I’ve spent the last 4 days reading through the school of pipsology. I’ve figured out the MT4 interface, and even started to delve into the MQL/EA side of things. I like understanding how things work. MT4 seems to be a great place to start, since all of the source code for indicators and trade automation is right there for my perusal. I’m now starting back at the beginning of the school, and I’m going to take notes and track my progress.
I’ve learned several things so far - the best traders are mechanical and separate their actions from their emotions. They have guidelines and rules which govern their actions, and then they accept the results of those actions without second-guessing themselves. They don’t radically change their system in reaction to poor performance - they sit out the bad streaks because they know their system will work in the long term. Variance kills new traders because they aren’t sure of themselves, or because they try to micromanage the wrong things… their actions - not the reasons for their actions.
That tells me that I need to develop an understanding of the system. Since I have an engineering mindset (I like taking things apart just to see how they work) I am going to approach my education analytically. I’ll start with the idea that “The forex market does things.” And I want to understand what the things are that it does.
I’m going to start out simply on a demo account. My goal is to be able to track what I learn explicitly.
My first strategy is going to be a trivial exploration of market behavior. I am going to buy a pair on odd minutes (1-3-5-7… 59) and sell on even minutes (2-4-6-8…60). This wouldn’t necessarily be interesting by itself, but I’ll be doing the opposite at the same time - sell on odd, buy on even.
My expectation is that one should make money, while the other will lose it, and both will happen at the same rate. My suspicion is that both could lose money, or that both could make money. Either way, I should be able to learn quite a bit while doing this.
I’ll be able to see what the market does, over a short period of time. After I can understand the short-term “what” I’ll move on to the short-term why and how.
By the way - I’m a programmer by trade, and these EAs seem fairly trivial in the way they work (from a programming standpoint.) I’m incorporating MQL into my Forex education, and I’ll be implementing what I learn in EA bots.
I expect that I’ll either be able to fully automate what I learn, or that I’ll be able to develop a robust set of tools that assist my trading when I go live.