Hi All- Newbie looking to get going!

Hi All,

Newbie here and basically I’m looking to get underway in my education into the world of FOREX trading.

Alittle about myself; I used to work for JPMorgan but have left employment to try and pursue my dream of making money my own way. I currently own a website which I am building up to pay the mortgage but my long term gameplan is to trade FOREX.

*I can hear already those of you shaking your head in disapproval at leaving a salaried job in pursuit of trading FOREX, a less than guaranteed form of income. But the truth is, worse case scenario, I go back into the world of employment if it all goes wrong (which it won’t).

At this moment I was looking for a little bit of help in order to hopefully quicken my learning:

  1. Suggestions of what book/s have had the most profound effect on your fx trading?

  2. What charting software is good for back testing systems?

  3. If I learn my way on a spread betting site, are most of the skills transferrable should I make a switch to Brokers?

Thanks in advance.

Well definatly go through the babypips.com school.

For charting I prefer metatader 4 or mt4

As far as book just start reading everything you can get your hands on. btw there is a great thread on trading books started by pipcrawler.

It takes courage to make that leap of faith, well done and I’m sure you wont regret it for a moment. Once you escape from the cage there’s no going back in :smiley:

Regarding books, trade your way to financial freedom by Van Tharp. I dont generally advocate the theft of intellectual property, but in Van’s case I’ll make an exception and encourage you to download it !, Vlad Graifers Techniques of Tape Reading is OK, [B]Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre is a MUST read[/B], Jesse Livermore’s how to trade in stocks is OK

You might get away with metatrader, but sooner or later, if your serious about testing you’ll need something thats reliable. If you have limited coding skills then tradestation is probably OK.

Skills are transferable between spreadbet and direct access. I wouldnt really advise short term trading with a spreadbet company, although its been a few years since I tried (and failed :D)

You might get away with metatrader, but sooner or later, if your serious about testing you’ll need something thats reliable. If you have limited coding skills then tradestation is probably OK.

Are you referring to backtesting? I have heard terrible things about mt4 in this regard.

Oh yeah, a few weeks back as was testing a daily breakout system, and was showing steady profits for the month of May and June. I had done all this analysis and studies using strategy tester. Then my broker went to 5th decimal in price quotes, so I decided to delete and refresh my price history. After that, those months previously profitable were 99% losers. Looked at my ST results and prior the accuracy was 25% (my fault for not seeing it), but 90% now. And the price history doesn’t update properly. I had to literally going down to the 1m TF and scroll back manually in time to have MT4 download the price history. Doing increased the accuracy to 90% where it should be. Made me completely lose faith in ST. Next time I use it I will make sure the data is updated well, but probably won’t use it much anymore.

I’ve moved on to trading the Daily and Weekly, using price action only. Back to demoing as well, until I save up enough start equity.

Synergy

yep, totally recommend babypips school. i’ve been through it myself a few years ago, and it was very helpful.

If your system is purely price action, then you’ve definitely got a solid foundation.

Hi Wild Chancer,
First of all welcome to the Forex world, by the way this is my first post in babypips forums, I just joined here ur post was the first I read.
I’ve been trading for 2 years now, 1 year of them was on a demo account,
I suggest you to use MT4 as your platform, easiest and best(my opinion).
and don’t risk with your money at the beginning(as you’ll lose much money, if not losing all).
Seek a broker which allows Micro-Accounts, if u still wanna trade live at first I suggest u Wall Street Broker(minimum deposit 10$) in micro accounts.
I hope that helped.

Thanks all for the replies. I’ve done the babypips school twice over and would definately agree that it has given me a good starting overview. I guess I’m in that position where I would imagine of lot of people starting out get to. Should I read a few more books to delve deeper into fundamental/technical analysis, should I start looking at at historical/current charts looking to further understand charting and trending, do I do a bit of both, do I focus on learning as much theory as possible before trying application etc. etc.

At the moment, I am leaning towards reading a good few books before I ‘properly’ get started.

Thanks again

Thanks Adam. Can I ask why you demo traded for a year? Was this the time it took you to feel comfortable with a profitable system?

i think demo trading for a year is too long personally.

i wouldn’t go more than 6 months.

Trading with a demo accounts is approximately equal trading with a live account/ but without realy money, It allows you knowing the market status, make real trades, when you feel you’re making profits irregulary, you can open a live account.

Well it depends on how comfort when you feel you won’t risk with your money in the Forex world.

I make the best trades in demo. Psychology always messes me up with my real trades. I trade live, but with small positions, to keep the psychology factor in play, so I can master it. I can honestly say majority of my losing trades, and trades that could have been more profitable, were so because of psychology.

In my opinion, Forums are a gigantic help that are proven to turn you from newbie to expert in a very short time.

Well, all of traders when started were doing the same you’re doing, it’s just a matter of time, practice & experience, then everything would work good for you.

Excactly man, noticing that there’s a sub-forum for success & failure stories, that help newbies much.