Looking for criticism

Hello friends, I’m still very much in the fledgling stage of learning how to trade forex - hoping some of the folks on here can let me know if my current plan seems sound or not.

Working through the babypips course, nearly done now
Reading Nison’s second edition of candlestick charting
Familiarizing myself with tradingview and regularly checking on the pairs I plan to trade. I’ve just started a few demo trades simply to become acquainted with the software and to see how terrible my noobie intuitions are.

So far I am enamored with just how complex all of this is - I think I know just enough to know how much I don’t know at this point haha. But I love puzzles, so I think this will be a good fit for me.

After I finish the course from there I plan to do some digging online and find as many books as I can and drown myself in them. My timeline is I’d like to begin trading live with ~3-5k by the end of this year.

If anyone has any books they would recommend, I would greatly appreciate it.

I expect I’ll become a regular on this forum as time goes on, looking forward to chatting with you all :slight_smile:

First of all, welcome to the forum, Ryan. :cool:

I was wondering how to give you “criticism”, as per your request, when we know nothing about you, but then that problem was solved because I found this sentence …

It’s [I]really, really[/I] high on my list of “[U]bad[/U] books, to be avoided by aspiring traders”. :8:

I can’t immediately think of any well-known trading book that’s worse for misleadingly cherry-picked examples and anecdotal evidence: some of Nison’s allegedly illustrative charts are even so badly selected that there are actually counterexamples to the point he’s trying to illustrate within the very charts that he presents! (His publishers/editor have done him no favours in their failure to spot this!).

He has something of a reputation (and a well-deserved one) for this, among successful traders. It seriously devalues his content, naturally. The problem, of course, is that the level of traders to whom the book sells aren’t well equipped, through absolutely no fault of their own, to notice it.

So, there you are: criticism was offered after all! :8:

Seriously, I think it’s a really bad book. And just so that I’m not being critical (in spite of your kind invitation) without also being positive and constructive, here’s a list of books I warmly recommend, which will do you as much good as Nison does harm, in my opinion. They all helped me to make a living.

Looking forward to talking more with you (and being less critical! :8: )

A beautifully respectful answer Lexy :slight_smile:

This is precisely the kind of critique I was looking for - thank you very much for taking the time to write that! :smiley:

Yes I have some nice pick for you. Romer - Advanced macroeconomics, John Hull 0 financial analysis and risk management. Both is my essential tools for fundamental analytics

LOL! Both of those (which I happen to have seen at my father’s work) are very advanced, complicated [I]postgraduate academic[/I] textbooks - they’re of [B][U]absolutely no[/U][/B] relevance to aspiring retail traders at all! (I can only imagine that he likes to mention them here to try to appear well-read, or something. Avoid!)

Yeah you caught me, well done :slight_smile:

But personally I do advice newbie traders to try to learn at least simplified Solow macroeconomic model to understand how changes of different economic variables affect economic growth, interest rates. It also gives good overview on economic shocks. Sure its too complicated for you Lexys, so this advice doesn’t concern you.

You said
"So far I am enamored with just how complex all of this is"

more advise then criticism, a simple approach to trading is far more advisable then a complex one, you will find most successful traders here have very simple trading styles, often looking at naked charts, no indicators, just price. and a set a trading rules easily committed to memory

Good luck and keep it simple

I’m not sure your post merits a response at all, but this is just ridiculous nonsense. It’s a [B]postgraduate academic textbook[/B] written for [I]research analysts at investment banks[/I].

It certainly is, and [B][U]that’s my point[/U][/B]: if it’s far too complicated (as well as entirely unnecessary) for a mathematician/statistician who’s been making her living from trading for several years, what on Earth are you doing suggesting it to someone who by his own observation is a complete newbie?! Look, I’m as pleased as anyone else that you’re now back from your forum ban, and posting again, but there’s no need to [I][U]keep[/U][/I] posting nonsense! :rolleyes:

Well I use this books in my self-study and find them not so complicated but very interesting. They stretch your understanding about macroeconomics and it helps a lot.

And I would like to remind you that this forum is free for sharing opinions, the advice was addressed not to you but for the TS. If he finds it irrelevant he will simply reject it. And who are you to be a watchdog there, assessing the quality of recommendation or advice, behaving in such impolite and disrespectful fashion?