Beginner's Disaster!

Beginner Questions
1159

Morning RC. Unfortunately with restaurants, as in life, there is always a trade off. Nice restaurant, good food, two bites and it’s gone, you need to stop at the kebab shop on the way home.

Cheap restaurant, give you a wheel barrow full of the stuff, you need to stop at the side of the road every 500 yards on the way home. Then spend most of the next day in the toilet hoping for God just to take you now !

But glad you both enjoyed it nevertheless.

As regards the e-book, haven’t had a chance to read it yet, only discovered it late last night. Will march through some of it today.

The thing is though, I’m looking for something that I don’t know what it is. It’s quite difficult to explain. If I was a trained electician and I went to do a job, I would know that this wire went here, and that wire went there. It’s just a thing you would know.

But I’ve been trading my account now for 6 months and I still don’t feel as though I “know” anything.

I fully appreciate the the Forex market is constantly changing, due to a multitude of different inputs. And therefore there is no exact blueprint as with the electrician. BUt still I feel when I sit at my pc that I don’t really know what I am doing.

The majority of recents gains have come from scalping, which I am not a big fan of to be honest, but it has been relatively, I won’t use the word ‘easy’, but I’ll say it’s been good hunting since we have been trading EU in a bit of a range recently. So scalping has been made a bit easier.

But scalping is not something I would like to base a future career on, as I would have the feeling that I was basing my whole livelyhood on luck.

It has always been a wish of mine, probably since I started this thread, to be able to say to other newbies, “Learn this ! This is what you need to know.”

Now I know there is no one thing that will be all encompassing, but at least to set people on the right path would be good. Trouble is there are so many different opinions out there it’s difficult to know who is right and who is wrong. Which I guess in a way, just proves your point that there is no substitute for thousands of hours screen time.

I must admit, it did occur to me when I first read a little about VSA, how do you know if the increased volume is buying pressure or selling pressure. But the concept of supply and demand obviously does make sense, as it does with any other product in the world, just so happens we are talking about currencies.

So I’ll read through the book anyway, and even if at the end of it I think I don’t like it, then I suppose I will have still learned something.

I suppose what I am really saying in this ramble, which originally just started out to say I’m glad you enjoyed your night out, is that I am still searching for my strategy. The triggers that show me higher probabilities.

But as I say, you’re more than likely right, nothing is a substitute for screen time. Anyway, must dash, quick bath then out to work for the next 16 hours. Can’t wait til the day I give that up for trading, or the day the wife tells me we’ve won the lottery, either would do. :slight_smile:

1160

Believe it or not I’ve just noticed this while reading back over the thread for the week.

I’m assuming it is the CHARTS you’re talking about yunny ?? :18:

1161

Welcome to the emotions Sir Columbus had as well when sailing to the “new world”.

Or the brothers Wright when they tested their first “aircraft”.

Or Mr. Edison played with electrity (what relates more to you electrician).

Well, it’s not really like this. Because many traders have exploited the journey before. It’s more like walking in the steps of those inventors, adventurers. Or like learning to drive a car, sailing a boat, flying a plane. Can you imagine what was my emotion when I sat in the small nut shell of powered glider with my instructor at the first time and I had to land that “thing” with heavy gusts at the runway which looks kinda this?

Believe me, if there would have been anybody and asked to immediately jump with a parachute I’d have not hesitated a nanosecond. All what hindered me, there was none asking, lol.

Against this emotion trading is like a breeze.

1162

So I take it that what you are really saying is , going back to RC’s ‘thousands of screen hours’, is simply the more you do it, the more you learn to do it.

1163

Definitely a key part. However as I said before. There is no one thing better than a backtested or forward tested systematic approach. Screen time is there to give you ideas about a system. You can see then things after a while what you wasn’t aware before. Patterns. I don’t mean the word in the used meaning. I mean opportunity patterns. It’s just that many of the patterns could be a illusion. You need to check it out for years. Either while trading forward and keep a journal or by backtesting. Then you can have confidence in your approach. All the emotions are shrinking below a level where they don’t matter. Because you KNOW then what your approch’s expectancy is.

Letz take an analogy. You wanna build a burger flipper chain. You start with looking what others do. You start with looking at how and when do people eat. What do they eat? Where are they going to work? Etc. etc. Then you can start with a plan to exploit a gap in the market where your business could fit in. Then you start with looking how much capital do you wanna deposit for your business, where do you wanna be at say 1 years after start, second year, etc. If it’s running, you look for quarters what tells you if roi and expenses are like planned or can be improved.

You can all that just do if you have a systematic approach. If you live out of every day with a new chance, you can survive, but you can’t follow a plan what is not there. You can’t compare the plan with reality, if there is no plan. So that’s why it is very important to have a proper plan. And if you compare it, you can always see if you are inside of your expectations or if this business runs out of order. Then you can decide to close it or improve it or whatever.

1164

Well if were splitting hairs… it was 9.78% i’e. 0.1% of bal trade sizes and multiple lots for 978 pips… Yeh 9.4% counts! :35:

1165

hey HoG… yes. this is true. I’m gonna give you a list of concepts that I use in my own trading. every single one is used in a discretionary manner. I have no single “Always this, but never when that is happening” I don’t even have one of these rules that govern my methodology. Many of the concepts I use can oftentimes contradict each other. For example there are times when i’m trading AGAINST current sentiment and trend…but it’s because I feel in this case, the fresh daily demand zone is more relevent, so I go long as opposed to short.

There are other times when I completely ignore a supply zone, because the COT registers that the market is shifting on a fairly large scale…and this move up will likely blast through the first sup zone or two.

Sometimes I’ll take a short trade on a retracement. Only to later in that same market take a long trade on a breakout.
I did this in fact in my “$100 to 1 million” thread last friday. short eur/usd from 1.3547 from a minor supply zone. took partial profits, then saw something i recognized as a pattern of price action I often see when price breaks out to new highs. Covered the rest at near breakeven, then I took a breakout long at 1.3562. COvered half at 45 pips… and probably shoulda gone short…but didn’t…and stopped out for a small win overall on that breakout long.

[B]The concepts I use in general are:[/B]

Supply and Demand level concepts (my foundation), combined with an understanding of orderflow.

price action

Trend

candlestick patterns

market profile

COT data

VSA concepts

classical chart patterns

fibonnacci levels

pivot points

average ranges and rate of change of price to determine relative overbought/oversold levels

market correlation

market sentiment (based on the trend of fundamental data, and the markets current attitude toward that)

options - strike prices, type of options, and expirations on these options

time of day…and likely intentions of major players as each major market opens/closes

fundamentals (though like bucks…only for the largest…longest term horizons)

a few newsfeeds

every time frame from a monthly down to a 1 minute, and even tick charts from time to time

[B]As for the more esoteric and abstract concepts that help me, I use things like:[/B]

a working, dynamic mental model of a “trading pit” - I picture not just a chart…but the story behind it. why this or
that happened, what would cause such a change…what does this particular type of PA in this circumstance represent?
etc…etc… I look to see how a move in a market would make what players in a trading pit feel pain. what am i seeing
on the faces of the people involved as the market reacts in XYZ way… who’s hurting? who can take advantage of this?
Are folks yelling and screaming more? who? and why? in other words…I try to build a comprehensive scenario of actual
floor traders reacting to the price changes I see on a chart. When I can match what i’m seeing on a chart to what the pit traders in my mind are doing… I know I am probably very right on with my analysis.

Another mental concept I use is I try to develop a working mental model of what the real implications of a particular situation are…and whether this is in line or out of line with what the market is currently behaving like. I know that if the
reality I see suddenly becomes a reality for what the market is currently focused on… then I can nail something really huge. I look to see clues as to when or how this is taking shape. This helps me project a bias or bigger trend moves a few swings in advance.

Bottom line is…when the story in my head, and the problems/advantages I see in a particular market start to express themselves in news, market sentiment, and a change in trend…I know what to expect, because I’ve already thought out how this is going to go.

As I said…these last to are particularly esoteric…and require likely a GREAT DEAL of experience to be able to do well… and I’m often wrong anyway. But, it works for me.

Now, how in the world do I possibly use all of this information in such a way to make accurate market predictions? Well… I have spent over 10K hours thinking about this. learning. watching price… reading, studying, etc.

I just know what matters now. for how long…and to what degree…and what would cause this to change. I know because I’ve read this story so many darn times. And i’ve thought about the characters, and the plot, in so many variations of the current sitation that I know what’s likely to come next.

Reminds me of a time when my dad (who was a medical doctor in a former life), was watching me and some friends play outside. One of my friends coughed. He suddenly called the kid over, and asked him 1 or 2 questions. He then said “Andrew…you’ve got pnemoniea”. My friend was almost weirded out, because other than that cough, he was fine in every way…and we just all kept playing together.

2 days later, he was in the hospital. pnemonia.

how did my dad know from just a single cough? how was he able to distinguish this from the many many many other types of coughs…and heck, they all sound the same to me pretty much right?

Well. he knew. how? he’s studied for years. he was an internal medicine specialist. and he has thousands upon thousands of hours of experience dealing with infectious disease. He just knew.

And people think they can come in here, out trade the best in the world…with just some “holy grail” setup.

it doesn’t exist. Pro ball players are pro because they have mastered so many aspects of the game…not just passing.

Top lawyers are the best because they know not just the facts in the case, but how people will react to them, how their particular opposing council thinks, what may or may not sway this particular judge, and how to find the facts that matter most the types of people in the jury box.

how did they get all this knowledge? experience.

experience. experience. expeirence. This is a trade. to be a master, requires a masters amount of experience.

So much for getting rich quick and working from home 10 hours a week in the underwear eh?

Jay

1166

Hog… yes in a word. Get a thorough grasp of VSA and in particular how smart money is revealed by it and at at what point in a chart, like for instance looking back at the hi’s and low’s is the more demand than supply. Sam Siedan is real good at this… he will scan through a dozen crosses in nearly as many seconds to find a pattern that looks ripe for a trade. Often he will let the Asian play out to establish a range and play the breakout. ICT and eremarket use two differing approches but both use VSA to track likely smart money moves.

1167

RC… don’t get me wrong…VSA is great, and I use it all the time…but there IS more than one way to skin a cat.

What HoG (and others in his shoes) really need to do is get some basic experience with as many of the viable market analysis methodolgies out there. from there, they can make a determination as to what works best FOR THEM.

It’s not one size fits all. VSA is great. but so is all the other stuff i mentioned.

Im such a person that I use it all. most successful traders don’t. Most don’t need to. but most dont’ just use VSA concepts.

it’s one great tool of a variety of great tools.

as a direct rebuttal to your statment, I could equally say just learn COT analysis, combine this with weekly/monthly sup/dem zones, and look to a daily candle for a “reversal” candlestick pattern…and you will see how the smart money is revealed and what the next move will likely be… and i’d even argue that this will get massive pip profits…more than VSA will do alone anyday.

test everything. learn yourself. learn what works for you. and then master it… if you need more than 1 thing…great. it’ll take longer to master, but you’ll likely be a better trader for it when u learn your studies.

Jay

1168

:smiley: NO, this is naked trading… :smiley:


1169

World Collapse Explained in 3 Minutes - YouTube

Laughing as you sink.

1170

There is every chance in the world I may have a few sleepless nights after seeing this photo !! Might even put it on top of the mantlepiece to keep the kids away from the fire !

I don’t really mind the weight gain, but do I REALLY need to grow a beard ? LOL !!

1171

Just about sums it all up nicely I would think

1172

Have to be honest Jay and say quite simply I enjoyed reading this. I think that I, like probably most newbies, have been searching for some one to tell me not how to trade, but what to learn in order to trade.

I think your post illustrates quite well, that in order to trade, and trade well, there are a number of things we need to learn and that will only come through time and study, not by stumbling across a one paragraph “reveal all” entry on some obscure web site.

I have been guilty in the past of trawling through different web sites looking for that one paragraph, and while doing that, been wasting time not learning ANYTHING. So I guess it’s time to learn SOMETHING, pick a subject and learn it. Because, just as in life, reading one subject will invariably lead to another subject which in turn will lead to another and so on. The important thing is that the education journey has begun, instead of just sitting on our hands waiting to see “the light”.

Thanks again, I can’t really say anymore than I did at the start, I just simply enjoyed reading your post.

HoG :slight_smile:

1173

I’m already long EU off 3504… 3580 would seem a reasonable TP? Certainly 3553. But don’t like where PA is the daily so going to play it bar by bar on the 4h… 20 pips and out. Looking for the next entry.

1174

Evening RC

Hope your weekend went well. I’m actually just watching the 1 min just now wondering if we are going to bob between 1-35 and mid 1-3530’s for a while longer. If price drops to around 1-35 again I’ll go long and target 1-3525. Stop around 1-3490.

Won’t bet the farm on it though.

1175

Yes thats certainly what the 1h chart is suggesting on the current bar… low 3503 & hi no more than 3532. Lets see what the next 1h bar suggests.

EDIT: I’m guessing well get near to hi or low and the next bar will do the ‘two step’ remember?

1176

Gotcha. Wondering if I’ll see it though. I’m ready to do the two step off to the land of nod… Didn’t get home from work til 5 on Sunday morning, back up at 9 to go ice skating with the girls. Eyes starting to close. Only reason I’m still up to be honest is I’m trying to read through VSA e-book

EDIT: That and the fact I can hear two of the three ladies snoring upstairs :24:

1177

Understood… I’m hardcore… put the kids in a cage and poke them with a stick. :smiley: Short off 3533.

EDIT: Better put a smilie after that… or else a knock at the door in the wee hours from Social Services! LOL

1178

No way mate, poking them with a stick will only make them angry, and they get quite viscious when they’re angry…and hungry !!

Anyway, heading off in about 10 mins, just time to check the inbox and then it’s the sandman time.