I have been trading for the past 4 months and have done alright. I tested different strategies and now I’m comfortable with my current strategy. I use the same strategy for Intraday and Swing trades. I don’t have a trading plan, but I do virtually the same thing with every trade. I don’t like that the trading plan restricts what I can do in a trade. I look at the same indicators and the news and if I like it I get in. I set my stoploss to where I think is a good place for the current trade. I don’t ever move my stop loss. Do I absolutely need a written plan or will my mental guideline suffice?
that depends. have you been “doing alright” on a demo account, or on a live account with $5000 in it?
if you’ve been trading in a demo account for those 4 months, then you’ve been trading it for 3.5 months too long. go live ASAP and yes get a plan of some kind. a plan doesn’t mean it turns you into a robot, it just outlines your operating process and boundaries. you can easily have fuzzy zones and discretionary trades as part of the plan, but DO make it a plan.
Doing virtually the same thing, and doing the same thing every trade are TOTALLY different. You will not reach consistency this way, period. its not possible, because your not doing things exactly the same way. I have a 50+ page written trading plan. With screen shots of perfect trades, profitable ones, and pristine losers ( losers that fit all the rules and still lost), trading journals, spread sheets, and piles of note books. I would never trade without a plan, period.
In the beginning phase I recommend you to have a written trading plan until you adhere to the rules strictly. But according to your statement you don’t need a written one as you already familiar with the rules.
But try to maintain a journal. So you can learn from your mistakes and develop your trading skills.
Do you really need a trading plan? That depends on if you want to be profitable or not. If you want to fund a live account and blow it up then no you don’t need one. If you want to be serious about forex trading and make consistent profits then you need a well defined trading plan and most importantly you need to stick with it.
Lol quite right.
Any business needs a plan, particularly one that requires a substantial cash investment. Trade to a plan, keep a log of results and then use that log to analyse what was done right, what was done wrong, and what needs work.
Without plan a trader never been succeed. Success comes after a good plan. In forex trading a trader need to take some plan, how he become a trader. How much money he needs to start, which lot he use, setting stop loss, target profit, everything should be pre planed. After all this plan a trader sees the profit of this trading.
In all honesty do what ever suits your personality & not what would suit ****, Tom and Harry’s.
Some people would agree that a trading plan may hinder & or restrict them when making trading decisions, while others would see a trading plan as a straight and narrow path to success. i guess it would all depend on your own vision and outlook on life (trading) you are the only person who see’s the world the way you do.
I would go as far as to say that 99% of traders on Babypips are unsuccessful at trading in a consistently profitable manner (including myself) so instead of asking unsuccessful traders how they trade unsuccessfully, you (we) should ponder and ask our self the same questions we post on forums & maybe you (we) will final have an epiphany to the questions we ask each other.
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
I get where you are coming from, but why are we all here if 99% on here give advice that is not worth following?! I’d like to think that more than 1% of members here make money, but perhaps I’m being naive.
I’m not saying that the advice people are giving is not worth “following” but were did that person get that advice to share with us in the first place…
Any one particular piece of advice could of been gathered from a friend or neighbor or an idea, how do we know if any advice given has any merit to it without trial and error, wouldn’t it be logical to heed our own advice & ideas from our own personal experience in trading, so that we can carve and sculpt our own unique style and approach to what we do, instead of playing the unfamiliar game of follow the follower. the problem isn’t in following good advice but who’s advice do you follow with out knowing how they stumbled across it in the first place.
"but why are we all here if 99% on here give advice that is not worth following?"
That is a good question, I do not know the answer.
The perfect example of why part of my strategy involves trying to avoid internet forums - unsuccessful people giving advice (and in the original posters case sounds like you’re more successful than this guy).
You can see I’m not perfect by deviating from my strategy in replying to this post, BUT…
I think everyone who posts on these forums should be forced to link to there trading stats so we can see how qualified they are to give advice.
Here are my results for the last 30 days on a demo account:
Trading Account 1 System | Myfxbook
In answer to the original question, I believe you need a plan. A trading plan and a business plan.
I like the quote, “Plan the trade, trade the plan”.
I know where you’re coming from, but it just isn’t realistic to expect everyone to link results as many just want to keep it simple. In my view the overall trading quality of the posts on BP is at its lowest point in the three years or so I have been here, for many it is just recreation, these days.
In terms of advice, most on here is garbage, but it’s easy enough to spot the genuine traders and the misinformed wannabes and just tune out the noise. I don’t need to see results to know how most are trading!
Hey SimonTemplar, yes good point and thanks for the reply, it is actually very easy to tell the difference between good and the bad posts on here. It’s taken me a while to realise that I can expect most posts not to be useful - the down side is that it can take up quite a bit of time looking for the good stuff.
With myfxbook.com it’s easy to hide figures interms of dollars / lots. Meetpips.com for example won’t even allow you to display monetary values, just stats based around pips. Here’s my stats on meetpips.com:
tbel’s Trading Statistics | MeetPips.com
For me personally I don’t care whether people I’m never going to meet see how much money I’m making or loosing. I think results speak louder than words.
Maybe the wrong thread, but could anyone help with writing a trading plan and a business plan???
Hey Brucey, I’m giving you a link to a copy of the trading plan template I’m using. I think it’s really, really good. Be great if more people knew about this one:
Let me know how you get on with it
Looks good! Ill have a good read through 
thanks very much. All the people on here are so helpful 
No problem. No they’re not, read the above posts haha 
Haha well if only they all could be. Im an absolute beginner and not many people seem to answer any of my questions 
have a look at my new thread Traders Toolbox. I dont know what I should be learning. I dont want someone to say do this do that and youll be a millionaire. But at least say you should learn about this this and this then let me learn it myself…
Well if it’s any help, I’ve been demo trading for just over a year, plan to put in real money in the next month, learn’t loads and loads and loads in that time and think the Babypips school of pipsology is one of the most informative, helpful and unbiased resources I’ve come across. I highly recommend you get stuck in. Second to the school for me comes books, especially ones that have a focus on money management and trading psychology.
tbel,
i hate to rain on your parade, but basically you haven’t been actually trading yet. demo is meaningless, and i’m sorry but linking to your myfxbook or whatnot if it’s a DEMO account is a joke, it is useless.
the harsh reality is that trading on demo is like playing pong. amusing, but pointless if done for more than one day.
to the original poster and others,
yes you do need a trading plan, just like you need a plan in everyday life. you can’t just bludgeon your way through it and expect to make any kind of meaningful progress over the long haul. you may bounce around seemingly “doing alright” but it would be a drop in the bucket compared to what you could be doing if you had a structured plan.
make a plan, have a goal.
and for the love of god and all that is holy - STOP TRADING DEMO AND CALLING IT TRADING!!!
just cuz you masturbate doesn’t mean you’re the greatest man in bed with a woman.