Been trading forex (badly) for about 8 months… blown a few accounts and getting a bit disorientated. See the potential but my strategy of fibs and support isnt going well. Any tips on how to just be consistent when you start off… or useful articles to read… help appreciated!
Watch this fib video, the more times you watch it the more things you’ll pick up each time. Enter on 50 or 60% level, nothing before or after. Place your stop loss on 70% level. At the stop loss, face it with a pending order. So if you’re stop loss gets hit automatically triggers the pending order. Make your first profit target at the 0% level. Make you’re pending order 1st profit target at the 100% level.
You can use the awesome oscillator (my favorite) macd, or Stochastics to confirm your entry and exits. As you get more comfortable add more profit targets. Don’t trade around any major or medium economic events for 20 minutes before or after unless you’re trading the dailies plus. Make sure you give the market enough time to work. If your pending order get’s triggered, do the same thing for profit targets, stop loss and face stop loss.
Practice, practice and practice with a demo account. Use the nearest swing high and swing low on the time frame you’re trading on to get your support and resistance points. If you need help drawing support and resistance use the zig zag indicator in your platform indicators or download a custome one from our platform community. The better you can recognize the nearest swing highs and lows, the more accurate your fib levels will be.
Hope that helps. Good Luck
Gp
Forex, Forex Forex, everybody is talking about it. What is Forex? I’m sure you don’t know anything yet. Well, you’re about to find out.
FOREX short for Foreign exchange is all about trading foreign currencies, goods or stocks in the right moment. The catch is to know when to sell or when to buy. How can you know that? Ask the internet? Yeah that’s one way to learn. Another way is to start a demo account with any Forex company you find on the web. It’s Demo, It doesn’t cost a thing. Just try. See if you’re OK with this.
Let me explain something about Forex to you. Let’s say you’ve bought 100 euros in 2013 for 150 dollars, next year 100 euros is worth 200 dollars. If you stop the trade at that exact moment , that means that you profited 50 dollars from this trade. Simple isn’t it?
Well it’s not that simple. To know when the prices are going to change is a very painful and long learning process.
Successful Forex traders did not became successful in one week. It takes days, months, to learn all the basics and details of this kind of trade.
So now I’m going to give you a few advices how to start.
Step 1
- Read books about forex. There are tons of books that you can read about forex. Most of them are very useful and will educate you to know what you’re up to.
Step 2 - You tube videos. Just type in Forex and there it is, before you know, you’re taken to a webinar for beginners. These things help. Information is crucial. Spend some time on internet searching for more education. Educations is what you need.
Step 3
It’s time for a demo account. Scroll this page and try any forex company that is offering a demo account. Don’t worry, it’s just a demo. You can practice your demo to perfect your trading strategy.
Step 4
Build a strategy. To build a strategy you need to know how to read and interpret different indicators. Once you’ve watched all the videos and read all the books you probably know what RSI or Japanese Candles are. Construct your strategy and practice it in your demo account.
See if it’s making profit. If it does, use it. Don’t lose it. Upgrade it but don’t overwork it. After all, you are just a beginner, you can’t make a billion dollars yet.
Step 5
You think you are ready? You got all the bits and pieces learned, you got your strategy formed, OK let’s start. Just one more thing, DON’T BE A GAMBLER. Gamblers are not welcomed here. Gamblers don’t last long in this kind of work. Use your knowledge wisely. Be patient and try to attend another webinar online. Who knows, maybe there is something that you’ve missed.
May you please clarify this?
Should only newer traders adhere, or, is this your advice to traders of any experience level…?
Absolutely for sure for new traders. My personal opinion is that anyone trading under the one hour time frame. Most successful experienced traders know if and what economic events or announcements might have an effect on their trading method. The problem is some announcements are not as black and white as you would think. Usually there are other influences you have to take into consideration along with the announcement. There are enough things going against a retail trader, especially new without having to add more things to figure out. Again my opinion, I don’t see where the reward of trying to interpret economic announcements matches the risk when you get it wrong.
How to be consistent?
DO THE SAME DAMNED THING EVERY DAMNED TIME. You can’t be a consistent trader, and expect consistent results if you can’t adhere to the rules 100% of the time.
Most people that attempt to trade don’t realize how much they tinker with things. 95% of the time, it’s not the system, it’s the trader that is lousing things up. People don’t have the patience to be consistent.
I’d second this. Trade the same pair(s), on the same timeframe, at the same time of day, looking for the same entry setups, have the same reaction to drawdowns, same on profits etc… The more you can trade like an if, and, or machine, the more consistent.
There are two things what I can think of here: 1. Your trading strategy need to be adjusted? 2. Not enough experience.
Don’t be too narrow minded either, as this can be incorrectly recommended sometimes.
In other words, if you’re only looking for one specific setup, on 2 timeframes, across 3 currency pairs, you may start to force positions due to anxiety.
It’s common to rationalize a position when you haven’t made a trade in a while and feel like you’re “missing out”.
Need to be able to trade different environments and adapt to constantly changing market conditions.
[QUOTE=“Gary76;625013”]Been trading forex (badly) for about 8 months… blown a few accounts and getting a bit disorientated. See the potential but my strategy of fibs and support isnt going well. Any tips on how to just be consistent when you start off… or useful articles to read… help appreciated![/QUOTE]
Consistency will only come after about 2 to 3 years of trading… Oftentimes more. Most of what you will find on these types of forums are completely useless, self-perpetuating fallacies which will hold you back even longer from developing.
The key is to spend about a year back testing different technical systems and tools (moving averages, fibs, etc.) until you firmly realize that these are utterly useless.
Once you make this realization (most on this forum haven’t yet) you can move on to the consistency part which will require true discretionary trading with an actual in depth knowledge of how the forex market really works (hint: it has nothing to do with fibs or moving averages or most other technical tools that get thrown around in this forum).
I disagree with pretty much everything said here.
Can you source something which proves your notion? Individuals have the ability to learn the same material, @ different rates. So, for someone who can only check the charts and actually “trade” 2 hours a day it may be a bit of a longer learning curve. But, what about those who can devote 6-8 hours / day researching, trading, learning and interacting with others? You’re saying these two hypothetical individuals require a minimum of 2 years each before becoming consistent? May I please ask what your definition of consistency is?
Being honest, I can’t really argue the bulk of what you’re trying to say here because unfortunately there is some accuracy to your statement. But, crap will levitate to crap, and those who are intelligent enough to weed through the trolls can actually find a forum very enhancing to their ability to learn by obtaining direct feedback from others.
This is the key? Spend a year of your life learning something so you can just forget about it? What’s your beef with technical analysis? Please elaborate as to why it is “useless”.
How did you make this realization, that “most on this forum” haven’t? Looks like you’ve been around since Jan of this year- have you personally scoured every thread on BP? Are you trying to say that your method is the only way to be consistent, yet there are probably hundreds of “consistent” folks on here which I interact with on a daily basis?
What’s the “in depth knowledge” you utilize? Price action? I mean, while we’re putting it out on the table I went back and looked @ some of your posts from just a few months ago…
“Sorry, but this system was deleted by it’s creator.” - i.e. your myfxbook account.
“Currently my losses are 3.8 times bigger then my wins in pips. My biggest loss is 729 pips. Even my expectancy for each trade is negative”
“Yay!!! Nearing my first $1,000 in trading profit! I hope this is ok for my [B]first month of live trading ever[/B]”
I’m [B]not trying to attack you[/B], but, you’re trying to attack my method of trading (purely technical) and I’m compelled to defend it.
To be honest, I hope you were somehow able to turn your trading around 180 degrees since then, and you’re making money each week. I truly do hope that because we’re all here to help and grow together! There’s nothing better that I like to hear than a good story of the little guy (us) sticking it to the big guy.
However, sometimes, I wonder why I even take the time to respond to posts like yours; because there are some clear elements of ego driving what you’re trying to communicate. I guess I’m just trying to stick up for others.
Please don’t take any of this the wrong way, I’m just trying to be as honest as I can.
Look at other things besides technical analysis, this includes learning things like volume spread analysis and how to use seasonals
FOREXunlimited,
Don’t pay any attention to LexiFX. He is a long time compulsive troll. Banned at least 3 to 5 times, it seems he can’t stay away.
Here are just a few of his former user names. Banker928, ChristianGrey, IlovePizzaMore, Samir Alibaba, DarkPool, etc.
For me trade journaling and deliberate practice are key. I know both can be tedious from time to time but you need to put in your “10,000 hours” in order to develop the proper trading habits and be consistent.
For me, studying long-term trends for a commodity/forex pair worked. I usually open short-term trades in the direction of longer established trend. The strategy is really helpful in ranging markets where I don’t end up loosing consistently even if I am wrong. Using this method, mostly I end up 50/50 in ranging markets.
There is another thread here that could help too: http://forums.babypips.com/newbie-island/64872-finding-consistency.html|
It might take you some time before you can finally stabilize your profits, but you will get there after some time 
try writing down what your trading habits are then ask your self a couple of questions,
is the strategy good?
am i over trading?
do i follow my strategy?
another good thing is back tracking and going back to babypipschool and refresh! take it easy! you might end up in a loop and it might ost you a lot. when i first traded with hotforex i blew a couple of accounts then took a break and worked on basics and kept things simple, follow the strategy and gradually you get out of that pit! best of luck
[B][B]100 % Agree to this post ,Sad so few people can understand the truth in this post …[/B][/B]
[QUOTE=“torulf39;625387”]
100 % Agree to this post ,Sad so few people can understand the truth in this post …[/QUOTE]
fortunately, this market is auto-correcting… Those that can’t see the truth in the post will either burn their account while refusing to adapt to the stated truths, and ultimately give up and leave the market… Or they eventually come to the same realizations and are able to progress their trading to the next level. The downside is the trading “community” is so heavily lopsided to the 0-2 year experienced “traders”, that posts like these are often lost on the majority who are still resisting the truths.
[QUOTE=“LexiFX;625505”] fortunately, this market is auto-correcting… Those that can’t see the truth in the post will either burn their account while refusing to adapt to the stated truths, and ultimately give up and leave the market… Or they eventually come to the same realizations and are able to progress their trading to the next level. The downside is the trading “community” is so heavily lopsided to the 0-2 year experienced “traders”, that posts like these are often lost on the majority who are still resisting the truths.[/QUOTE]
Lexi, Lexi… I’m so impressed. You’ve got it all figured out after 3.5 MONTHS of trading. It’s good to see that you are graciously giving back to the forum.
Can you explain to the rest of the forum how you have been able to accumulate such wisdom in sooo little time, thus making yourself the exception and class genius out of this, as you put it, community of heavily lopsided of 0-2 year experienced traders???
It’s nice and entertaining to see you back though.
Cheers