Hi, I have been bouncing back and forth from video to video on youtube for 9 months resulting in analysis paralysis and not taking any actions since there are so many conflicting opinions, so many systems, and the feeling that I also need to learn “that” aswell before I can start backtesting and trading on demo.
Ive now decided to do it from the ground up with as little disctractions as possible and wonder if you think this is a good path to take for a beginner or if it is overkill and better to do it in another way to not end up with analysis paralysis again?
Foundation
Babypips school
Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets - John J. Murphy
Generell
Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom - Van K. Tharp
Trading Beyond the Matrix - Van K. Tharp
Come Into My Trading Room – Alexander Elder
Trading for a Living - Alexandar Elder
Price Action
Naked forex - Alex Nekritin & Walter Peters
Understanding price action - Bob Volman
Al Brooks video course
Always good to read and learn - one thing to take on board is how the market has changed in recent years largely due to ‘automation’ - computer programming that tries to be ahead.
Old style systems that use only pa can fall by the wayside - check the 3 ducks thread for an example - tried and tested for many years but now redundant.
PN mentions Mark Douglas and the trading zone - that zone increasingly revolves around the market as a single entity with each piece relying on each other.
The only reference book that I can think of that unwittingly by the author best describes today’s market is by Murphy - not as old as most your list but even yet a little out of date.
You remind me very much of myself when I first started. I probably read nearly every book on trading back in the day and like you said it just leads to information overload.
In my opinion I would scrap all that for now as all those resources together is just going to leave you more confused on where to start. They are good sources and I would come back to them, but for now you need to just START trading. That is where you will learn the most.
Open a small account, pick some trend following strategy either from here or youtube and begin backtesting AND trading in real time.
Make sure you journal/record all your trades and track whether you are sticking to your plan or deviating.
Do this consistently every day for 3 months and I promise you will know more about what works for you and what you need to work on than all those books and courses combined would tell you.
Many think finding the perfect strategy is the most important thing but it certainly isn’t. Once you understand the basics and have good backtesting and trading routines it is easy to ‘plug in’ a new strategy and test it out on minimal risk.
What turned out to be most helpful for me was reading a lot of forex books and following copy trading. But I had given myself a timeline, that after 3 months I wouldn’t be copying strategies but doing everything on my own. And for my own good, I stuck to my promise
