Hi All,
I have been Demo Trading for about 5 years. Took the dive into live trading and blew that account. The reason – I was trying to let a program, otherwise called an Expert Advisor (EA), to perform the trades for me24/5. It originally looked like a great way to get maximum gain from initialeffort. Time showed me that was not the way. At least not to perform the trade.
I saw I needed to start over and learn from the ground upwithout the specter of EAs floating around. So I went through the School ofPipsology (SOP) again and took each lesson slowly and paid close attention towhat they were trying to show me.
Once I finished the school, I wanted to find a strategy thatwould work for me and my current work schedule. Working a 9-5 job gets in theway of Day Trading. I wanted to trade longer time frames (TF) so I could put myorder in, set the Stop Loss (SL) and Take Profit (TP) points and let it run.The strategy needed to agree with what SOP taught me. So I went to a Forex website that had listings of trading strategies from Basic to Complex.
Forex-Strategies-Revealed.com has a large selection oftrading strategies. You just need to look through them and try them out. Istarted with the Basic Strategies and went through them one at a time. Many haddrawbacks and while other were really for short TFs. I then went to SimpleStrategies and started working with each of them. The first Simple Strategythat seemed to meet my requirements was Forex Trading Strategy #9: Teodosi’sMoving Averages tunnel.
Teodosi’s Moving Averages tunnel was submitted to work on1HR TF. It made a comment that shorter TFs would give too much whipsawing. Soif I go longer, then I it might be steadier. So I set up a demo account and setthe strategy up on the 4 Major Pairs and see how it goes.
After the first week I had three (3) winning trades and two(2) losing trades. Previous with EA Trading, I never had a winning week. Thisgave me confidence to try it for another week.
After the second week, I had again three (3) winning tradesand four (4) losing trades However, my account balance went from $5,260 to$6,003.97 USD. It felt good. Never have I had a two winning weeks in a row andan account balance above the beginning balance of the account I started. I feltI was on to something and many of the things that SOP taught were finallyshowing themselves to me.
I realized I was following many of the principles SOP wentover so many times. Principles like, Don’t Be Greedy; The Trend Is Your Friend,Money Management, Determine your Trading Style, How the Set Proper SL & TPpoints while staying in your Money Management goals and so much more concerningthe indicators and the various tools used to trade. The most import principlewas to follow the rules you set for your trade and do not break them. Believein them and follow them. When you don’t, that is when you run into trouble.
The third week showedonly three (3) trades for the week. The market went crazy and I was negative anumber of times during the week. I was as far down as $1,900. I felt I wantedto get out nad cut my losses. However, I followed my rules. My trades did nothit their SL points so I stayed in. I reminded myself to trust in what I had asa strategy and let it play out. When the week ended, those three (3) trades hadturned around and provided over a $2,100 gain to my account. My doubts were nowreplaced with confidence.
The fourth week had me trading the same strategy. However, Iwanted to try another one to see if it could enhance what I was doing. Thissecond strategy was Forex Trading Strategy #23: Trading with Average DailyRange.
This strategy was designed to catch 30 to 50 PIPs withorders set right at the start of the trading day based on previous days AverageDaily Range. I tried the first order with 0.1 lots so as to minimize any loss.That trade completed within 3 hours and pocketed me $30. I then tried it onfour (4) of the ***USD currencies pairs with 0.5 lots each. Of the four (4)trades, three (3) were successful and one (1) was a loss. Those trades had a$355 profit within 15 hours of the start of the trading day.
My trades from FSR#9 were successful too. Following asimilar rollercoaster trading period, I had three (3) trades that weresuccessful and one (1) trade that was a loss. Combining the FSR#23 success withthese trades, places my account at $10,847.09! Never have I ever had such awinning period to not just have a profitable account but to have doubled my initialbalance.
Is this typical of an ROI? Not likely as from what I haveread. This is the exception as far as I am concern and may not happen again inthe short time it took. Was it luck? Luck is when you do something and ithappens to work out in your favor without much thought given by you. Was thisthen skill? I am far from a skillful trader and will not proclaim myself to be.However, I am giving credit to SOP. It finally hammered into my head the principlesand discipline they feel will make me, and any of you who are reading this now,a better trader.
I welcome comments and will try to answer your questions.
Happy Trading.
Great compliment to Babypips in general and the School in particular!!!
It is a great way to start your trading carriere as a new trader, so you will be well equiped with risk and money management rules the moment you start trading for real (as small as your account may be in the beginning).
Vincejg327 you are a living proof of it, All the best to you in your future trading!!!