Just try to avoid “Assertiveness”, as it may work against you when I start to learn how to revolt… 
Lol I know what you mean.
Reminds me of akeakamai and one famous saying.
[I]If I wanted to become a tramp, I would seek information and advice from the most successful tramp I could find. If I wanted to be a failure, I would seek advice from men who never succeeded. If I wanted to succeed in all things, I would look around me for those who are succeeding, and do as they do.
~~ Joseph H. Wade[/I]
Praise the gods for finally moving the threads.
Exactly!
So if I want to be a successful trader, I need information from the most successful traders I can find, not from a whole lot of marginal / non profitable traders = the blind leading the blind…
Wow man. You moved? So you are doing this full time now? I admire your commitment to doing this. I have actually thought of moving but I figure I still need to build my account for at least a year before jumping in like that. Is your personal trading not doing well? The ICT tools failed for ICT because he didn’t fallow them. You can make them succeed. Now that he is gone I think people will be more willing to fit them to their own personal style and you will start seeing more people posting success.
I would be interested in hearing about your transition and move…
Exactly!
So if I want to be a successful trader, I need information from the most successful traders I can find, not from a whole lot of marginal / non profitable traders = the blind leading the blind…
Wow…I feel for ya 
Same kinda thing happened to me with back in the TRO days…cept I didn’t relocate or anything drastic like that…lol…but I invested a lot of time and energy into something, and went so far as to open & trade a real $ account only to find the ensuing drama (when he got banned) unbalanced me too much and it all fell apart. I even followed him to another forum to try continue there, but it wasn’t the same anymore. So I came back here and started over… you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and carry on. “You-know-what” happens
How to prevent it from happening again?..well when it happens to you once, you tend to be a bit more cautious of the next one…lol. As for preventing it for those it hasn’t happened to? Well that’s difficult…you saw what happened when others tried to warn. I see FF has a voucher system but it probably has it’s weaknesses too. You can only go so far to help…you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink if it doesn’t want to. It’s a universal problem.
So you are frustrated. I can relate to that. You are here in the right place, you just think that you need a top dog to make a living out of this. Well, these top dogs don’t work alone. They have a team of analysts and traders around them.
And you don’t need them. There are profitable traders around here. You just want to have things right in front of your face, certainty.
We can help out, if you just want to listen.
What is not working for you? The tools or the discipline to trade them?
Wow man, I feel bad. My dream is to work for myself, and I love trading forex, but the bad gamble type trades in Jan, have made me realize that before I take a big gamble like leaving my job to do this, I want to see that I can put up some real professional quality results for a consistent period of time. I really believe I can do it deep down, but until I prove it to me, (and to keep my wifes blood pressure in check) I want to show results that are of a professional quality for a while. Green as Grass (not sure you’d like the acronym) could I ask a little about your methods, etc. Not trying to pry.
Wow! Dunno what happened to babypips, you guys in your rush to reply to me must have overloaded the site, it all crashed here for a while 
I’ll try & answer you all in the next post.
Basically I started out in forex a few years after a discussion with a relative of mine @ the family BBQ.
He hit it big fx trading & had dozens of investors moneys, everything seemed to be promising at his end.
I started here @ BP school & then following Tymen as I knew squat, he seemed to make sense at the time but it bothered me that Tymen wouldn’t disclose anything about how profitable he was, citing words to the effect of “he didn’t want to expose himself to terrorists & no one should ever put their account details on fxbook bla bla bla” I still laugh when I think about this Anyways you shrug things off, I became aware he had limited funds to do the basics in life, like fix the car etc, didn’t make sense… then he got banned for yet another rant or something, so as he was booted out the window, ICT came thru the door.
Well after two years of ICT, he just made a lot more sense. A lot of it was just your basic s/r London Open etc. I used to overlook the hype thinking he’s just been American again Not a lot of ppl challenged him to tell the truth, not like Tymen.
So anyways I thought it’s about time I committed more fully to fx, quit my job as I was working on average 70hr weeks at one point, sometimes 30 & 40hr days, pretty hard to do quality study, lol but it got me enough dosh so I don’t have to work for a few years if I’m sensible.
At this point I find my super trader relative made the national news… 1.7 million dollars fraud! So he lost that & well over a million of his own money! Great… He’s doing jail time now… This really affected me psychologically, since up to this point I could say I knew it was possible to trade profitably & I actually knew a legit trader… Well after a while I pushed on all inspired by ICT & the vibe from all these genuinely cool guys on the ICT threads, setup a small live account, handed in my notice & left the country.
I pretty much landed on my feet here in Eastern Europe, got good friends & contacts, can have paid work if I need it, but when it’s only costing me 15 Euro a week all up to live I’d rather learn to trade.
I actually took me five years to set up here & fx was hopefully going to be my income, my reasoning been much lower cost of living = lower up front capital at risk in fx to generate a livable income.
So, I’m full time study, haven’t touched my live account for the eight months I’ve had it cause I’m not consistent enough, Was using ICT tools along with s/r London & NY open.
Not particularly frustrated, more like “lost at sea” bemused & disappointed with Michael’s attitude & the fact he was baited while doing this 5K challenge, it wasn’t really necessary in my opinion, if he was fake it would have showed on fxbook, but baiting his ego really gives him or his supporters an excuse as to why he failed at the end of the day.
It’s actually been a great adventure!
& appreciate the empathy btw
Ok you can all [B]wake up[/B] now
I also had a similar experience back in 2009 when Mike Parker aka mp6140 crashed, burned and was banned from babypips.
As most great gurus, Mike Parker also preached a grandiose overly optimistic vision of the earning potential for small-time retail FX traders.
I bought his BS hook line and sinker, sitting at his feet taking in every word spending a tremendous amount of my time following his methods.
At the time I really believed using his tools I could turn a few thousand dollars into a full-time profitable trading career within a year or two. Oh boy was I ever wrong. :17:
I’ve since learn more about Mike P and I now suspect he was a very lonely man and the feedback, attention and praise he received from all his young eager students filled a void in his life.
Mike Parker also didn’t asked for money. But perhaps he craved attention, praise and admiration so much that he kept preaching the grandiose vision keeping us coming back for more and more.
Lesson to learn, next time a great guru says you can take a few grand and a few years and turn it in to a full-time career, run for the door.
You know D-pip, I often disagree with you, but I like what you have to say. It’s funny, that there are people I know who I share opinions with that I’m more likely to have arguments with, and people I disagree with that I enjoy hearing their perspectives. Do you think the thing with ICT is that what you don’t like are some of the promises (quick growth) tied to the challenge, or do you really have an issue with specific tools. I honestly am curious. I think MG thinks his tools (or the combinations of them are overly complex, but I’m interested is hearing your point - I am really not looking to heat up a debate again, just understand your views on trading.
Hogarste,
Here’s the very short version
I followed ICT’s first thread and witnessed his behavior back in 2010 and became a life-long ICT skeptic. :56:
I would say for the most part the tools have merit, but…
I follow the principle that a task should only be as complicated as it needs to be to get the job done.
[B]
But yeah the rags to riches promises frosted my backside the most[/B]. :mad:
PS why the red sox???
This is cool man. I have thought of moving when i can get enough capital together and I am halfway consistent. There is more ways to being wealthy and “retiring” early then just making big bucks. Finding somewhere that doesn’t cost big bucks would really speed up the process. Fascinating story.
Toekan, please stop wasting time here and open a thread on automated trading already 
I want to listen. I’d open it myself but the last thread I created (on a different topic) has been pretty lonely. It seems all of babypips is stuck killing time in threads like this one…
I’m into manual trading at the moment but I’m a decent programmer and eventually want to translate my strategies into EAs that I manually supervise. I think I read on some other thread that this is what you are doing. I would love to discuss different kinds of approaches, thoughts on translating price action into code, etc. No need to disclose complete systems.
As for those that don’t have a clue, we could open their eyes to the kinds of concepts that can be coded into an EA to enforce disciplined trading…swing highs/lows, statistical tools, time of day, impulsive moves, candlestick patterns, pivot points, etc. Almost everything can be coded.
P.S. The EA section of this forum is filled with complete rubbish so might not be the best place to start such a discussion though.
Minimum effective efficiency. I read a book once that talked about it. Why work harder than you need.
A C student gets a degree all the same as an A student.
Do the minimum required to be effective then leverage your time for other tasks.
Manual discretion can’t be coded.
If there is a consistent basis for entry and exits e.g. engulfing bar at important support/resistance, it can be written in code. If required, manual adjustments can be made through external parameters; for example to override the directional bias of the program.
I do not believe in complete automation, but partial automation makes trading easier, more disciplined and rule based. For example your entry may be discretionary but if a program can identify nearby support and resistance, a trailing stop can be automated to be put defensively behind such levels as price moves in your favor.
Pippatron - EAs are a rabbit hole down which you can disappear for months or years. When you emerge, you will still need to learn how to trade.
I recommend skipping any sort of EA coding, until you are profitable manually. Places where EAs can assist your method will then present themselves.
Don’t do it the other way around.