I am new to Forex and want to make it a lifestyle. I only want to focus on EUR/USD (for at least a year). I am currently attending Pipsology School on the site and love it. Grasping the simultaneous Buy/Sell confuses me. Understanding what I’m watching on the charts also confuses me. There is so much to see. I have a Forex Trader account and made 1 trade a week ago - EUR/USD. I think I bought Euros and the spiral to date has been downward. Trying to be patient I have not done anything and just left my position open.
Here are the stats as of Sunday Morning:
Current Position: -200,000
Avg. Rate 1.559005
Unrealized P&L -4091.00
High 1.57952
Low 1.57902
What would you do at this point? Where did I go wrong? Should I have set a stop loss order to cut off my losses? Please advise.
My 1 year goal is to master making [B]$700.00 per week[/B] as consistently as possible. I will move on once I have become good at this.
My personality lends itself to daytrading. I love working on my computer.
I would appreciate a few responses from the wonderful experts at this site. I feel like I’m home and have surrounded myself with the people I’ve been looking for. Thank you in advance for any and all responses. I’m going back to school now, lol!
I am a regular trader in equities, forex, commodities and stock indicies.
Whenever I learn to trade a new product, I will ask myself, what is the way to make consistent profit. I do not want to profit based on luck, or based on inconsistent strategies.
When I started to trade forex, 20% of my trade wins and 80% of my trade loses. I gave up, I told myself there is no way to make money from forex, forex is too unpredictable, there are too many news that can affect the currency every single hour.
Few months later, I decided to trade forex trading again. This time I tell myself, why don’t I do a back-test on the currency pairs. So I did back-testing on all the major pairs and some minor pairs, avoiding currency pairs that have wide spreads.
Using from my result in back-testing, eventually I manage to make money from forex. This year my trading profit from forex trading account is already up 62%.
How I do I it? I post my trades in my website, take a look.
There are many forex websites that post news and recommendations, but there are few websites that have the guts to post their personal trades.
Thank you for sharing that advice. Although I still don’t really know how to read charts and understand what I’m looking at entirely, I am going to your website. You Expressed exactly the way I feel. Emotions won’t play a big part in my trading.
Thanx for having the guts to post your personal trades.
4X4Life,
Your platform should tell you if you have gone long (“bought”) or short (“sold”). Based off the above and EUR/USD’s current rate, you actually shorted EUR/USD (meaning you sold EUR while buying USD). Because price has moved in favor of the EUR (and against USD), you have a loss. The negative sign in front of “200,000” indicates you are short.
On your questions: they are very difficult to answer. 200 pips (how far the market has gone against you) is a horrendous drop for a daytrader; one which could’ve been reduced significantly by place a stop loss order. No daytrader wants the market to go against him that heavily and then find it necessary to wait around for the trade to swing back in his favor (if it does) because trading capital is locked up for an extended period.
One obvious place you might’ve gone wrong is shorting when you intended to go long. Aside from that, why did you take [I]that[/I] trade at [I]that[/I] point in time? Why did you choose that position sizing (200,000, or 2 standard lots)? What did you feel the market was telling you, and how did you determine that (are you using indicators? Did you simply feel bullish/bearish on the dollar?)?
There is a lot to learn, and among the most basic is the layout of the trading platform you are using. Try familiarizing yourself with that further (knowing when you are buying or selling, to start), and continuing working at each grade in the school until you feel you’ve mastered the material. Also: even if you think you’re slated to be a daytrader, it’s much too early to lock yourself in to a mold. Daytrading is very demanding in a variety of ways. Try just continuing to demo and learn, and let your profile as a trader evolve on its own.
And one other thing, 4X4Life: beware of self-aggrandizing individuals relentlessly promoting their websites or wares, or spending time and energy reading forum posts or blogs of dubious benefit. Simple, objective and proven sources of information (like this website) are best at this stage in the game.
Becareful of what you say. If you could do that from the start you would be consistently profitable imo. It takes alot of work to take out the emotions in trading. Don’t trivialize it.
I would start in the holy grails section go through some of their trading systems, try a few out, pick one, and learn it very well. It took me about 6 months to feel I got the basics down. Sometimes it will feel overwelming but stick to it.
Thank You Randon, that was very good advice. I am a real newbie, as I’m still in Pip School and staring at the ForexTrader chart in an effort to figure out where to focus. What did you do to advance at that stage?
I will certainly take heed to your advice. I LIVE in this website and love the school. I am comfortable with the Senior Members and I like the way they trat the newcomers. I feel welcomed and reasonably safe. The sharing that goes on is unbeatable. How long did it take you to understand your 1st chart. I have ForexTrader and it gets a little overwhelming as to how many things I need to be focused on. Can you provide a little insight?
Understanding my first chart? Good question - I have no idea! It’s been a number of years back now.
Many traders who start out wholly unfamiliar with charts go through a kind of cycle: first, they are bewildered by charts - no knowledge of candles v. bars or maybe even what the X and Y axes on the chart indicate (time and price).
With a bit of persistence and study they attain a little bit of knowledge (the “knows enough to be dangerous” kind of knowledge). During this period their curiosity and increased familiarity with charts prompts them to experiment, usually loading their charts down with indicators and other bells and whistles.
Some stay in the “bell and whistle” mode while becoming more sophisticated, using systems with customized indicators and perhaps creating their own. Others move from the excess of this period to a stripped down chart with little more than price. There’s no regress there, though; they’re no longer bewildered. They realize indicators can be very helpful and may use one or two, or consult a few sometimes, but are otherwise concentrated on the one thing they began with: price itself.
That probably sounds strange: it sounded strange to me at first - how can price tell me more than these indicators? Weren’t the indicators created to express something price wasn’t conveying clearly or directly? Yes; but some of what is most important about price becomes displaced. Indicators become a hindrance then.
Begin at the beginning: feeling bewildered, looking at price. You may not follow the above path, or end up back at price only. There’s no single way to go about learning. Technical analysis (which is generally the study of charts) is a fascinating discipline putting many tools at your fingertips. Start learning about price: first, learn that price isn’t price (even though it is always called that), it’s an exchange rate between two currencies. Then, learn about the representation of price on a chart: candlesticks and bars: open, high, low, close. Understand the implications for the EUR on the one hand and the USD on the other when EUR/USD goes up, and when it goes down. Try to find relationships: bottoms and tops, trends, places price stops (both above and below). Once you are more familiar with this, you’ll be read to add more: the babypips school will be an immense help.
Even though daytrading seems a lot more exciting and fun, especially if you are interested in forex (which you obviously are if you’re here :P), I have found that trading longer-term makes money much more consistently. When I first started trading I day-traded, holding trades for a few hours or maybe overnight. Now I have switched to buying and holding positions for a week at a time, and personally for me this is much more profitable and very consistent. Also, rather than putting all my money into one place, say buying 1 lot of EURUSD, I diversify into 6 different pairs each week and buy 0.2 lots of them (size would depend on your account value.) That way you will always have some losers and winners, the goal is to make sure you have more winners than losers. It will also help you find your “favourite pair”. Maybe you are just bad at readying the EURUSD… personally my pair that I consistently lose at is USDJPY… I’m sure everyone has one weak currency that they aren’t good at reading.
But this is just what has worked for me. My biggest advice is to get yourself a demo account and try every strategy you are interested in or think might work at least once. Experiment with all the different indicators, time periods, etc until you find something that works right for YOU.
Wow! I loved your response. You read what I’m going through perfectly. I printed out your response and will be focusing on some of the key points you offered up. You were dead on with the cycle. I am still bewildered, but each day I see a little more. For instance, I stared at a candle so long last night I think I actually saw it forming. I’ve been using ForexTrader as a demo and there are 2 large numbers with an exponent (I have no idea what the number w/exponent represents. Especially since the rate is reflected above it. When one (1) demo account ends can I get another without a problem? What platform would you recommend for a “newb”? Thanx in advance for all you have explained.
Glad to be of help. The two large numbers are part of a quote: they are larger than the numbers around them because these are pips, which as you’ve seen is the standard interval by which exchange rates (and thus trades) are tracked.
The “exponent” is not an exponent, but a superscripted “pipette”, a still smaller unit of the exchange rate that is immaterial unless you are scalping (which you are not, and should not attempt, especially at this stage). An example would be EUR/USD quoted @ 1.57883, where on your platform 1.57 appears at the top of the box, 88 are the large numbers (these are the pips), and 3 is a pipette. Again, the pipette is too minute a price change to be of much relevance; you can disregard it.
I think Gain Capital/Forex.com has a 30-day trial; Oanda has a demo (visit fxtrade.oanda.com for more info) with no expiration, though the platform has a different layout and functionality compared to ForexTrader that may take some getting used to…
It’s been a number of years back now.