I’ve been binging articles, books and videos. I see that I’ve got difficulty retaining the information. I’ve got a bachelor degree, but study technique was never my strong side. I just read without learning how to take notes and put it into action. I’m looking for a good way to focus my learning, techniques that will aid me into retaining the information and put it to action. I’m thinking maybe 1h a day in the will days to study, as I’ve got a full time job and a family with 2 small kids.
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Helloooo Magss! 
I’ve read a lot of your posts and I just wanna say I think your determination to learn and become profitable is really admirable. It gets tough and complicated, but I hope you don’t get discouraged! 
I feel like forex in itself is a never ending learning process. 
If I were to suggest, personally, I think, rather than gathering ALL of the information you can about forex, maybe it would be more efficient if you put your energy into developing or finding a strategy that works for you. 
You can look into the indicators you’re comfortable and familiar with, or even explore existing strategies and see how you can tweak them to fit your personal trading style.
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I hope I’m making sense! But I’m sure the other members here can also give more helpful tips for you! Good luuuuck!
Thanks for taking the time to reply🙂 Yes, that really is the result in looking for. Right now I’ve come down to trading with positions open for a day to a week(s), as that seems to fit my life situation and temperament. As for my last insights, I’m looking to trade trends and use support and resistance, moving averages and rsi to find entries. I tend to overcomplicate things, do this might just seem to be a good enough strategy to start working with😅
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Oooh. Then that’s great! I feel like you’re on the right track with focusing on this strategy and seeing how it works for you in the coming weeks. I feel like we all have a phase where we just want to absorb all information about forex, which eventually makes it super complicated and overwhelming. I also tend to overthink so I definitely feel you. 
If you don’t mind, where did you find the strategy your working with? Or is it something you put together yourself?
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It’s just something that I put together from reading and watching different stuff. So I don’t think it’s my own creation in any way😅 In my head it requires a level of patience, because you need to monitor the charts to get into trends early. Start drawing trend lines and when the price bounces off the line on the third time, it’s time to look for entry. You can enter on the second if you’re more into taking higher risks. But in order to enter I’d look for more confirmation that the trend is indeed going up. I haven’t completely worked out how, but I’d use candlestick patterns, moving averages, trend lines and an rsi to make the probability of the trade be in my favor. This is the jist of it anyway. So I’m guessing it’s down to demo trading and start tweaking parameters😅
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You also need to decide that “getting into trends early” is a good thing to do.
I don’t think it necessarily is.
There are, in fact, some arguments for the exact opposite.
Just a suggestion, in case it helps: use the MAs and RSI to determine your directional bias, by all means, but never use them for the entries! Use the S/R for that.
I’m not trying to sound “anti-indicator” and I believe that some have good uses, but “timing trade entries” is decidedly NOT among those “good uses”! Nobody has ever made a living entering trades on the basis of moving average crossovers, and of course there are reasons for that. 
I’ve assumed that by looking at a daily chart, if the price bounces off the trend line a third time, the trend is considered strong. In your opinion, is this not true? If not, at what point would you consider it a strong enough trend to enter in?
Yes, you’re very correct. It’s just my beginner knowledge that is showing through😅 The MAs and RSI is to confirm the trend. Glad you are here and helping me to crystallize this into my mind👍 Can I ask how you’d use the S/R to determine entry when in an uptrend? I’ve got a difficult time defining the zones when in a trend.
To retain information better, try active learning: summarize, take notes, and teach others. Use flashcards and spaced repetition. Dedicate 1 hour a day to focused study, and balance with family time. Good luck!
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Sorry, I have no answer to this that will be helpful to you, because I use only horizontal trendlines, myself (i.e. horizontal lines of S/R), not diagonal/sloping ones.
Please don’t take me as suggesting that you shouldn’t use sloping/diagonal ones either. I don’t mean it that way at all.
I do, however, mean it that way when I say that I don’t use MA crossovers to enter trades: I do think that you shouldn’t enter trades on that basis, either.
That’s still only my own opinion, and many will disagree (in my opinion, without any valid evidence for their beliefs, only ever with completely cherry-picked examples - of the kind often seen in Steve Nison’s horrible books, lol - and/or sixth-hand gossip about their friend’s relative’s friend’s wife’s dog).
But in principle, don’t forget that I’m just an almost-anonymous forum poster, myself, and I could also turn out to be wrong in what I say. Sorry about that.
Yes. This one I can answer, lol.
For myself, I want a horizontal trendline to be clearly broken by the price (at which point I guess at first that it’s probably a fake-out rather than a break-out), and then revert and retest the trendline and more-or-less bounce off it, or nearly off it, and continue in the direction of the original break-out. In other words, resistence has (however briefly) become support. That, to me, is an uptrend entry. Or (more often, in fact) I’ll take a retracement followed by a breakout a tick or two above the top of a retracement bar, in the same style as Ross camelback entries or Brooks’ H1/H2 entries.
But the bulk of my own trading is fake-outs. Along turtle soup lines. Again, I’m not suggesting that’s what you should do, of course! It’s just a nice method that works for me, and I like it.
That is absolutely normal. What I have found, over nearly 15 years of trading since starting to learn, is that there is no substitute for experience. All that theoretical stuff amounts to nothing until you have stared at thousands of charts, pressed the button and placed a trade. Whether paper trading or real life trading (for the smallest risk amounts possible for the trades), you will realize that when the right hand side of the chart is missing (your real time trade entry) you are in uncharted territory. I think you only become confident after thousands of trades. Remember, entry is not the B all and end all. The full lifecycle is:
Defining a strategy
Planning the lifecycle of trades that will fit the strategy
Identifying the entry zone
Confirming the entry zone
Entering the trade
Managing the trade
Exiting the trade
Analyzing the trade after the event - did it conform to the strategy and plan you set up.
Analyzing all trade results to date. Have you learned yet to stop losing money?
After that, it gets really easy, but that doesn’t mean you can ease up on the total lifecycle approach and the post-event analysis. If you don’t like doing that, then trading is not for you. Only my opinion after 15 years.
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I get you. I’ve just observed that in some trends, I just can’t seem to identify a clear S/R. I’m learning to draw trend lines along the trend. Ie, one diagonal line along either the HLs in an uptrend or LHs in a downtrend. And when doing that, there are times when clear S/R zones aren’t identified by me. Let’s say in an uptrend there’s one retracement bearish candle which is followed by bullish candle again and the trend continues. If this is a pattern that’s repeating, I feel like I’m missing out on a trend. I wonder if there’s a way to maybe use S/R from earlier periods on the chart in order to find good entry points.
Yes, this is something I fortunately discovered early. If it was that easy, I’d create an algo to do the trading for me. Finding good entries is something I need to get better at.
This I’ll copy to a document and keep handy. It simplifies the process for me. I tend to overcomplicate these things. I’m glad to have this forum to ground the information for me. 
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I see that that’s a very intelligent and reasonable thing to wonder. I just don’t know the answer, sorry.
Yes. Very fortunately. A lot of independent/academic research has been done, on this subject, needless to say. Some people spend many years trying to do this. Some are even convinced that they (or others) can do it! 
I think I’ve identified why I’ve adopted the get in early easy of thinking. It’s from a market flow perspective that I’ve seen someone touting. It’s the one saying that the market ideally goes through stages. Accumulation, markup phase(uptrend), distribution and markdown phase (downtrend). I’m sure there is some merit to this, but I wouldn’t rely on it. Especially as a beginner. I’ve come to believe they’re is no way you can predict that one phase will follow another. It would be great if it did though…
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This is very close to what I feel like saying when I read about half the posts in this forum, to be honest. The words “If only! Wouldn’t that be lovely? We’d all be millionaires!” are often at my fingertips but I don’t often post them here. I offend enough people as it is!
You can quote me on this, learning comes with information, information with research; and understanding comes with knowledge, knowledge with experience.
While this model could be applied everywhere, anywhere, pay attention to your hindrances in attaining the potentials of each models and think probable ways they could be curbed.
Warm Regards.
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Much is made in trading education about the importance of identifying support and resistance levels, and of drawing trendlines.
In practice these are subjective lines drawn by an individual. They are artefacts imposed on the price chart, not finger-prints found at a crime scene.
I never draw any of these lines. Yet when I look back I see that price in my long trades rose from support and stopped at resistance. My long entry order is above the last daily high in a sequence of days with LH’s and LL’s in an uptrend: my stop-loss is below the last daily low. Price will find these levels or it won’t, it will prove them to be what trainers predict they are, or it won’t, but it doesn’t matter to me.
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Did you at some point draw these lines in order to train your eyes our ave you just studied naked charts and learned that way?
Well in truth I learned how to draw them and spent time doing it. And I watched what other people were doing and made the obvious conclusion - they’re each doing it differently. Ah! - but not just differently from each other but differently from themselves on different charts.
I never used these lines in trade planning or management.
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I totally get it! Balancing a job, family, and learning is tough. Try focusing your study sessions by using active learning techniques.