.

If you want to know more about the tools I use and how I apply them to my analysis please check out my thread 301 Moved Permanently

I have articles, videos and a lot of great PA conversation going on, on a daily basis.

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Ananais… I am trying to send a reply to you as a private message but your inbox, apparently, is full… Could you Private Message me an alternative address for me to reply to your questionnaire? I will not let me send it… Sorry to hijack this thread… Cheers…

Yeah I just got the notification! I cleared my inbox a bit. You should be able to send now. Let me know if you’re still having problems :smiley:

Thank you, Ananais! I have now successfully sent you my answer (as a two-part reply). Cheers!

Hi Krugman,
Thanks for your appreciation. Now i can look at my trade with more confidence!

You must be [I]desperate[/I] to increase your post-count, to be bumping even old threads in this part of the forum with your never-ending, fatuous, pointless, one-line posts. :rolleyes:

Lesson learned. Thanking you.

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Your welcome.

It’s always a little bit of a blast from the past with this old thread resurfaces.

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Thank you for this piece of advice and knowledge you have shared.

Good information, thanks for sharing it with us.

Hi. I enjoyed this thread and another one about you regarding your use of price action. If you don’t mind me asking, can you share w/c broker you use to trade forex? I am interested to know which brokers successful traders use. I have been making consistent gains with my small account (trading minilots) and thinking of increasing size to standard lots, but I’m not sure if I’m with the right broker (US trader). Thanks