Trying a demo account for 3 months proved to be successful for me. In the past 3 months I learned a lot about forex & grasped other techniques like money management etcetc
One area which I require more sharpening is information. Since I am a part timer trader, I find it hard to keep in touch with all the information. I am subscribed to 3 blogs.
Reading most of their posts during work is impossible. Do you guys suggest a summary professional service??
Thank you
By “information”, I presume that you [B][I]don’t[/I][/B] mean basic forex education. I presume that you mean [B][I]news and commentary[/I][/B] on what the market is doing right now, and what you should do right now.
Well, you won’t like my advice, but here it is anyway.
Wean yourself off all that noise. Go through [B][I]information withdrawal[/I][/B], and do it “cold turkey”. Just turn it all off, and learn to trade on what the market is telling you, not on what the talking heads are telling you.
In your short career as a new forex trader, you probably have not experienced [I][B]price-action trading.[/B][/I] You might even believe that it can’t possibly work. But, I — and many other profitable traders — will tell you: not only does it work, but it is by far the superior way to trade.
You don’t need the information/recommendations/opinions/advice/signals offered by experts, gurus, and other commentators. But, once you start listening to that noise, it’s easy to get addicted to it. It’s easy to start thinking: If I just had a little more information, I could really make this work for me.
Try my suggestion. Just turn all that stuff off. Stop compromising your 9-5 job, by constantly worrying about what “breaking news” you’re missing.
Learn to plot support and resistance levels and zones on your charts, and then learn to recognize how price is behaving as it runs the gauntlet between support and resistance.
Learn to use indicators sparingly, and [B][I]never[/I][/B] as your primary decision-making tool. A couple of indicators are fine, as long as they’re used strictly for confirmation of your price-action analysis. Beyond that, you can get addicted to indicators, as easily as getting addicted to other people’s analysis and opinions.
Do a search on this forum, and others, for training and discussion on price-action trading. It’s the path to success, in my opinion.
I agree 100% with Clint. I would go out of your way to actively avoid the talking heads because this could really mess up your trading!
Great post Clint!
EVERYTHING one needs is on the chart.
Clint is 100% correct. News is useless.
Why?
Because it’s NEWS. By the time you get it, it’s been sliced, diced, and regurgitated all over the charts. The market is well informed. You’re not going to catch something on The Bloomberg Channel, or CNBC that sneaks by the market movers.
So what’s left? A lot more time to look at charts, and freedom from being glued to an endless stream of useless diarrhetical crap.
While we’re at it, do yourself a favor, and just study one pair.
Having 15 charts open looking for possible entries can be as counter-productive as staring at TV all day.
You’ll get PLENTY of opportunities off of just one pair, and it won’t challenge the cranium.
The simpler you keep this, the more productive your trading will be.
It is practically impossible to know everything that is going on. Hence, you will find that you only use what you want to. The things that ring and connect with you.
This was exactly my problem as well. It led to paralysis from over-analysis on my part. Now I’m working to block all that out and just avoid major announcements. 
Correct me if I’m wrong shoeshine but I think you’re asking whether there is a website where you can get all the information in all the forums/blogs in a summarized form (not necessarily news)? Meaning everything you need to know about forex in a single site? Is that what you’re asking?
I don’t think we do, avoid it, use a price action based strategy and take head of Clint’s post, it makes a lot of sense.
This is what happened with the NFP last Friday
In effect you get nowhere.
There are a small number of experienced profitable traders on here, and although we have all differing views, and sometimes there are quite some strong disagreements, one thing that always come to the fore which is common is Price Action and keep it simple.
So here we go again, I see so many newbies looking for the answer they want and they really do get some very good answers like Clint’s post above, but ignore it because it’s not what they want to hear - Don’t fall into the trap.
At risk of just sounding like an echo, I would agree with that. Many economist failed to predict the recent global recession, banks and experts are often, these days, divided on their opinion on a number of key issues. So if you want to seek expert opinion you are left with a choice: either be very selective in your sources and risk having backed the group who turn out to be wrong, or open yourself up to everything and risk information overload while still not getting a clear steer. I just avoid NFP day for trading and favour the charts over the news the rest of the time. I don’t know if you have read ‘Market Wizards’ by Jack Schwager (if not, I would), but it is basically a collection of interviews with experienced, successful traders. A number of them make the point that at various points in their trading careers, often early on, they have been trading in proximity to other, more experienced, more successful traders. They had the opportunity at that time simply to place trades because ‘that was the trade the other guy placed’. However, the good traders did not take that soft route, as they realized that there is no real learning in trading if you do not develop your own style, and that can only come from doing your own analysis. I see news and many alerts services in a similar way: second-hand information that is not going to lead to you becoming a successful trader. Don’t get me wrong, if someone tells me that, say, the Euro is trending nicely against the USD, then I will look at the chart and see whether there are any setups that fit my strategy. But if a website (including the major news sites) tells me that x has happened in y country and this will have z impact on the currency, all I will do is look at the chart and see what I think of that chart. Which is what I would have been doing anyway. So the time I spent finding that news story has got me nothing. During that time I could have been taking the kids to school or playing on the Xbox or polishing my car or whatever - it doesn’t take that long to look for setups if you have a clear strategy and know what you are looking for and on what pairs. Apologies for the ramble, but in a nutshell I would always favour your own analysis over second-hand sources, whether that is news or tipping sites or whatever. Noone ever built a good career on doing stuff because someone else told them they should.
And apologies for not breaking that up into paragraphs!
By the way, for news junkies check out this Oanda lab, it’s pretty cool:
OANDA ATNABTU - All Their News Are Belong To yoU
But beware of information overload!!