Thanks for that, really helpful, I’ll put it off for now, with work I can spare a lot of my own time for research, even though it can be a little erratic, but at times I can spend a whole week on it if I want to, I think I’ll persevere on my own for the time being, and best of luck and everything, I think you’ve been really helpful
My pleasure. Thank you very much, both for the feedback and the good wishes! Hope it continues to go well for you.
Before you go spending money on a course, try and understand positive and negative expectancy. Then you may have a chance at succeeding in forex, shares, whatever you fancy.
Create a spreadsheet and put these figures in fields.
Start Balance $ - Cell A1 - $2500
Capital Balance$- Cell A2 - =(B1*c1)+A1 - This cell will calculate your ongoing balance
Pip Buy size - Cell B2 - =ROUNDDOWN(IF(A1>25000,50,(A2*0.002)),1)
(- This cell will calculate 5 which is equivalent to 50000 to a maximum of 50 pip (500000). I just can’t see myself having the stomach for any higher than $50 per pip size, psychology)
Win/loss pips - Cell C2 - =IF(G2>0.5,50,-25) - This cell calculates from a random cell
Profit / Loss $ - Cell D2 - =(b2*c2)
Wins - Cell E2 - =IF(C2>0,1,0)
Trades - Cell F2 - =IF(D2<>0,1,0)
Random - Cell G2 - =ROUNDDOWN(RAND(),1)
Then copy the Cell A2 - G2 and paste down to A250, that is approx 1 year of trades.
Total Wins - Cell E1 - =SUM(E2:E250)
Total Trades - Cell F1 - =SUM(F2:F250)
Profit Loss $ - Cell I1 - =SUM(D2:D250)
Win % - Cell J1 - =E1/F1 - Then press %
From the above spreadsheet you will see randomly your total profit, win % calculated. You will need about 20 losses in a row to lose 2/3 of your account, and maybe if that is the case you may need to revisit your strategy. Hopefully from this spreadsheet you can understand positive expectancy and depending on your profit target & stops you may only need a win % of approx 35% to breakeven any higher your in profit. To make the spreadsheet change just resize a column or type in a blank cell a number and press enter.
Now if you wanted to test a simple breakout system, is about 2 mins before UK open, EURUSD set a buy price 15 pips above current price, & a sell 15 pips below. When one triggers the other cancels.
Eg current price 1.3556
Buy price 1.3571
Target price 1.3621
Stoploss 1.3546
Sell price 1.3541
Target price 1.3491
Stoploss 1.3566
I do a similar system based around the london breakout strategy that I’ve adapted for my own style and it is profitable at the moment. I trade the EURUSD, USDCHF & GBPUSD. Now in Aussie QLD time, I put my trades on at 6pm for the EURUSD & USDCHF, and 7pm for GBPUSD. It takes me 10 minutes per day.
Good luck with your search, my only advice is there is no holy grail, and many will spend hours trying to find the perfect entry and exit, unless your scalping and sitting by a computer all day every day, most systems will revert to 40 - 50% win%.
To be honest you could put =RAND() in cell in a spreadsheet. Open the spreadsheet 2 mins before UK open, if it is > .5 put in a buy, else put in a sell with a 50 profit target, 25 loss.
No indicators, no $2500 course and probably just a successful as most systems.
Expectancy is so ridiculously important. It’s sad that the BabyPips school has omitted quite possibly the MOST important factor of FX trading. Actually, it omits a lot of points and now that I know more about FX, I realize it really isn’t a particularly good resource.
Hey everyone,
Thanks so much for all of your input. I have decided to firstly do the obvious best thing and am part way through the school. Then I will be at least a bit informed so I can ask some intelligent sort of questions and maybe even get close to starting a “paper” trading account to try some strategies learned.
Feel free obviously to post more as I will be checking it to see what other great info I can learn from.
Thanks everyone
Kyle
But its not designed for the benefit of traders, its designed for the benefit of those profiting from this forum.
My advice to new traders is always to avoid forums, the BP school is no worse than most other sources of broker sponsored disinformation
that’s kind of harsh dude.
I would typically agree with you but FXStreet has a much more detailed beginner guide, and it goes into stability statistics and other mathematical mumbo jumbo that’s pivotal to a trader’s success. It’s dense, doesn’t try to hold your hand, but it does lay everything on the table.
If BabyPips wanted a way to improve their school, it could get a few ideas after reading through the FXStreet tutorial.
I totally agree with “this barb”. If you understand expectancy you really can start to make a profitable career trading.
A couple of things I would like to add. Firstly, I don’t understand why everyone is doing demo trading, because under no circumstance is this the same as live trading and don’t kid yourself it is. If you can’t afford a $1000 account and trade $1 pips, then how on earth do you believe you are going to make a living from this. If you use my example from above $50 profit / $25 stop, you would need 40 losses in a row to wipe out your account. If that happens I think you may work out trading is not for you.
In my opinion one of the main aspects of trading is psychology (trading live money and watching it go from profit to a loss and still accepting it because you know long term your system will show positive expectancy). The amount of posts you see on forums is if I had of got out there I would have made x number of pips/dollars, which then brings back the focus on looking for the perfect entry & exit. As I posted with the spreadsheet, if you understand basic probabilities and compound your profits, you will slowly build up your account, and conversely if you have a bad run of outs then you trade lots will be smaller and you can wear a decent run of outs before blowing up your account.
Simple mathematics, if you have 4 winning trades out 10, and your profit is double your loss, you win. Compound that until you get to the psychology point of I can’t trade that much $ per pip.
4 wins x 30 pips = 120pips or 50pips = 200
6 loss x 15 pips = 90 pips or 25pips = 150
profit 30 pips.
35% is roughly breakeven, not including brokerage if your platform charges.
Is it this simple? I can’t see why not!! And I guarantee the two simple systems I posted above no one will use because they sound to simple but they be profitable.
Cheers
The last sentence above should have read
And I guarantee the two simple systems I posted above no one will use because they sound to simple but they MAY be profitable.