If it’s because of psychology or emotions…how come bots fail too? fundamentals can be avoided by bots, just turn it off when theres big news right? This forex is really hard LOL I only win using large SL, its really hard to tell where its going.
When it’s hard to tell where it’s going you simply don’t trade, which is 90% of the time, but sometimes it’s a doddle, that’s when to trade, there’s really only 2 ways to approach it, you either have a system that will tell you which way the market is likely to go from a certain point or you can be in the market in the hope that it will go your way.
But really if you don’t have a strategy that will show you high probability setups, you just don’t have enough of an edge.
Quite - to reinforce that, it really is not important to be in the market constantly. A strategy that lets one pick out high probability setups can give a great return on only a handful of trades a month. If winners make even 1-2% each, it only takes a run of 5-10 successful trades in a month to give a 10% return. That is enough for financial comfort. In my opinion, too many people try to rush things by trying to compensate for a smaller account size by overtrading. That leads to lower quality setups being taken, that lowers the success rate, sometimes terminally. Following a losing trade, it can take a winner just to get back to B/E, so two or three losers in a row can take the next week to offset. So for me it is much more important to have a strategy that gives quality setups, then take those and be comfortable staying out of the market in between winning trades. I spend more time scanning than I do trading - and I make money. I used to spend more time trading than scanning - and I lost money.
I would strongly echo PPF’s point - when it’s hard to tell where it’s going then simply don’t trade. This is a probability game, at the end of the day. If you can’t tell which way it is going to go, I would not trade it, as trading then is guesswork, surely? Which to me is - whisper it lest it takes on a life of its own - gambling.
ST
Nice discussions here…
I tell you guys one thing there is big secret in the trading and financial markets that how to make money in the markets.
And once you know the secret you start making money and you become consistenly profitable at this game and you also realize that wow there is no secret at all anybody could make money in this market.
and you start telling you have to buy low sell high…
follow the trend…
just follow your system…
keep digging unless you find the secret and realize that there is NO SECRET
Oh yes there is, and I know it can be a contentious issue but that has been well discussed on BP and I’m not entering that discussion again, because I know what I know, and I don’t care who knocks it but - Volumes in Forex work.
Here’s some great trading material:-
http://www.tradeguider.com/mtm_251058.pdf
http://www.techtradercentral.net/documentation/mtm_251058.zip
Definitely it is as ppf and st wrote. Overtrading is probably the no 1 killer of accounts. Revenge trading close.
Another word regarding psychology: If it would all be psycho, then why make my bots money? My bots decide when to trade and when not. I am completely out of the game. Do my bots have a mind? No. They just trade the setups which give an edge over statistics in the long run. They make losses and they win, and over the long haul they win 100% more than what they lose.
You can compare that with any business. To drive a business, you have expenses and you have revenue. As long as your revenue is higher than expenses, this would be a profitable business. The better you can handle your business the more you can cut on expenses or drive more revenue, but you will never cut expenses to zero. Plus it might become a losing business if there are too many customers and you can’t handle it while the expenses grow too much.
I guess whoever already had a business or at least understands how a business works has it easier to trade, because he knows what he has to deal with.
Volume is also one of the many tools trader can use to its advantage
consider this say market is going up and market wants to go up but all the retail traders are in the long position then what do you think the smart money will do even though they want the market to go up.
Market is always right whether smart money is moving it or what ever
Listen to the market it tells the TRUTH and where it wants to go.
Umm , maybe i will lost so much.:46:
I believe we are here to discuss and help each other
FXCM, which is one of the largest retail FX shops, posts their account stats:
180,000 accounts
23% Profitable
77% Not
Who posted it?
Good info, growing such money is easy, losing it is easier
By no means a know it all but I do agree with these guys that there is a good reason so many fail. It is like any business where you have to be wise about what risks you take. I think having a good business(trading) plan is great but it has to be followed by physiological fortitude to see it through. It is for the same reason that most small businesses fail. I don’t really see this as alarming. The greats are the ones that fail but decide to learn for those mistakes until they find the right idea that is successful and duplicate it. This is no different in trading. Once the consistency is nailed down in a profitable manor you just repeat until the idea is no longer valid, then readjust.
Slow and steady wins the race. I am all for improving the system because innovation wins too. Really, I am talking to myself here too when I say if improving my skills as a trader is going to make me more profitable in the long run then why not do it.
Those figures are highly misleading, they are taken over a 3 month period. Also a profit of 0.001% and a profit of 25% over the same period are both considered as profits. If FXCM had figures that showed 25% of their clients where profitable over 3 years they’d be spamming every trading forum on the planet promoting that fact.
I’ve not seen FXCM’s data, but I suspect their long term data would very clearly show that 95% of their accounts after 3 years have been closed at a loss
Guys guys guys…
The bottom line of this thread is re-enforcing the fact that most people into FX really don’t make money and most people on forums giving out systems and advises are really not profitable and are aspiring to be. In summary of it all, not more than 2-5 people in every forex forum actually make money…
Well my take on this is that we sometimes neglect the fact that 5-10% of traders being profitable is quite large when considering the total number of people trading…lemme give an analogy:
If there were [B]1,000,000[/B] traders trading: 5% of profitable traders is actually [B]50,000 profitable[/B] traders and if there was 10% of profitable traders, we are talking about [B]100,000 profitable[/B] traders
With this little analogy I do know that it is not impossible to be among the 50 or 100,000 profitable traders
Lets keep on slashing and not be discouraged my fellow comrades:64:
Well, sort of agree with it but i am in forums not in mind to share my system althought sometimes i do, but i am more like to share opinions and look/give for support for those freaking moments when emotional control seemeth not to work. Just like AA.
Regards.
LoL. Hey, dude, I had the exact same thought. Forums are useful though to get cold-hard facts—how things work, what something means, etc… As for the opinions, those MUST be taken with a grain (or heap) of salt.
One issue with a forum advice is the anonymity - I am sure that there are people on every forum - not just Forex - who have created an online ‘persona’ which bears little relation to the reality.
For instance, in Forex, it would be possible to look at the charts for the past week, spot four setups that went on to hit TP, then say that you took those trades, they played out well, made 20% that week, so Forex works. The individual doesn’t need to trade those setups, just spot them with hindsight and post them on a forum. Over time, that individual will probably be heralded as one of the profitable few - while having made nothing. It is possible, over time, to spot the frauds if you yourself are a profitable trader, but many won’t spot it, and presumably even experienced pros will fail to spot some.
So advice on here is interesting, and can be invaluable, but I never take it purely at face value. It’s the old thing - only ever place trades based on your own research, and understand at all times why you are in that trade and what needs to happen to make you come out of it. I see advice given out on here sometimes, presented as Gospel truth, that I think is crazy. Either I am wrong, or the advice poster is wrong, yet we are both on here presenting our opinions as being based on successful experience…
ST
I think that not only over 90% of traders don’t make money. I think over 90% of people on forums have little understanding of the topic. If you want to make money in the markets don’t search for the holy grail systems on forums/google. You have to invent it yourself. The reason why over 90% of traders loose money is because the population is stupid. But avoiding stupidity is a choice and a discipline. If you believe in your ability to find the answer to day trading to fit your personality then do it. Otherwise don’t even bother. You wont be successful in a few months.
“Hell, there are no rules here - we’re trying to accomplish something.”
[U]Thomas A. Edison[/U]
Well said.
My personal comments on these posts:
- Don’t trust anyone but yourself
- There are no shortcuts in forex
- There are so many numbers flying around, the reality is that it’s impossible to get to many eg how many people make it in forex, how many people on forums are profitable
- There are so many people on this forum who add very little value in their comments who think they know it all, but in truth they can’t themselves figure out how to be consistently profitable. BUT there are a select few, who do know and I’m sure are profitable and it is from these people I personally take advice from
- You can never stop learning