Is there actually a strategy that is profitable?

Beginner Questions
1

So far it seems like it’s essentially like buying lottery tickets. All I do is lose. Someone told me to “just do the opposite” if I’m loosing all the time. I did that and I’m still loosing. I’ve read about so many different strategies and indicators and such… none of them seem to be profitable. Is there like a legitimate secret to it?

Some people say that looking for candlestick patterns works, BUT THERE ARE SO MANY FALSE SIGNALS. When people post photos of these patterns they only show when it works. They don’t show the 99% of the time when it’s pure BS and a false signal. People do it with indicators too… while it may look good historically, in the moment it doesn’t seem to work.

Even in the pipsology school… (and I’m not trying to discredit it) they show hypotheticals. Okay, so that drawing you made with the trendlines looks good but it doesn’t quite work the same way when I log into metatrader. Everything is so choppy and imprecise.

2

look at a few currency pairs say eur/usd , usd/jpy and eur/gbp watch the price of these pairs wherever you are on your phone many times a day, when you see that price is low buy and when price is high sell, look at forexfactory economic calendar and make sure price isnt high or low because some news has just happened. simple idea it may not work for you but you could try. basically watch the price of the pairs alot.

3

If everything is choppy you should trade a higher time frame like the daily if this is still too choppy change pairs.

4

Hi, how long have you been studying/trading?
You’re a new member and don’t seem to have worked your way through pipschool, at least there are no quiz scores showing.
Don’t be in a hurry to trade, learn, read the threads here, demo for some months, and if the demo goes well think about trading

5

What are you learning when you lose? You should not only write down what you’re trying to do, but if it worked, why it worked or didn’t work and why it didn’t .

To idiotic to respond to.

Any strategy that follows a trading method that based on the balance of probabilities has the potential to give you more positive results than negative in the long run; a money management plan that protects your account balance while adding to it long term: following your trading method and money management plan applying patience and discipline long term.

The secret is simple; long term. . . no strategy or money management no matter what plan it is: indicators, no indicators, price action, candle patterns, 1 minute time frame 1 year time frame; no leverage, 1:500 and everything in between. You need to make notes when it works as well as when it doesn’t.

The 2nd secret is “always be learning and trying to improve your knowledge.” As TheLastBear says " it’s a tough business out there." If you want to have success you have to get sharp and stay sharp. The only way someone makes money is by someone losing money. If you have family, sit down with your other half and write down how much time you can spend without hurting your personal life. From your post with reference to experience, you need to start from the beginning. The success process starts with a solid understanding of the basics. Next you want to apply and reapply the things you’re learning by practicing the basics, from there you use your knowledge to design a trading method and money management plan and work your plan. So. . .crawl, walk, run and race.

2 reasons for that. 1. You need to have a picture that illustrates what the person is trying to demonstrate. If you want to see live illustrations, jump on utube and search. For example here is a very simple candle strategy. YouTube I’m not telling you to buy any product or service they might be selling, just a great illustration of a simple candle strategy.

Which brings me to 2nd reason. A lot of what you’re looking at is a teaser to get you to proceed and buy a product or service, so whoever is trying to sell you something, don’t expect them to tell you it doesn’t always work or focus on the flaws.

Again you address this with knowledge. If the school illustrates something and you don’t understand it do exactly what you did above. Nobody is interested in giving you a fish; but there’s a lot of different traders that wouldn’t mind telling you how to catch your own fish.

Remember usually there are no stupid questions but don’t do something like this " Hey guys can somebody share with me a strategy that will make me money in a hurry, that I don’t really have to spend a lot of time learning or doing. " Instead
I’m going through babypips and having a problem understanding trend lines. in their illustration they said to do this, but when I log in it doesn’t work. By the way go to utube and search " how to draw a forex trend line." Hope that helps
Gp

6

Wow thanks. Lots of good advice in there.

7

Some people just need to be spoon feed. There is one one strategy that works. Its called your own trading plan. You spend many years and countless hours developing it. If you’re not prepared to do the time then save your money and give up bro

8

Excellent way of putting it. You can spend a few years trying to develop your own profitable strategy which is what stops many from really trying. I think the benefits down the road are well worth it, but again forex trading requires time. I have read that the first ten years may be spend on research, hard work, testing and losing money and account building. After the first decade if you are still around you can advance to the ultimate goal.

9

Yes, however it will not be posted on a website or public knowledge.

If you have the answer to unlimited wealth would you share it with the world? or just keep quiet & smile?

10

Yes cause everyone would think they’d know better and want to change it. Nor would they have the disciple to follow the rules.

11

Everyone start from somewhere…

There are profitable strategies posted on the internet for free but not everyone can use it… that is to say that people need a strategy that fits them. However, most of the time people start by using a preset strategy and then adjust it after mastering the strategy. Problem is…most people adjust it wayyyyy too early and ended up destroying the strategy (and then of course comes the blaming game).

Trading is a patience game… it will take some time to find the good strategy and then it will take some time to really, really master it and afterward it will take some time to be able to adjust it to custom fit the trader.

If anyone expect to get a “perfect package” from the start then it’s like what the thread starter said… “like buying lottery tickets”.

Becoming a doctor will require someone to complete years of education and practice and then more years to hone the skills (go into a specialized field). After that he will enjoy the satisfaction from his works both material and non-material. The same goes with becoming a trader… many people simply took the bait and were led to think the opposite. Blame the ads…

12

I think almost everyone was where you are and perhaps others are still there. The easiest “strategy” to get into is trading only with the trend, trading only from support or resistance with the trend.
To do this you need to be realistic with yourself and realize you will not be taking a trade everyday, or even every week. Take the time NOW to learn patience as this is the best tool you can have. Wait for the right trade and the right signals. When not taking trades, go back and look at charts, mark levels, see how price reacts, understand what a price pattern is and how to follow price action. Check your loosing trades, see if you were trading right into a support or resistance zone, were you following the trend.
Lastly, don’t limit your potential. Start small now, wait and practice trading on a demo account even after you go live. See if the trades you do on the demo are still the trades you do on a live account and if they aren’t figure out why.

13

True they would say I can do better than that, Human nature. There is one constant in the markets once you spot it & develop & system to benefit from it you can do something far more interesting with your time on the earth.

14

jakebvt, yes there are strategies out there and I have one of them.

Are you a day trader or a Swing Trader? what has been your strategy?

Most of my frustration in trading came when I used to Day Trade. No matter how many strategies I tried, I kept losing money despite periods of moderate success. Each time I zeroed my account after my latest new strategy, I often felt like doing this to the computer…


Day Trading is just took difficult. The number of things that this approach requires you to consider each day-news, Support, Resistance, confluence of indicators etc.- puts too much pressure on the trader and his strategy.

After switching to Swing Trading instead, trading became a lot simpler for me. Trading gains were more consistent, trading stress was significantly reduced and more time was spent actually earning money.

After demo trading for awhile to develop a clear strategy based on the Daily and 4 Hour Charts, I started going back Live in July. With only 8 trades made - almost 600 Pips coming from the last 7 trades - I and my fellow traders are up 22%.

RETURN LIVE 22% 8 TRADES.png388×554 62.2 KB

(No trading was done in August)

The latest of these came on Thursday on the GBP CAD which gave us 199 Pips in 3 days;


A demo account, which tracks these Live Account trades (behind by 4 trades), is also moving up steadily.



On both accounts, only 8 trades would be required (assuming no losses) for a 100% return in the early part of 2015.

Swing Trading has several advantages over Day Trading. You can keep emotions in control because you dont trade everyday, allowing you to calmly focus on the best trades with more objectivity.

I also use Candlestick Patterns and Price Action. These allow me to identify the patterns and signals that provide the best opportunities each month, without having to deal with the conflicting signals of statistical indicators. The main aspects of the strategy are;

[ul]
[li]Identifying the Trends and Signals using Candlestick Patterns and Signals;
[/li][li]Waiting on the Daily and 4 Hour Charts for Market Direction and Entry Signals;
[/li][li]Targeting 100-200 Pips per trade;
[/li][li]Trading the Weekly Range of each Currency Pair;
[/li][li]Holding Trades for a Pre-Determined Maximum Period of Time;
[/li][li]
[/li][/ul]

Have a look at my trades in the Trade Journal and Swing Trading thread…http://forums.babypips.com/trade-journals/68590-swing-trading-results-price-action-strategy-2.html#post670894

Use the strategy on Demo Account, compare to other methods and I am sure you will be profitable.

Duane aka DRFXTRADING

15

I have to say you are right, find one that suits you, spend time and effort focus on, and trade with your plan and strategy.

16

This one http://forums.babypips.com/free-forex-trading-systems/70787-range-sniper-trading-system-ea.html that I posted is working for me currently.

The problem is that the market changes, our emotions change, our determination and greed/patience changes. there are too many variables. But once you learn discipline and patience, you take the gambling aspect away from Forex.

17

Hi Jake, in my own experience almost all strategies/methods/systems were successful. It was myself who
wasn’t successful. The reason was I didn’t know what I was doing and I learned how to trade by myself,
which is a very difficult path. You really need a mentor to show you how it’s done. Trading is extremely easy, but extremely hard trying to figure it out yourself, because you have to buy all of these systems, read all these books, watch all those videos etc. When some one could have just shown you how it’s done
in a very short period of time. It took me 4yrs. learning how to trade on my own, when it would have been
much shorter if I had paid someone for private 1 on 1 training. Forex trading for newbies is basically a slaughter house, because it looks so easy, although it is, but if not shown the subtleties you need to know
you will be eaten alive! One of those subtleties is money management, you have to know how to structure
your trades according to money management. Once you get it it’s impossible to lose. I searched for the Holy Grail and actually found it. Here’s a picture of it.
MetaTrader Trading Platform Screenshots
I’ll even tell you what the Holy Grail is, it is the ability to see the markets hidden universal pattern which is chaos and apply it with proper money management and to figure out what your trading style is, meaning are you a day trader a swing trader or position trader, can you wait weeks or days for a trade or do you want to sit in front of your computer, so you have to know and understand yourself before trading.

Kitaab

18

I like the question and thought it would be nice to share my experience in relation to this question.

It is probably prudent to say there are profitable strategies but these cannot be bought and will never be sold as you can’t put a price on a successful system or strategy. It takes an awful lot of trial error to find a good high probability low risk strategy. If you have focused on chart patterns (the art of technical analysis), then you probably have to find a successfu chartl pattern that has been consistent over time and then device a way to trade it. You should know by this point the expectancy of the pattern you wish to trade, the rest will be down to money management.

I assure you this is not an easy task but once completed, it really depends on how much you want to invest in the market.

To summarize Go through 100+ charts across several instruments

Sifter for recurring patterns of price action (you will have to explore relationships between price, time and structure).

Then test the expectancy had you traded those patterns and exited with certain rules. You should get an expectancy for each pattern you backtest.

You can then foward trade them on a demo 30-90 days over at least 100 trades.

At this point you should be able to tweak your money management to either increase win/loss ratio or risk profile for e.g. breakeven on trades, trail stops, partial position closure, etc. Also risk adjustment and profit target adjustment.

Once this okay you will soon have a max return your system will produce under relatively normal conditions.

That’s it…

It took me 2 years to develop a winning strategy and I would not sell it unless so one offered me 100m or so but not likely… In the end you get exactly what you put in and that’s a law. Earl Nightingale once said, “The streets and prisons where the lonely walk are filled people who thought they could write new laws just for themselves”. Don’t get bitten by the successful strategy bug, build your own.

Merry Christmas fella!

19

I personally didn’t do too well in the markets until I formulated a plan. Once I had a plan together I traded a micro account, not really risking much on each trade. After lots and lots and lots of practice and building confidence I moved up to a larger account.

I know all too well about trying to learn about hundreds of indicators, but what worked for me was reading price action, setting up a game plan, seeing if it worked or not, then reformulating if it didn’t work and moving forward if it did work.

Losses are part of the game Jakebvt. You may be going through a bad time for your strategy only to switch to a strategy that looks like it’s working at this moment. Only for the market to change state (Choppy/Trending/Ranging) and you start a new strategy only to pick that one up at a bad time. It becomes a cyclical pattern you never get out of and eventually might just give up trading.

I back tested a whole lot using software, but you can probably do it just fine on your charting platform. Just be honest with yourself with trades and trade it like a live market.

Good Luck!

20

I think the best strategy is following the money…the old adage of buy LOW and sell HIGH applies to the FOREX market…So the question now becomes when do I know when to buy and when to sell (the million dollar question, right?).

The market movers, that is the central banks, huge hedge funds, very large companies among others, buy and sell currency at prices that permit them to hedge their positions. There are far to many reasons why the market movers enter the market at any given time or for that matter, how long they will hold their positions…the charts give us clues at where those price levels occur (at least from a historical perspective). As retail traders the best we can do is identify those areas to enter a trade (many, many hours of screen time to become proficient at this task). Proper risk management and initial investment capitol will be key factors in becoming successful or at the very least remain in the market.