Did you focus on a single strategy first? For how many months did you work on it? I’m seeing a lot of trading strategies available and I’m a bit overwhelmed.
better to be a master of 1 than ok at a few
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Hi mate,
I’ve been in the same boat as you and I think the key is not to get fixated on a single strategy. You have to understand that the market dynamics change frequently, which means that your trading style has to also change accordingly. Now one of the key things and something which really changed trading for me was learning fundamental analysis and focussing on that a lot more than I focus on the technicals.
Realistically, it will take around 6-18 months to really understand the fundamentals and understand how to apply them. It’s not an easy thing, but definitely worth it if you can understand it.
Read everything.
Try as many as financially possible.
Eventually you’ll find something that feels ‘natural’ to you.
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I think single strategy does not work on all the instruments all the time as market has different movement for different instruments. It takes time to understand the fundamentals of market.
I can’t say that there is a specific tactic with which I would work all the time. Basically, I try to change tactics depending on the situation on the market.
One of the best advice is to use a demo account first and try different trading strategies on that. You can learn how to use the strategies without using your real money and once you are familiar with it, you are ready to apply it with your real money. Also, a demo account will give you practical knowledge about trading and its strategies.
I developed my approach around avoiding my weaknesses.
For example
After a signal I simply couldn’t be bothered waiting days for it to trigger.
I hated giving back profits but I also hated missing trends.
I don’t believe in using classic support or resistance - I tried but always overuled trading rules
I needed as few entry criteria as possible and i had to avoid using any discretionary approach.
What I’m trying to say is it was my failings that made me realise my strengths.
This does take time - also the system must account for the chance of using actually sticking to it.
There is no point you being a position trader if you think each morning the market is going to collapse.
Or (in my case) no point being a day trader when you think it’s more profitable holding for two (or more)
As some on here have said already expose yourself to as many styles as possible - try them on demo and see what fits.
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You need to gain an understanding of how the markets move. You will only be able to devise a strategy once you get this understanding.
If you were tasked with creating a strategy for a computer game, let’s say for Pacman, and if you had never played Pacman, what’s the first thing you would do? You play the game, understand the rules, observe how Packman moves and what it does under various circumstances. Once you have a handle on these things then you can go about devising your strategy to win the game.
The same applies to the fx market. Gain a deep understanding of how the fx market moves. Note, it is not important to know why it moves. That is not essential to the task of creating your strategy. Knowing what to learn and what to ignore is a big part of learning anything new quickly and effectively.
If I were you, I would learn to trade naked charts, without any indicators; not even a moving average. Concentrate on observing and learning price action (PA) and market structure. By PA, I don’t mean the analysis of candlesticks. Rather, observe the up and down impulses that price makes, the micro and macro movements, volatility, efficiency, etc. I’ve posted several YouTube resources to learn market structure. A quick search of the forums will reveal these to you.
I also strongly urge you to you keep away from Fundamental Analysis for now. You can pick up that thread at a later time if you believe it will be useful.
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Exactly this. After you trade for 3-6 months, you’ll start to get an idea of what type of trades you prefer. It’s going to be completely subjective and unique to who you are as an individual.
Thanks for reiterating my comment! 
Why is that?
I see no value in FA, at least not for short term traders. One needs to build a model to apply it to the currency markets, since no single variable is sufficient to gauge market proclivity. That’s where you get into trouble. See the following article which explains the folly of attempting this better than I can.
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I’d be very cautious sticking with that mindset, especially if you are a short term trader…very.
Fundamental analysis not only accounts for non-chart inputs, but also includes being aware of economic releases.
If someone new to trading is trying to daytrade on low timeframes and is unware of a major central bank decision, or, something like NFP (or really any event risk) they can easily be whipped out of their position in seconds.
The value in FA is being prepared to manage event risk.
I concur! See this post …
But,
Can you tell me how you might manage a news event risk, other than keeping out of the markets?
Here we diverge. 
As an avid student of PA, I’ve searched the short term charts of several pairs to see if I could spot a news event reflected in the charts. I found nothing that diverged from normal PA. What I did find on certain occasions is that price moved in an accelerated manner. However, there were other instances where price moved equally quickly even when no significant news was released. Just recently the GBP went on a 300 pip range rampage for several seconds. And this was just after the end of a daily NY session. This anomaly too respected PA.
Given this, I firmly believe that news plays no role in the markets, other than, on occasion accelerating price movement. And, if you were trading using PA, this would be in your favor if your analysis was correct.
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The claim was never made that economic modelling or news events can gauge market proclivity. The claim is that a news event can whip a position pretty easily due to the increase in volatility (market orders) and decrease in liquidity (air pockets between limit orders)
Sure…Simply by being aware of the event risk is the first step. If you’re about to put a position on the night before NFP drops you’ll want to take this into account. Either you wait for a better price during the news event, or, widen/tighten your stops, or widen/tighten your limits. It’s all going to be contextual so there isn’t a simple answer.
It’s role is not = 0. It plays a role by accelerating price movement, which is exactly what my original claim was? If you’re not aware that a key news event is about to occur and you have entry/exit limit orders in the market, you can enter a position and be stopped out before having a chance to even react…
Contextual to what? You say that there isn’t a simple answer but I’m claiming that there is really no answer since it seems that we both agree (unless I misunderstand you) that, at best, news merely accelerates price on occasion. However, no one knows before hand whether or not it will accelerate price. So, there is really nothing you can do to prepare since price acceleration can occur without a news event and indeed such acceleration can be readily observed in the charts.
I state the same thing regarding acceleration. Please read my comments again. However I qualify it by saying that such acceleration is not confined to news events and one never really knows whether or not a particular news event will cause an acceleration of price movement. Other than occasional price acceleration, news in fact plays no role.
If you’re trading using PA then news really is a non-event. Once again, my observations are that news does not change PA. Therefore, your entry, stop and exit have already been calculated using PA and all orders should be in place. That should not change because of a news event. Hopefully, you’re not hitting the “Buy” or “Sell” button to enter or exit the market.
If you’re a scalper or a day trader then, once again, as stated earlier, you may want to stay out of the market on big news days only because of the occasional acceleration. If you’re a swing trader, news should not worry you in the least bit, even if you are entering the market or exiting the market on a news day.
I’m still not clear on what you would do differently on a big news day, other than stay out of the market. Once again, I submit to you that there is really nothing that you can do to mitigate your risk.
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I would even debate whether one off news events add much to the fundamental picture out all.
When I think of fundamentals I think of the large macro backdrop over the long term.
Neither scalpers or swing traders need to know this - though it is a great subject to chat about at dinner parties.
So when we say ‘fundamentals’ do we mean individual data releases or big picture macro?
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thanks! Any recommendations on where to learn fundamental analysis?
Yep. I’m still on demo and not yet ready to go live. Thanks!