Just asking for some help!

Hey guys I’m a very very new forex trader and I am in dire need of help. I have started the BabyPips course and have learned some; but I am struggling. Does anyone have any suggestions on where to get the ball rolling because as of now, I feel like a lost child in a mall.

  1. What timeframes are good to trade on?
  2. What are some good indicators to use?
  3. Is the babypips course a good thing to finish?

Thank you very much!

I suggest you to go for higher time frames. One of the biggest advantages of trading the higher time frame charts is that they act of price movement. For Indicator I can say to know which indicator works best for you, you need to know the ins and out of the forex market. And of course the course of babypips you should finish that for your own good.

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  1. H1-H4, with looking for confirmations on M5-M15
  2. Moving averages
  3. Yes, it’s quite all right
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  1. Live - none until you know what you are doing. Demo - Experiment with several, it is what a demo is for. Maybe start with 1H and 15m with a couple of major pairs like, for example, EURUSD.

  2. Live - none until you know what they are really about. Demo - Experiment with various types, I also suggest MA’s are a good place to begin. But do it methodically. read about and understand each indicator that you try. Don’t just slap them on your chart and see if it “works”. There are no magic wands in forex trading.

  3. Definitely!

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Sounds good! I will definitely try and finish the course. Thanks

Yeah I’m definitely going to wait on the live trading. I’ll look in to see what MA’s are and learn from there. Thank you!

Yes those time frames seem much more stable and easier to understand, I will definitely finish the baby pips course though. Thank you very much!

  1. All time frames can be good to trade on as long as you have a decent strategy that makes use of them.
  2. Personally, I use Bollinger Bands and various Moving Averages and I am satisfied with them. I would also recommend looking into pure price action as well.
  3. I think the Babypips School is a great, even vital way to learn about Forex.

All time frames are the same because markets are fractal. Choose what suits you according to your own preferences and availability.

Don’t let yourself get sucked into the widespread forum belief that longer ones are more “stable” and have less “noise”. It’s seriously missing the point.

They all have the same amount of “noise” and fluctuations relative to their own volatility.

If you look at a chart without the time frame shown you can’t tell what it is, and that illustrates the truth that they’re all the same.

The one possible exception is that trading on much longer time frames in practice means that you normally hold positions open over weekend breaks when the markets are closed and that can cause some Monday morning accidents.

I think MACD and moving averages in general are a good way of identifying trends for “bias purposes”, in order to judge in which direction to look for entries, but I wouldn’t use them to time the actual entries. Don’t imagine that indicators have any predictive powers.

Also don’t let yourself get sucked into the belief that “signals” are better “confirmed” by “multiple indicators”. People claiming that are usually not trading profitably. In its simplest terms, their multiple indicators are all derived from recent price action.

Finish the BP school and quizzes, by all means. Good luck.

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Wow that actually helps a ton. I was so confused on the timeframes and people trying to sell me signals all over instagram lol. Thank you very much I’ve been studying non-stop this summer. Good luck you as well and thank you again!

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A suggestion for you, Mike: never listen to any information or “facts” from people trying to sell you anything at all, in this game. Those aren’t real traders - they’re real marketers.

It is certainly worth remembering that there is indeed only one, continuous price stream (except for weekends) and it is the same stream whatever timeframe one looks at. The only reason for breaking that stream up into segments is to facilitate some kind of analysis on that stream. The bars or candles break the stream up into “packets” that now only have an open, high, low, and close for each of those packets. This in itself is a form of smoothing out some of the kinks in the overall movement. The choice of timeframe is only a question of how much one wants to pre-smooth the price stream.

I admit, I am one of those that believes that longer timeframes are more likely to succeed than short TFs because of less “noise” etc - and I am a short-term trader!! :blush:

I understand what LC is saying here and I do agree that they all have the same degree of noise relative to their volatility, but what I think this means is that, for example, a 4H chart is only a magnified version of a 15m chart. But this is the point here. Whenever we take a position we are not only looking for the price to move in a certain direction, but we are also looking for it to move sufficiently far in order to get a profit out of it before it reverses again.

Moves on short term charts like 15m or 5m will have significantly less duration than on longer term charts and therefore are much more demanding in terms of timing for entries and exits. Of course, one can place the equivalent 1H indicators on a 15m charts like, for example a 10- period ma on 1H chart = approx 40-period ma on a 15m chart. But then one may as well trade the 1H chart in the first place.

There is also some justification for assuming that longer term charts are more stable - or at least, that trends last longer. And that is that big investors like pension funds etc do not, (and cannot) move huge amounts of funds back and forth between various currencies on a 15min basis. Their horizons are much longer than that. This means that the short term fluctuations are more due to short term, in/out, purely speculative trading and therefore much less related to any underlying fundamental changes in the markets conditions. At the same time there are scalpers looking for a few pips over many transactions, day-traders looking for several 10-50 pips moves per day, and swing traders looking for a little more over a little longer. Pressures on price resulting from all these various short-term interests can throw the price up and down without any determineable reason and leaves the trader with only a short term technical map to rely on.

These fast and brief fluctuations are extremely taxing on the human brain and demands an intense concentration as well as a constant presence by a screen. In contrast, longer term charts allow one to “check in” hourly or 4-hours or daily etc. Indeed the volatility may be relatively similar, but the strain on the trader may be less and perhaps the reasoning for moves rather clearer - the downside being that targets and stoploss distances are usually much wider.

It is certainly a personal issue for each trader which timeframe suits them best and is dependent on many factors.

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You have helped me immensely, Thank you very much for the detail post. 10/10!!