I’ve been here before but i never followed through with the training and forums. I came here in 2012 under a different nickname but just never came back due to interests elsewhere on the web. So after about 5 losing years straight, I’ve got no where to turn until i remembered babypips.
Now i’m back and going through the " school " and making sure i didn’t miss anything. So far i’ve got 100% on all my quizzes and it doesn’t look like i’ve missed any details about trading currency. However i’m now finishing the pipsology middle school and moving on to high school so lets see what happens in the next set of quizzes and find out if i forgot or just missed anything at all.
I’ve lost for 5 years straight. But i’ve had some winners inbetween. Once early in 2013-14 (i think, i can’t remember for sure) i made $1300 off the Japanese data when abonomics was first getting reved up. Then just two months ago i made $200 and withdrew $100. But quickly lost $100 of it after that.
I can’t seem to make consistent profits at all. But every once and a while i’ll get lucky. I’m back again to try to see if babypips can offer more than stevehopwood or forexfactory. Most of the other forums are crap and nothing but hero worship.
Maybe forex is just a scam, maybe those people who claim they’ve made it are paid to say that, and the only winners in this game are brokers and institutional banks who do high frequency trading through robots and those who have insider information. Maybe fair retail trading is impossible and that’s why you never made any real profit
not to toute my own horn but in my aud usd thread i have never lost a profit
It can be done and its not threw fundementals and all that crap its maths and very very hard maths at that combinating 100 pairs to get an answer even it is it just 5 pips last one usd cad sell
Hi Josh.
There’s a lot more lessons and quizzes than the 4 you’ve taken so far.
Try to stick with the school, not only will you learn about other aspects of forex, you will learn what sort of trading is likely to suit you best.
Im with Jake, you need to journal your trades so you can review them to see what you’re doing wrong. It can be tough but you need to be brutally honest with yourself to uncover your mistakes and eradicate them.
You clearly have a good knowledge of the basics of how markets work etc and after five years you also clearly know a lot about trading in general, but you are not making money. You are not talking about a sudden bad patch, you are consistently losing throughout the period.
I think the problem could perhaps be that you do not have a clear strategy or methodology in your training? Do you tend to change your strategy often, incorporating new thoughts, rejecting this, trying that, follwoing this, modifying that etc? If so, then it could be a kind of catch 22 situation in that whenever something that starts with promise seems to go wrong then you are effectively starting from scratch again with something else. Do you stick with the same timeframes or do you change from intraday to long-term etc?
If this is the case then I think you need to select your strategy and stick rigidly with it for a long enough period to be able to assess it properly. I would suggest that you start by defining your overall trading framework in terms of short or long term, currency pairs, risk/reward parameters, equity management, etc and then define a trading strategy that fits those parameters. And don’t try too much too soon…
I also emphasise what Eddie and Jake have said above. Journalling is essential in trading and it is incredibly revealing as to where exactly the problem lies. For example, are your winning trades greater in number but less in pips than your losses. When you can define where the problem lies then you can do something to correct it.
By way of example, I have a set methodology with preset stops and targets, but sometimes I close a position manually when I feel that it is not going to reach the target. A few months back I decided to analyse precisely these trades that I had pre-closed and see what would have happened if I had left them alone to meet either the target or stop - to my surprise ( and bit of a dent to my ego ) the results showed that I would have performed better to have left them alone! Now I seriously think twice about pre-closing positions! The point being here, that journalling gives you the tools to analyse your results and pinpoint where any problems lie - as well as helping to optimise your profits.
I think your ‘two major winners’ gives me more clues as to how losses came about. I think the idea of having a percentage limit loss for each trade (1% would be highest IMO) is very important. You should be able to see through your backtesting/ forward demo testing that any trading plan you have is profitable before risking any further capital. Keep going, you can do it !
) the results showed that I would have performed better to have left them alone! Now I seriously think twice about pre-closing positions! The point being here, that journalling gives you the tools to analyse your results and pinpoint where any problems lie - as well as helping to optimise your profits.