Just dropping in to introduce myself. I am young gun (23) who has followed and occasionally experimented in the stock market for years, but never dabbled in Forex. The past week I have been reading every article, blog, and book I could find. This stuff amazes me. Obviously I know it’s no “Get Rich Quick” scheme. The real draw is that it’s something that returns what you invest into it (ie If I work hard, I’ll be rewarded…if not, I’ll fail miserably). Through my experiences in life I’ve seen that everyone wants stuff but nobody is willing to work for it. I am very successful in my current career, however, there are so many variables that restrict advancement (promotions, cutbacks, economy, office politics, the company’s success). Forex excites me because it puts me in charge.
I’m the kind of person that hates listening to people complain because all I can think about in my head is, “You know you could fix your problem but you just don’t want to work hard enough to make it happen so you’d rather complain!”
Sorry for the rant, just letting you all get to know me. Trading with a broker won’t be for a few more months AT LEAST. I’m just absorbing every detail I can until then. Thanks for reading!
EDIT: I forgot to add that I’m currently going through the BabyPips school. I have taken so many notes and have cups of coffee all around my desk and my hair looks like it belongs to a 30yr old programmer in his mom’s basement. It’s like I’m back in college (but this time enjoying the learning…)!!
Good to hear your going through the baby pips school. Always a nice place to start with the added benefit of the Forex forums to answer any additional questions that may be bothering you.
I’m also in a similar position to yourself, being 22 im also regarded as a baby in this business. I guess the difference is my three years of research into the area and quite literally thousands of hours of screen time.
I hope your ready to enroll into the art of thinking you’ve found your feet, and then having the rug pulled from under you. It’s good fun, stressful at times, but more than anything, its rewarding when you start to build your knowledge.
I think what excites me is the idea that I can do this without risking financial stability. My current job is essentially my dream career path, yet it is a very consistent 8:30-5 time commitment. My current position doesn’t require lots of overtime, I don’t have to think about it after leaving work, and when I do have downtime at the office…I read up on Forex! I’d like to start putting aside some money so that when I am finally ready, I can open an account around $250-500. I’d do more but the wifey would get piiiiiiiiissed.
Alarm bells are going off…if your going to read up on anything, then read up on money management, thats an extremely small bank roll to start off with. Micro-lots it is then.
I’m also assuming that your going to be looking to hold positions for longer than one day, hence your tied up in your full time day job, so intraday trading is going to be difficult. That also makes it difficult with a small bank roll as longer time frame trades ‘usually’, in my view, require a wider stop loss.
I’m glad you have you dream job already, but as a word of warning, 90% of people fail in this game. If you don’t make this your dream career then it most likely wont succeed. That being said, enough research and relevant practice should give you a nice foundation.
I too feel quite inexperienced with all this, just starting out ~ the only subtle difference is that I’ve been 22 for a while, 24 long years now. I don’t feel any smarter. Just older.
Diving into technical analysis, I’d like to expand upon that a little. Perhaps 90% who try, have failed. Contrast that against the effective 100% failure rate of those who haven’t tried. That’s a ten percent edge, right there! One chance in ten to escape cubicles, performance reviews, those ridiculous mandatory meetings put on by management, and the guy who parks a bit over the line into your parking space.
Failure is nothing to be afraid of, if losses are contained within acceptable predetermined bounds. It’s a rather inexpensive education compared to most other methods of learning.
Its possibly obtained from all broker sites who have the stats on all their client accounts, who can express their success rate without disclosing individual client details. I’ve been told stats from IG Index, one of the UK’s biggest index spread betting providers. So they do indeed make this information public.
Contrast that against the effective 100% failure rate of those who haven’t tried
You cant make assumptions on statistics that are out of the data range its self. Saying that people who have not attempted to trade are 100% losers is incorrect. The 90% failure rate is derived from all active client accounts. I don’t see a 10% edge?
In fact, if you want to include every person who has not opened a trading account, then the odds of being successful are more like less than 0.01%
If im getting the wrong end what your trying to say then please forgive me, however from what I’m reading it makes no sense.
Cart, you, my friend, are in the perfect position to learn how to trade, and you seem to have the right attitude going in. So if I may suggest the following, when you are done with the BP school take time to read the ICT thread, the method may not fit your personality but there is much general wisdom in the thread. Start with $500.00. If you are in the USA you might consider the following brokers, in no specific order, OANDA, MB Trading, PFG. (No I am not shilling, spamming etc.) Use only ONE mini lot with a demo until you are consistent, beware of summertime trading, then when you are truly consistent in demo, start live, again 1 mini lot with $500.00. Risk no more than 3% per trade, controlled by either stop or leverage. I prefer stops myself. Work on your self control and patience, if you can get to the point of being able to enter a trade and place a stop and take profit, then walk away without thinking about the trade, you have won a huge battle in your head. Also as always have a worst case scenario in mind.
I can add more later but I’m not trying to make money with this system. Basically I’d just be proving to myself that I am able to manage a live account. Psychology and head games aside, the principle would be the same
I’m glad you have you dream job already, but as a word of warning, 90% of people fail in this game. If you don’t make this your dream career then it most likely wont succeed. That being said, enough research and relevant practice should give you a nice foundation.
I keep seeing that 90% of people fail in Forex, but I also don’t have faith in 99% of the population. Most people can’t even get to the gym on a regular basis but complain about being overweight (the same people that look for weight loss gimmicks). There’s no shortcuts in life and I don’t expect to take any in trading. The knowledge is there, I’ve just got to learn it.
I highly recommend you start your forex journey with the first [B]six[/B] videos on the first post of this thread. If you feel that you like what you are seeing, continue watching all the videos on that page, and hopefully start posting on the thread. I post there and along with the other traders there, can help you with the methods being taught there.
There’s nothing wrong starting with $500, but make sure you fit your position size to that amount. Some brokers won’t let you trade lots that small, so do your research. In the future when you want to “get serious” with this, a $2500 or $5000 account can get you on your way to respectable profits in this arena
That thread is already marked on my favorites! I looked into it last night but decided I wanted to complete a good portion of the BabyPips curriculum first. Every time I re-read something I understand it a little more.
Speaking of which, why does everyone keep saying not to use leverage when starting out? Don’t you basically [I]have[/I] to use leverage? Isn’t that the whole point of buying in lots? Or do they mean to not use excessive leverage and let your eyes get to big?
Having no leverage is the best safety net because you physically would have a hard time damaging your account with the lot restrictions in place. But if you are dedicated to not over-trading, either risk-wise or frequency-wise, then something like 10:1 leverage could be safe for a newbie. Although, I only use 10:1 now and I’m trading my real account, so really between 1:1 and 10:1 is all you’ll really need, IMO.
Since we are talking about leverage, the institutional benchmark or average used by the big players in the City is bouncing around 1:30. Its food for thought, and could be a nice piece of information to know about when looking at the bigger picture.
Of course these institutional players have multimillion pound accounts at their disposal, and do not have to worry about the limitations of a retail client’s account size.
Ah it’s just my way of saying ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ ~ you are correct, a strict mathematical analysis does not apply (I was kidding around) but the larger point is that just trying, does provide for an edge. I’ve done modestly ok in life so far, not by being clever or best at anything, but mainly through trying different things. Lots of failures, but a couple successes good enough that I don’t have to work for anyone else any more. Not sure how forex will work for any of us but I do know this: without that bit of initiative, a boss will find far worse ways to fill your days… better to strive for freedom
This is an interesting thing, trading. Both astonishingly simple and devilishly complex at the same time. Profits or not, it’s worth a study simply for the discipline and mental challenge of it all. Likely to pay off in many unexpected ways.
The trick with forex is to do the right thing, first of all forget about how many and how much other people make, what you need to think about is your success and no one else’s.
Forex is not about working hard, it’s about being patient and waiting for the right opportunities, you can waste so much time working out complex systems and methods and calculations etc etc etc. and not get very far, whereas you can do nothing and wait until the market becomes easy and profitable to trade and then pounce, I keep banging on about this time and time again, and generally I get ignored, I think it’s because people think it can’t be that easy, so off they go looking for the Holy Grail, but I tell you you can make it as hard as you want, but if you can just be patient enough and wait for the easy opportunities you will save yourself a lot of headache.
Thanks for the great advice. This concept has been rolling through my brain and I think it’s what I’ll adopt too. I’m here for the fun and challenge of Forex. I don’t even have thoughts of “making money” in this business for at least 5 years (if it happens sooner, woohoo!). I’ve got some money to play around with and I love exercising my brain. To make it easy on myself I’m just going to wait for clear opportunities. I am way too inexperienced to try to interpret the market when it’s tricky!
I didn’t see a clear thread or sticky anywhere that listed recommended demo software. I’d like to deal with mico-lots and I would like the ability to choose how much fake money to start with. Do people like online based programs or downloadable software?
I use Oanda as a broker, they’re pretty good, MT4 is generally the charting package of choice, which has become available on Oanda recently, but I think any of the top brokers are Ok.
I’m a little confused. Do brokers share platforms/software? I thought that Oanda would have their software that connected to their site and something like Metatrader 4 was a broker that had their own software/platform. Am I way off on this?
Also, I created a practice account with Oanda just to play around but it’s a little overwhelming (as to be expected I guess). The platform that comes with it looks like it’s dated to back in Windows 2000. Maybe I’m being a bit picky but is it too much to ask for something a little more graphical/user friendly (like colored candles…)?
Oanda’s platform is a proprietary system, whereas MT4 is an independent trading platform used my most brokers. Best thing to do is just play around, it may seem overwhelming at first, but you’ll get the hang of it in a couple of days.
That makes a lot more sense, thanks for clearing that up! Even after just an hour of playing around with MT4, I am starting to figure out what does what. I tried a demo account of $500 but I kept getting trade errors saying it wasn’t enough money so I went back to the default of $5,000 and I’ll play around with the details later.
I still have a lot of training left to do plus I’m only half way through the BabyPips school. It does help to go back and forth between tinkering with the software then doing a lesson because it places a little perspective on the lesson.
EDIT: I just did a trade and make 12 pips! I watched 5min candles and saw a downward trend start to fizzle out, saw a “hammer” candle, then bought. Closed my sale after it went up a bit. More than likely it was 99% luck but hey, it was fun! :35:
