Lol, I started the debate about weekends, but I was only using that as an expression of the many facets of the market, not just up, down and sideways.
Now as far as going into the weekend naked… or exposing … lets hope that PipnRoll is not reading 
Oh dont worry about me. I am NOT reading at all :D…
I am currently busy learning how to #Break The Internet 
I am rather disappointed about Kim K recent performance …so sad…Trying to find my other “hiden” talents lol
Yep, I figure that maybe Mike Golic is a FX trader, and since it’s the weekend, and he’s not afraid of gaps …nydailynews
Agreed re KK, oh well, funny old world, take care Pip.
we need have enough fund in account. it depend on your expensse. if you can get enough expenses for your life you can make quit your jobs. you must sure about your money which enough for your life when you do not have profit in trading about 3 months
I didn’t read all the replies but it is an interesting topic to comment. Your environment affects you in determining what is right and what is wrong, classic psychology. If you were surrounded by trades that make consecutive monthly returns from the market you would say forex trading is difficult but possible. If you are surrounded by traded that have negative results you would say it is just a dream and a waste of time. The market in both examples does not change, simply its faces. I can tell you for a fact that trading is not suitable for everyone, perhaps only the minority possess the required skills for trading. I can almost guarantee you if I were to give you a 6 figure account and ask for a 7% return a year but no leverage whatsoever and only a 1% market exposure at any given time, do you know how many pips you will have to make in order to reach a 7% return? After incurring multiple losses you are likely to break. Trading is not for everyone. It sounds easy, risk management sounds great but it is not for everyone. Now there is a new thing, binary options, 85% return in one trade. Trading binary options is even more complex than forex as you are dealing with so many other factors but I won’t get into it here. It will begins and ends with leverage, usually the most common disease in this market. If you decide not to trade I wish you the best of luck in whatever you choose to do but do stay away from binary options.
Good trading. But no withdrawals ?? Kinda hard to believe.
The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.
It took me over a decade of trading losses to discover that you need a back-tested and forward-tested system (like a trend trading system) to make money consistently. Then it took me more years to discover that even the best systems will suffer stinging drawdowns that must be endured. You can’t turn a good system off and on or you wreck its potential. The first problem with most traders is that they trade manually. For many, many reasons you just can’t do that. There are only a handful of traders who can win consistently trading with point and click and the odds are you aren’t one of them. Most winning traders have automated systems. The second problem is that, even after graduating to your own automated system, most traders have no understanding of how drawdowns work and what a reasonable ‘Gain-to-Pain’ ratio might be… so they over leverage and/or bail on their system during what might have been just a normal drawdown in a winning system. The complaints I hear about Forex trading are nearly identical to the complaints about trading in other markets. In a nutshell, most traders simply do not know how to trade and they will never learn how to trade because they are so emotionally invested in their current gamble that they don’t take the appropriate time out to study and develop a winning system through paper trading. They dive in and try to ‘learn as they go’. You can’t learn anything when you are being constantly pummeled by real trading losses. Your brain goes off the rails and you can’t think straight. You thumb through books instead of reading them cover-to-cover and taking quality notes. You argue with people on the internet instead of doing real research. Most traders need to STOP trading until they have spent at least SEVERAL THOUSAND HOURS developing their own automated trading system and testing that system with paper money. If you’re not willing to put in that kind of work then you don’t deserve success because that is exactly the kind of work people who succeed at trading put in. You want what they have but you’re not willing to do they work that they have done.
Agree with you here Burt , especially the part about leverage. After the development work trading becomes well not so much trading as just a system that works with the market to make profit not so much what people would call trading. I think of myself of a person that extracts profit from the market rather than a trader. The term trader makes people think of a skill or an art or a spotting a set up which leads to failure in the end. After you develop a robust system you can just manage it and do something else instead of hanging by every pip move up and down like a junkie or gambler needing the emotional fix. A good system is a boring churn of profit with no emotional drama just transactions. Develop the system well & look for thrills elsewhere in life.
I disagree…mechanical systems have many flaws in them as the discretionary system do… But I would choose discretionary over mechanical on any given day
There are exceptions to every rule. Maybe you are one of them. Good luck.
You can thoroughly test a mechanical system. It is next to impossible to test a discretionary ‘system’. Even if you develop a discretionary methodology via software, you will struggle to duplicate the results manually so the test has little meaning. It is not a robust test. That’s why they call manual ‘systems’ methodologies and not systems. Only a fully automated system is actually a legitimate system. There are all kinds of reasons why most people will eventually fail using point and click. That’s not to say that all autotrading systems are winners. Of course not. Your system is only as good as your imagination and your coding. It’s hard work to develop a good system. It’s just that very, very few discretionary traders can beat a good system trader in the long run. Of course you’re welcome to try, but don’t say you weren’t warned. Good luck.
Judging by what you just said, we would all be millionaires using automated systems, and yet it’s just the opposite…
Even a great system can only average around 20% to 30% per year (generally speaking). There are some exceptions, but not many - not in the long run. What system traders who want to make big money do is develop a track record, then open their own fund or go to work for a hedge fund. Why? Because it takes too long to get wealthy earning 20% a year on your own money. The fast track to wealth is to trade other peoples’ money and earn a performance fee. 20% on 100K of your own money can’t compete with earning a 20% fee on even a very small 1 million dollar fund. So, you’re right that most system traders don’t get rich trading their own systems with their own money. It takes too long. It’s just a starting point if you want real wealth. However, even if you just trade your own money with your own system your odds of overall trading success are far superior to the vast majority of manual traders who are practically doomed to failure by the many pitfalls of point and click trading.
Good discussions !
Does anybody care to explain what do you mean by automated trading system ? are you referring to EA or manually executed system ?
I’ve been working on my system - which takes pretty much everything into account but mostly technical. I do multi timeframe analysis and enter on lower TFs few SMAs plotted.
But when it comes to entries I’ll always have to do it manually and for my positions to survive I’ll have to sit by the laptop for at least couple of hours and but once I set SL at BE or a little above my entry there I’ve got some free time to lounge around. I’ve just been wondering if there was a better way around to it.
I certainly don’t want to sit by the computer all day long and gambling away for 20 pips here and there. Certainly not the lifestyle that I’m seeking. So far I’m good with the overall functionality of my system. But the drawback is that it does require some time until I get things rolling. Say for a trending market, I want to be up at least two legs and I can set BE at a certain level and just forget about it altogether. Gotta be adding more positions along the way if the trend persists. So the only work thats there to be done is quick scan every morning or every day really.
I suppose mine is not much of a system but a methodology. Probably thats why its takes a lot of time to set things up. Its doable. But it does take a lot of time to get my positions running and survival rate of successful positions.
Any thoughts on that ?
For clarity, an EA that is turned on and off manually is not a trading system. It falls into the ‘methodology’ category. A genuine trading system is turned on once and left alone. The only time it might be tampered with is when the creator has an improvement to insert. He might manually turn the system off for a moment, insert the improved code, and turn the system on again. Of course trading systems can stop themselves from trading for periods of time while they remain ‘on’ and waiting for a new entry opportunity.
The terms ‘system’, ‘trading system’, ‘automated trading system’ and ‘autotrading system’ are the same thing. They are fully automated trading systems that are turned on and left alone.
An EA that is turned on and off by the trader is not a trading system. It’s a semi-automated trading methodology. Very difficult to test thoroughly, so very difficult to trust during drawdowns. Not saying you can’t make money that way, just more difficult.
I agree with Burt…
I would also like to quote the great and wise PipNRoll, when she told me that I should make a distinction between
‘system’ and ‘strategy’: to have a mechanical system is not necessarily the same as having a strategy, and
having a strategy does not necessarily imply a rigid system… The context of our conversation was a mechanical
(non-automated) system that I was experimenting with, in preparation for having it coded as an Expert Advisor…
The best way would be for a single trader to try a manual and an automated system, each one on a separate accounts,
following the same currency pairs, and compare results over a chosen period (let us say, a year)…
That would be a very good experience, although by no means conclusive…
that you should
One question Pipmehappy, How long time have you been involved in trading ?