Forex Forray

Beginner Questions
1

Hello,

Thanks in advance for any information anyone can provide me.

Introduction:

I am still going through the babypips.com school and know that even though I am only half way through,
I am going to have to go through the entire school at least a couple of times to grasp some of this information. There is certainly a lot more to trading Foreign Exchange Currencies than I originally thought.

So needless to say I am not looking to trade in real currency anytime soon, in fact, I am not even ready to demo trade, as “noobish” as that sounds.

I have had the opportunity to browse these forums and can tell that there is some successful traders here and I think it’s a truly awesome that there are some people willing to help guide new potential traders in the right direction at least as they figure out realistic goals and how to trade profitably.

Questions:

I do have a couple of questions and perhaps misconceptions that need to be cleared up by someone who wouldn’t mind helping somebody new out.

Q: I am Canadian and have a couple of options for brokers, I have done some brief research on a couple of brokers who have MT4 availability, mainly Oanda and FXCM Canada, for some reason I like the FXCM layout a little bit better. I was wondering if anyone who has some experience could say which one is more reputable and maybe a bit better for trading when dealing with eventually a more technical systems based approach?

Q: Capital, I am not a millionaire by any stretch of the imagination, but realistically my goal as a 29 year old is to trade profitably and compound my earnings as fast and efficiently as possible and see where it takes me I guess.

I have access to approximately $10,000 that wouldn’t ruin my career or life if that initial deposit was somehow lost, replenishing it isn’t very likely however at least for a few years, is this a reasonable sum of money to begin with, when thinking on using more of a compounding money management strategy.

I want to clarify that I am not going to start off exposing the entire bankroll each trade, but I mean while using a 2-5% risk per trade threshold that I have seen advocated early on here, then compounding any new earnings into the total picture if that makes any sense.

Q: Professional Trading

“…[B][I]I’m talking about liquid. Rich enough to have your own jet. Rich enough not to waste time. Fifty, a hundred million dollars, buddy. A player. Or nothing[/I][/B]”. - Gordon Gekko

Although it’s probably everyone’s dream to have 6 30 inch dell computer screens all displaying charts and making millions a year from their 115 foot yacht, obviously there are only a fortunate few that can pull this off.

I am wondering if Professional Trading, specializing primarily in Forex is something that someone can accomplish and make good money?.. i.e $100,000+ where I live is considered “good” money.

Anyway, I realize that people can’t start with $1000 and turn it into a million dollars in a month, but I am hoping that I can eventually have a profitable side income day at the very least with obviously lots of hard work and dedication, maybe retire early and get to the golf course a little earlier than I normally would of been able too and provide a bit better life for my family along that journey.

Anyway, thanks for letting me rant, hope to someday be a good contributor to this community

2

I am wondering if Professional Trading, specializing primarily in Forex is something that someone can accomplish and make good money?.. i.e $100,000+ where I live is considered “good” money.

With patience, plan and focus… This can be monthly. :57:

3

If you are in BC or AB, you may have more difficulties with brokers than other provinces. If in BC you need a broker that is registered with the BC Securities commission. Some less reputable brokers may accept you even if they’re not, but most I tried wouldn’t accept me because I was from BC.

I used FXCM before even though they didn’t have the MT4 platform I demoed with, but later they dropped their Canadian customers, so then I went with another broker that ended up going bust…luckily because they were registered I got all my money back. Now FXCM is accepting Canadians again but through another broker named Friedberg Direct, which is registered and has MT4…I will be going with them soon. I think Oanda is good too, and FXDD, for BC and the rest of the provinces except AB.

If you’re in AB, it seems they won’t let their residents trade unless they have significant net worth…but you might want to double check on that if applicable, and in that case one might have to go off-shore :wink:

Maybe others here have more info.

Hope that helps and see ya around :slight_smile:

4

I’m just going to give you some opinions regarding this… If you take them, they will save you money, and most likely keep your dream of becoming a full time trader alive… If not I tried :slight_smile:

If you have never done any form of trading, or even gambling… Anything which risks your money… you are going to need to get used to the emotions that this business puts newbies through.

Let’s say you work with a demo account for a few weeks… Make 75% profit… And figure you should go to live account. You load up your account… Your heart is racing as you make your first trade… The adrenaline pumps through your veins as you watch the trade go positive… And you most likely will close it after only minor profits because you want to secure your first win.

You look at the account which has now grown, you have a huge sense of satisfaction and maybe a little bit of disbelief… Is it really this easy??? A few more trades… You take your profits early, thinking you are gonna be conservative, you now have a nice series of small wins… Thoughts of ferraris and women throwing themselves at you run through your head as you calculate how much money you’ll have in a year at this pace…

Then it happens… You just made a trade and inexplicably it almost immediately goes against you… 5 pips… 15 pips… What’s going on!?

Thoughts begin racing through your brain… “oh it will come back… I can’t close it now, because that will mean I have to take the loss… If I close it now, all my previous profits will be wiped out”… You decide to move your stop loss back to give the trade more room to breath… The trade continues to fall.

It’s late at night… You decide you’ll just leave the trade open and go to bed… After the worst sleep you ever had… You jump up some time early in the morning and open your trading platform… Your heart sinks… You see a red number… A very big red number… 20% of your account is now gone…

Biting your lip and with a feeling of numbness you click the “close trade” button… The rest of the day is a blur… “this can’t have just happened… How could i have been so stupid!!!”

This happens to soooo many new traders. After the first big loss, psychologically they are unable to effectively trade with their real money.

The point I am getting at is 10k is alot for a new trader to trade with, even if you will only be risking 2%… load your account with a tenth of that… Train your emotions with that, the chances are you will lose most of it. At that point you will have to make a decision if you want to reload it or quit. Do not trade with more then 1k until you’ve had 6 months of being profitable… You think you will be wasting opportunity of make more money with a larger capital… But virtually no trader will survive their first six months without having severe drawdowns…

It takes a long time to re-make the money you lost in the first 6 months of your trading career… Minimize it by using a small amount to start with. :slight_smile: good luck to you.

5

Man, your a downer,lol

6

Someone has to tell him…

7

But your right, lol

This is why I think having a daily goal is important. Then you can put loses in perspective of lost time…

dont allow yourself to lose a certain amount, once you do, your done for the day.

Which of course, is downdraw, then time to find out why, and dont re-enter market till you understand why.

8

I would’ve also appreciated it if someone had told me the same thing when I started :smiley:

9
  1. Graduate fully the school of pipschology (atleast twice).
  2. open a demo account and make sure that whatever you do,
    you can be consistently profitable.
    (FXCM has better service at any level,not only technically or financially,
    but as community , available education , signals and variety of strategists with deep knowledge of
    Elliot wave , sentiment , risk appetite and so on…)
    3.start with micro account , loosing/winning 50 dollars feels much more different life than loosing/winning
    500 on demo.
    4.forget about those 30" Dell screens…
    if you have no idea what specific set up you looking for,
    it just going to cross your eyes. …
    5.keep learnin every day and conquere the world!

Note: if you trade any amount of money with the preset mind that is ok if you loose them,
you will 100%.

success comes when is your only option

10

i am pretty newbie,

been reading and learning for the past 2 months.
i took few steps.
what is my trading plan. - how much pips is my target, my initial capital -5k, what time frame i am comfortable with. whats my indicator, what triggers my entry and whats my exit, what are the type of signals? fundamental or technical?

open demo account. instead of starting to trade, i browse the history and starts applying what i learn, and see whats the results. draw your trendlines, fib and etc.

its all about practice and practices and managing risk until you are comfortable enough. i uses pips as p/l instead of cash value.

losing is inevitable in trading. its all about minimizing the amount of loses.
above all as seniors said, consistent profit is the key.

i am just a newbie, sorry if my point have offended anyone. do guide me along.
thanks.

11

I have been trading for over 4 years and initially lost my entire 3.5K investment - really quickly. I was just now thinking of the advice I could give and actually you just need to really listen to Banker and WaterWay. They both gave you really good advice and the only thing I could add is - no matter what size your account – initially trade the smallest lot available – when you feel more comfortable add another small lot (I believe Micro is best to start) You actually will get the same emotions initially as if you were trading more money. Be in it for the long run — I will take a long time to become a master.

12

i would not put any more in it for starters than you could flush down the toilet without noticing it’s gone really, and i would definitely not put any real money in it before you fully understand and have undergone the impact of emotion on placing trades. Other than that, in most things practice makes perfect but i feel you need to develop a feel and watch your chance of succes percentage closely, 5 out of 10 is no way to start slinging big money around. Patience more important than analysis sometimes but the school here holds some very nice info. I’m just a starter myself ofcourse .
Oh, and never take advice from anyone involved with a broker. Brokers are not there to make you money, they’re there to make money from you
at any rate, good luck, and may the slithering snake of mammon be with you :slight_smile:

ah and (sorry i have the bad habit of editing my posts about 20 times because i always forgot something)
and if you take a demo account make sure it’s not over-leveraged, you will get a false feeling of comfort that won’t have anything to do with how you should feel when you’re doing it for real (but you can read all of that in the school as well, so please do :slight_smile:

Personally i’d prefer an early day part-time job leaving time to do mah thang during the London/NY - overlap and a bit of news and analysis in the wee hours. For several practical reasons, paperwork one but at most to have something to fall back on. Treating the broker account as a savings account where i make my own interests, never putting more into it than i can spare at the end of each month. Forget about that yaght for a moment. Just calculate the compound interest you get on an (achievable for most) starting capital of $1000 over 10 years if you increase each month by 5% (which is realistic if you pick 'em well but by no means a certainty) just to get the picture. The yaght and seven mansions requires a dose of luck as well i’m sure (or some serious starting cash)
If you calculated that, try finding one single investment you could get into that gives you the same. If it’s about boasting pips it’s probably some yuppie who can easily throw a 1000 at it every month. Don’t be fooled by the bling. Keep it real. People HAVE made fortune, but i think the proverbial 99% won’t. There’s also the matter of taxes. My main first objective would not be that yaght full of beeches but the means to get out of this place where you can easily pay between 35-50% at the whim of the tax office (leaving them with nothing in the end)
Then again, that has been my only objective for years and it will be until it happens. Seems like this might actually make it pôssible before i’m too old to walk by myself. Downward economy the least of all concerns
But for now, the situation isnt optimal. I’m pretty confident it’s possible tho, but i’m also sure not everyone will be capable of keeping the required mind set on
keep it real , dont just throw your whole savings at it after a few lucky months on a demo

One thing i’m still not clear on myself is : when people talk about placing a 150 point stop loss, do they mean they do this with a broker that offers four or five digits because for the same amount of movement that’s a whole lot of difference you get there?

13

focus more on consistent risk reduction / risk management