Hi Trolloc63.
I went through and am still going through the same thing but it is slowly starting to get better. I have been swing trading for 4 months on demo account only.
I tend to notice a lot of generalised fluff in trading material where people make statements like:
“Trade with the trend”
“Watch the major currency pairs”
“Keep a journal”
“Pay attention to news”
“Use confluence of indicators”
“Build up screentime” etc.
None of these statements mean anything unless you can ground it in some specific real-world practice which you can view.
I am by no means a pro but some practical tips that may help you which have helped me have been included below.
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Open a demo account with say only $1000. Use only a contract size of 100 for all pairs.
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Line up 40+ different currency pairs on your watch list on the side including all exotics/majors/commodities etc. (Reason I say this is because you will not know which FX pair will works best for you until you test them all with some specific rules).
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Open up a spreadsheet titled “Strategy test - iteration 1”.
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Create a simple set of specific rules and write them at the top of the spreadsheet (Important note here is to pick ANY rules as long as they are specific). For example, I started with:
Parameters
Step 1: Start with first currency pair on my list and use ONLY 4 hour time frame and MACD and nothing else.
Step 2: If MACD crossover is visible on the currency pair, enter in that direction.
Step 3: Use Stop Loss of 50 and Take profit of 100 pips for all pairs.
Step 4: Log the trade in the spreadsheet including date of entry, FX pair, timeframe used (in this case only 4 hour), entry price, SL, TP and result)
Step 5: Go to next currency pair on your list and repeat for 2 hours (before you start work) until you get through all currency pairs.
Step 6: Log all results and closed trades on the weekend.
Step 7: Log 100 trades and make a final assessment of the strategy.
You can start with the above exact template if you wish.
Having said that. I am not saying the above strategy is good (and you will quickly notice this). But once you start scan through the pairs every day, execute based on your rules, and recording your results you will notice one of a few things:
(a) My net profit/loss was $x.
(b) y% of my trades were losses and z% were winners.
© Biggest loss was currency pair abc.
(d) Best performing pair was “def”.
(e) Average winning trade was $w
(f) Average Losing trade was $l
For example, you may notice after completing 100 trades the following results.
(a) After 100 trades I ended up with a net loss of $100.
(b) I was wrong on 70% of the trades and right on 30% of them.
From here you can make a tweak to your strategy such as:
(a) Trade only pairs are clearly trending and not consolidating.
(b) Reduce SL to 30 and TP to 60.
© Add two EMAs and only when the MACD and EMAs are crossing I will enter.
(d) Use Daily Timeframe instead.
(e) Title this new tweak “iteration 2” and re-test on a new tab on your spreadsheet.
As a result of repeating this process over and over several times (I have had to go through approximately 50 iterations to date) you will naturally start to develop a sense of what works and what doesn’t including where to put your SL and TP, which pairs work best for you out of the 40 you have tested and which timeframes and what indicators (if any) should be used.
The idea is to mass test A LOT and record results and then look back over the results and make tweaks.
It’s no easy process but this has been something that helps me to navigate the excessive information out there and assist in the construction of my own style.
Hope this helps.
KL.