Looking to do it right

Beginner Questions
1

I am not here to get rich overnight, next week, month or year. I am firm believer in the slow but steady route. I am however finding a bit of a challenge in finding my way through the noise. Trying to do research on getting into Forex trading one is bombarded with “get rich quick” schemes and I will admit it is a challenge trying to decipher who is trying to offer quality legit advice and who is a complete whacko.

I am looking for a kind hearted person who has been in my position to impart some wisdom or point me in the right direction. I am 31, a father of two, I have done relatively well for myself up until this point. I discarded the over-priced formal education route and opted instead for a self education model and have worked myself into a comfortable management position earing around $60k/year in a relatively small town with a population of around 90,000 with a super high poverty rate. I myself was born into poverty and have fought hard to get where I am- I own a house, brand new car, and am able to provide my kids with the opportunities I longed for as a child. However, I will admit I feel I am have limited myself and that I can still do better.

I have opened a Forex.com account and have been approved and plan to fund it will $1000 once I am ready knowledge wise to jump into the game. I know this is likely peanuts to many of you, however as I said, I am not looking to make an income or get rich quickly. I simply want to grow slowly and am desperately seeking a mentor if you will to point me in the right direction of online material or books to get a firm grasp on the truly successful strategies that helped them grow from the position I am in.

A huge thanks to anyone who responds will anything of value.

2

i have been trading derivatives for 3 years to date. i learnt a lot by going to free seminars and doing research on line. i hope that i can be of help. this forum has a school which teaches you the basics but very comprehensive. you can try going thru and let us know if there is a problem.

3

People will suggest the Babypips school, and that is probably a good place to start. I worked in the corporate world for nearly twenty years as an accountant, and I think that having an analytical background is helpful but not required. There are many differing ideas about trading and lots of arguments. Once you get through the school and are familiar with the lingo and all that, I think that understanding support and resistance is the foundation of a technical understanding. You don’t need to understand fundamentals, and you don’t need to spend money to learn. S/R and higher time frames like the daily chart, will get you understanding the beginning of price movements.

I’m familiar with several types of trading such as Harmonics, S/D zones etc. I trade full time now, and in my honest opinion the best trading teacher only teaches for free. He does not charge anything and has several courses available. All of his teachings are always totally free, and he teaches how price moves and in my honest opinion his work is the best hands down. His name is Michael Huddleston and is known as ICT - Inner Circle Trader. Watch his videos and decide for yourself.

Default Institutional Support & Resistance Explained

If you take the time to look into this and you get familiar I will refer you to a Sk… I mean conversation group, and again it’s all free, but there are some haters on here so decide for yourself.

4

Thank you for the replies, I fully intend to work my way through the babypips school- and am a firm believer that all education can be obtained for free. I do see value in paying for “the right education” to expedite the learning curve, however I am the first to admit that the task of finding such quality education can take just as long taking the time to learn it for free.

5

[QUOTE=“NeedsNOTWants;719550”]Thank you for the replies, I fully intend to work my way through the babypips school- and am a firm believer that all education can be obtained for free. I do see value in paying for “the right education” to expedite the learning curve, however I am the first to admit that the task of finding such quality education can take just as long taking the time to learn it for free.[/QUOTE]

Most on this forum are not qualified in the least to give newbies trading advice, the saying about the blind leading the blind is no more appropriately applied than here. Realize that most posting here are as green as you, and many of the ones that aren’t green have developed horrible trading habits, many instigated by the various trading gurus that have frequented this site for years, and freely spread misinformation.

Starting off on the path you are on, you are going to have to get ready for a very long, difficult battle. I can tell you right now that statistically speaking, you will give up trading within a year and a half, leaving with less money then when you started. The odds are very stacked against you. Being anything but a hobbyist requires huge amounts of invested time in learning the market, and also requires a MUCH higher capitalized account than I bet you have access to. It’s hard enough for a single guy with no wife or kids who need attention, finding the time necessary to keep up with the markets in any capacity more than a hobbyist with family is going to be EXTREMELY difficult.

Conceptually, trading is easy to understand. Buy low, sell high. Easy right? Sure, when watching someone on YouTube explain in hindsight how price moved in a certain way, it seems super easy. In reality, it will take thousands of hours of watching charts, back testing ideas, learning what makes the market tick, un learning misinformation learned on forex forums, and after you have the knowledge, you then have to develop the steely cold psychological discipline that risking large sums of money requires. This is only going to be developed after losing money on bad trades… You need to be prepared for the fact that you will be losing trades, which means losing money, on a constant basis.

Your account balance. $1k is fine for just starting off… But you need to have the correct expectations in order to avoid blowing up the account. The number one reason why retail forex traders lose money is due to over leveraging small accounts (because they can only afford a small account). They over leverage because a properly risk managed trade on a small account would result in such insignificant profits that it wouldn’t be worth it. Engrain this in your head… Do not risk more than 2% of your account on any trade. For you that would be $20. A good trade profits about twice what your risk is, so that’s $40 if you win.

Now that may sound okay, but at the end of a trading week, you are going to be doing good to have a net positive win vs loss count… 2% account growth per week is a good number for a properly managed account… On a $1k account that is only $20… A pittance when you take into account how many hours of your life it took to get that. Eventually you’ll get impatient, begin taking on larger positions, see a few big wins, which encourages you to take more risk… Eventually the big loss comes and wipes out a big portion of your profits, you follow up the loss with a few unthought out revenge trades which results in the rest of your account being thrown out the window… My point? You need to have a properly funded account… At least $50k. Big enough so that properly proportioned positions result in profits that are significant enough to be worth your time, because after more than a year or two, trading a 5 figure account becomes self destructive, and a trader with less then 5 years of trading experience isn’t going to be able to trade up a $1k to anything significant before blowing it up.

Basic pointers… Learn basic support, resistance, and trend line theory. Learn how to identify when a market is trending and when it’s ranging. Learn how to apply fibs correctly. These are the foundational technical analysis concepts. You are wasting your time if you focus on anything more technically complex than the above. What will take you from a hobbyist to an elite trader is the ability to process the news, geo political events, central bank monetary policy etc and to turn them into trading ideas, executed in confluence to the above mentioned technical analysis. Interpreting these kind of events and turning them into actionable ideas is subjective, a skill learned through watching how events affect the market. This takes years. No two ways around it. Are you ready for that?

6

Hi there,

I m kind hearted…
You can ask me any question…
I will point you in the
most accurate direction…!!
You wont regret!

7

Thank you for that post, I can tell you have seen many fail over the years and many high hopes crushed. I hope you are able to dissuade many away from the markets as I do agree the majority are expecting unrealistic gains. I have no such expectations, and am also accepting of the fact that I will loose a lot before I see any true profits. However, I feel if I do commit I can get there. Several years from now, once I feel I do have a handle on it I will look at trading a higher amount. The $1k account is two fold in purpose- it is presently an amount I feel comfortable losing all of, and it is enough so that I will take it seriously. I know on most trades I will be aiming for a very small profit amount wise ($5-$20), however it is the % of increase which I am mostly interested in as it can scaled.

While I fully admit that I am entering this as a hobbyist, I do have one attribute which I believe will serve me well. I actually thoroughly enjoy following the news, international politics and observing how it effects the markets. My challenge will be turning this info into trading ideas, and I am fine with it taking several years. I am here to enjoy trading and hopefully make very slow and steady increases, not get rich with any unrealistic expectations.

8

I highly suggest you backtest which ever plan you have in place for atleast 2-3 months on a demo account if you haven’t already. Sorry if you already have I skim read your OP. Best of luck

9

See the problem is, that everybody is biased towards a strategy he does, and they want to enforce that onto you. Why? First because they know that best, and second, because no one will admit that there could be a better strategy.

Thus you have to do the brainwork yourself. But if you want some useful advice, in my opinion you should go through the most read and replied strategies on this, and other big forums, collect around 10-15-20 of them, inspect them carefully, what others wrote about it, how does it work, are they still active (especially the mentor who started it), etc,etc, then start narrow it down what could you do, which do you like, and when you find the one, just go fully on with it, at least for a year.

10

Your family always comes first, I’m sure you know this. This isn’t investing. Don’t look at this more than a hobby for now and a longtime. Don’t obsess over it and you’ll be surprised how well you can do.

11

I like your approach and long-term thinking. Rather make slow steps and not bust your account within a day. Pay attention on having a trading plan and not only a trading system.

Wish you all the best,
ZR

12

When i started my trades, i did not had any Trading plan with me :frowning:

But then i was able to understand the importance of using a Good Trading Plan :slight_smile:

And this has led me to believe that if our trading plan is good it is eventually going to help us :slight_smile: