I have been following a combination of these strategies strictly but without much success in the past week. My overall (demo) equity is down.
What method can I use to pick an effective and definitive strategy? My goal at this time is not to make the millions but to earn a good sustainable extra income to cover college fees, pay for my long-haul vacation and to buy a decent gift for my mum/dad. Thinking to take things step-by-step and as experience adds up then I can move on.
How many trades should I test a system on (or any other method) before trading live with it?
I think you may be coming at this from the wrong angle? Lets say you have a proven ‘strat’. There are many! Unless you have a considerable account balance to trade, then your returns will I fear fall short of ‘paying tuition fees’. Lets look at two examples. Example 1) $100k balance and for the sake of argument, a 2.5% gain averaged out week on week. Nice, $2.5K a week. Example 2) Account balance $1000 and a 2.5% weekly gain = $25. So all things being equal you have two choices. 1) over leverage your positions in the hope of building your account fast and almost certainly blow the account. 2) Compound the 2.5% over a few years to those big numbers. Both unfortunately, I suspect will be less than appealing?
Don’t force yourself into someone else’s system. You are different than them and have a different risk tolerance and a different opinion of what makes sense. If you have even the smallest doubt about a system, it is wrong for you.
Try out different strategies and find out what you like and dislike. You probably won’t find a perfect fit, but if you find something you really like, you can tweak it to suit you. As someone once told me. don’t try finding a strategy, let a strategy find you.
EDIT:
One more thing. Give yourself at least a year to make up your mind. But be prepared to take several years.
What strategy to chose is only up to you. Who knows the way you are better than you? Try all of them and see which one makes you more money. Or mix them all together and in the end everything that is useless will fall off.
What kind of person are you? Strategies come in all different sizes and shapes; long term, short term, aggressive, passive, etc. For example I’m a short term trader, because, it’s my belief, the longer you’re in the market the more things can go wrong. So for me I’m in and out and so I use a short term strategy. I trade bigger lots on shorter time frames. There are other successful traders, who are in the market for longer terms because of their beliefs, experiences and goals tell them that’s how they should trade. So you need to figure out, how patient you are, how much understanding of the forex you have, how much time can you spend trading and when. Make a list and base your strategy on your list. Next trade your demo, while you keep learning and putting together a written trading plan. Keep practicing in a demo until you don’t make silly mistakes that everyone makes when they first start out, you know your platform inside and out and completely understand how leverage works and it’s impact on your account balance and lastly until you finish your trading plan. If it were me, I would make my demo balance and leverage the same as when you start trading a live account. Once you’re ready for a live account decide on how much money you can comfortably lose then divide it into at least in half,(if it were me, it would be thirds) open your account and work your plan. If you blow out your first account, you use the other half or third to redeposit and after you review why you blew the first one out, make the adjustments to your trading plan and go back at it. Again these are my opinions
Nobody can tell you which strategy to chose, but when you trade you tend to trade your personality so find one that fits you well. This takes time so don’t rush it.