Please don’t laugh but I’m new to Forex. I’m studying at the School of Pipsology and I’m in Preschool. I have just got to the section on " How do you trade Forex " and the first two sections have left me scratching my head! Mathematics and Economics at school were never my strong subjects.
I have started down this road with Forex because I would like to study the subject with a view to one day maybe trading in the market. But should I be concerned at being so confused at such an early stage.
The sections “How you make money in Forex” and “Time to make some dough” have left me very confused. Or will the penny drop the more I study?
Hello,
Well: you’re probably AS concerned as somebody that’s just decided to learn to write their first computer program or somebody that’s just read the first few pages of their first accountancy textbook!!! The point is: don’t go thinking that this business is any easier (or any more difficult for that matter) than ‘studying’ for any other ‘profession’ because that’s what it is. For some or the other reason (and I speak from bitter experience here): ‘Joe Public’ just cannot understand why somebody cannot just open a trading account, quit their current day job, and be making their monthly salary within a month or two!!!
But yes: ‘the penny will drop’ I assure you and there are very many good people here on these very forums that are only too happy to ‘help the penny drop’. And there are NO ‘stupid questions’ either so don’t worry about that (sometimes for fun I read some of my own very first posts from years ago and I want to DIE of embarrasment but hey: I’m still here and the better for it)!!! LOL!!!
Then again (and to quote one of our very own experienced traders here i.e. purplepatchforex):
[I]“Well, first of all you got to learn to walk the walk and talk the talk, and thereafter it’s more or less all downhill”[/I]
LOL!!!
For some or the other reason that quote just ‘does it’ for me!!! LOL!!!
Regards,
Dale.
Please don’t be afraid that anyone will ever laugh at any question posted on here, if they did then they would be the pariah.
It takes a long time to become consistently good at this, like with any new career. We were all beginners once, and as one of the principal functions of this site is to give voice to questions and bring us all along, it would be bizarre for anyone to mock the questions.
Many of us - myself included - came from background entirely irrelevant to Forex trading, so asked many questions when we started that could have made others laugh. They didn’t laugh.
Forex was like a foreign language to me at first, and I went through long periods of thinking ‘there are too many subtleties, too many factors, I am not going to get on top of this’, but as I went along it started to click. It is just like with anything, layer up the learning, take each subject slowly and ringfence things: deliberately leave out a detailed study of some aspects until you are comfortable with the basics of others. In my own case, I was aware of Fib, but I deliberately waited to incorporate it into my trading until I was comfortable with my knowledge in other areas (personally, I started with Price Action, Support/Resistance and Trendlines, then added stuff from there, but we are all different).
So don’t worry about getting laughed at, ask anything you like, and yes, however confusing your first run through the Babypips School is, it will become clearer with time, repetition and, er, more time.
I can remember the very first time I heard the word “forex” – it was very eye-opening. I came from a stock/options background, but never managed to get that to work very well.
Forex was different and I liked the de-centralization of it all. No exchange to play dirty tricks, no companies to get busted for accounting fraud, no regulators to get in the way by hampering shorting, etc.
The other thing I was really attracted to was the idea that one could trade fluidly in both directions, long and short. In the stock market it just never seems that natural. I wanted very badly to train my brain to think in both up and downward movements like this. It was like trying to teach myself to be ambidextrous LOL
After going through BabyPips school, maybe read some good books. That will give you inspiration to keep learning. I really like the Market Wizards series by Jack Schaweger.
Yeah perfectly normal to be flummoxed at the early stages of learning something new.
This forum makes for a good addition to the school, a place where it seems nearly every possible question has already been asked at some stage and some of them have really illuminating responses.
Have a search around on the ideas that are causing you confusion, you might find something that will explain it in a clearer light.
This subject has many corners, try not to get side tracked at the begining by the bunco artists and flimflammers standing at the entrance. 
I recommend opening a demo account somewhere, and always try to relate what you’re learning in the school to what you can see on your trading platform.
The understanding will snowball but you need to ask some questions to keep it rolling. So what in those sections has left you very confused?
Thank you for the help that you have all offered. I will carry on with my schooling and post more questions as they come along.