My Experience, Who Can Help?

Hi Guys,

I live in the UK and trade the London session.

I graduated university in May 2015 and got a job straight away, however while in uni I developed a passion for trading. I have been looking through free online resources to try and build my knowledge, my trading style is day trading, while using support and resistance and also using chart trends (Sometimes on major news events i would try and trade these as well). I have had a demo account with CMC Markets for over 18 months and just went on it maybe once or twice a week due to the little spare time I had, however 2 weeks ago I quit my job and wanted to get my head down and properly trade full time.

So, last week I was up before the London session and read the news and analysed the charts. Last week I started myself on £1000, and I finished the week with £2100. I was mainly doing little trades and earning maybe £25-£50 per trade, where I would do about 4 trades a day. I didn’t want to risk the trade going any further because of how little experience I have in the market.

However, this week I was doing the exactly the same as last week but I could not make one good trade and went on to finish the week with £1083. I wasn’t doing anything different which has baffled me, I understand that this is the market and it happens, but I didn’t make one profitable trade this week. It just seemed every trade I made was instantly going in the opposite direction, So i got out of the trade and watched the chart and it did go in the other direction.

I was hoping to find some knowledge and experience on here to quite me int he right direction.

Hi Nick.
We have an excellent school on here, totally free and well worth working your way thru.
Sorry to hear about your trades but at least you didnt blow your account. Am I right thinking you traded without a stoploss? Its risky and probably not worth it if youre only making £25-50 per trade. I often dont use a stoploss but Im looking for 100’s of pips per trade, sometimes in a trade for several days if not weeks.

Hi Eddie,
Thanks Eddie, i have gone through the majority of the stuff on the school section and found I knew the stuff.

I sometimes have a stop loss, but the majority of the time I don’t. I have been trying to perfect the day trading, so being in and out of a couple a trades a day however with the little experience I have I don’t swell know where the top of the trend is. So, without risking it I just take £50 for now until I get more experience. for now making £200 a day I will be happy with, then with my increasing experience I would try for more.

Nick Rideout…love the name

Start with a 5 simple moving average and watch how the market ups and downs.
People scoff at me with this, but it truly shows you how the market moves.

Na zdrowie,
Tim

Do you have a written trading plan, and have you calculated your expectancy from your 18 months trading?
If so you could calculate what the chances are that you end up in a horrible losing streak.
Markets don’t always react your way, and you should have written out on what to do then.
Only then you will be able to trade with consistency.

It looks like you are letting yourself being influenced by emotion as you are in ‘doubt’, which is dangerous in trading.

Write first your thoughts and feelings over the past 2 weeks on paper.
Then write your trading plan.

From that point move on and improve.

Good luck! :23:

Hi,

I just want to give you few pointers:

  • Trading on demo account for so long is just a wasting of time. What ever you have learn there is not going to work on a live account because the psychological moment is not the same as when you have your own money in.
  • As you said you don’t have enough experience, so making 50% profits in one week is ridiculously bad risk management. You are going to lose your 1000 with matter of days.
  • You spend 18 months on demo and you have nothing so far, so I would like to recommend you to spend at least 18 months more on trading education and in the mean time you can trade your 1000 in a micro account with much much lower risk per trade so the account will last longer and you can accumulate live trading experience.
  • [B]In this learning[/B] period you should not even think about making any profits because there will be non. If, only if you mange to educate yourself enough and also you create a working trading strategy than you can start thinking about profits, means [B]at least[/B] two years from now.

Good Luck

Hi Nick,

The bad news is:
Your profit expectation considering your level of capital is way off and not sustainable.
Your skill level, considering your lack of experience will also an issue.

The good news is that these things can be rectified with time, work and practice.
The previous posters have given you some good suggestions. It might not be what you want to hear but it will probably save you that £1000.

Good luck op.

I think it’s namely business which not always get easiness to making profit, if likely we faced succesive losses in trading hence we can learn why, maybe we can’t understand wth the trend market behaviour properly and might we choose pair that on hard condition to analyzed, might better wait and see again before enforced to start again.

Hi Nick,

I have seen some great answers and suggestions. I have seen quite a lot of new traders and know how and what they do.

I am not a mean person, but want to just give you a very quick face to face heads up. Did you make 100%+ profits in one week? Please be advised that trading the same strategy in a couple of weeks your account will be empty. This is a very high probability. Just wanted to mention that you know. If you want, you can give the 1000 for me and at least you do not give it for your broker. If you decide to trade with it further on the way you did, do it, lose it and come back after the lesson was learnt.

It is not to scare you away, it is reality that is on the corner, I just wanted that you see the real situation with your current trading.

I wish you a great and successful journey, with a lot less risk!

Journal every single trade you make, with as much detail as possible- before, during, and after execution.
Do you remember every little detail from a trade you entered in 11 days ago?