Making money on Forex and trading for a living

[lexys]

Looks like we got the triple play from the three wise men.

And an encore, too, it seems. Little wonder, with the board covered with all this trite stuff, that people like “Truth” decide to stop posting here. Very sadly, because this situation has now been left uncorrected for so long in the face of all the explicit warnings and explanations, it’s become self-perpetuating: it’s no longer possible for the forum to attract [I]and retain[/I] many of the potential member-participants it needs.

[Sam141]

Hello Emilio,
Thanks for your comments.

If you want to become a full time trader, then you should definitely take a look at the two suggestions I made in my first post, for people that want to quit their jobs and trade their own funds (1year of expenses and a big capital).

Another thing you want to consider is to have a back up plan in case things go wrong. In my case I have 3 strategies, A, B and C, all of them profitable. Strategy A is better than the other two so it is my main strategy, and I have the other ones in case something happens. So what is the plan? For example there has been a couple of years where I started trading but had a long downswing (bigger than my historical downswing) indicating that some conditions in the market are not favorable for my mainly strategy. So I have to switch to my alternative B strategy, and I was able to recover and made some money at the end of the year. And there has been years where I made money trading only my main strategy. The important thing to remember is that making consistant money is not the only thing; you can not follow your strategy blindly and think that it will work forever. You have to be always analyzing, improving it and developing new strategies that help you when the bad times comes. That is the key to survive in the long term.

My family was skeptical at the beginning, which is totally understood because this is speculation so there is not guarantee of a regular salary, at least not at the beginning. But when you have good results, and people see that you are successful, then all the worries disappear. It takes time for family to get used to. In my case, I am married (not children yet) and I can tell you that the first years are the hardest one. Then it gets easy.

Good luck with your decision and plan every little detail.

Cheers,

This has got to be the most uplifting post I have seen in the last 5 years of looking into Forex/cfds/spreadbetting etc.

Here is my story. I have looked into trading over the last few years on and off and never really got into “it”

I have good career in IT as an architect and have just hit a milestone birthday I wont say. I have a family too.

My plan is to share the pain with some close friends. I am getting together a small group and will do the following

Sign up to Baby pips school,
go through the various instruments to get an appreciation of FX.
outline some good risk management steps. My ethos will be to focus on loosing as little money as possible NOT making money.
sign up to dummy account - discuss potential trading strategies we will each try. - Discuss, compare notes
and after 3 months open a real account. try and repeat

from previous exp i have settled on the following inidicators let me now if you agree or not.

MA
MCAD
RSI
Stochastic?
Ichimoku cloud
fibonachhi to backtest

Im planning this for the longterm, 2.5 to get comfortable and 5-10 years to be tracking in the mulahh!
I would be appreciative if any one in here would offer some advice in what I have said

thanks

Sam.

[lexys]

from previous exp i have settled on the following inidicators let me now if you agree or not.

MA
MCAD
RSI
Stochastic?
Ichimoku cloud
fibonachhi to backtest

Hi Sam, welcome to the forum. (Nice to see something of interest creeping back into this thread.)

My ethos will be to focus on loosing as little money as possible NOT making money

This excellent approach will put you way ahead of the crowd, in my opinion.

Of the indicators you’ve mentioned (if you’ve already decided that “indicators” are the way you want to proceed), I always found MACD and the Ichimoku cloud the most useful, by far. Just a personal perspective.

Both, however, are [B][U]very[/U][/B] easy to misunderstand and misuse, and a large proportion of the “information” offered about them online seems terribly misguided, to me.

If they help, there are some observations (and links, I think) about Ichimoku settings in this thread and about MACD in this one.

I never found very much use in “stochastics”, and would put them at the bottom of the list, myself.

I’d also omit Fibonacci from the list altogether. For myself, after studying it for quite a long time, I never found any more than anecdotal, cherry-picked evidence that it has any more value than randomly drawn lines (and am aware of some independent, academic studies which report exactly the same), and can see no sensible probabilistic/statistical/mathematical reasons why it would - for me, it’s about as rational as a horoscope (and plenty of people base their trades on those, too!).

Just my perspective. Those of others, doubtless, will vary.

Good luck!

[Sam141]

@lexys

Hi Sam, welcome to the forum. (Nice to see something of interest creeping back into this thread.)

This excellent approach will put you way ahead of the crowd, in my opinion.

Of the indicators you’ve mentioned (if you’ve already decided that “indicators” are the way you want to proceed), I always found MACD and the Ichimoku cloud the most useful, by far. Just a personal perspective.

Both, however, are very easy to misunderstand and misuse, and a large proportion of the “information” offered about them online seems terribly misguided, to me.

If they help, there are some observations (and links, I think) about Ichimoku settings [b]

I never found very much use in “stochastics”, and would put them at the bottom of the list, myself.

I’d also omit Fibonacci from the list altogether. For myself, after studying it for quite a long time, I never found any more than anecdotal, cherry-picked evidence that it has any more value than randomly drawn lines (and am aware of some independent, academic studies which report exactly the same), and can see no sensible probabilistic/statistical/mathematical reasons why it would - for me, it’s about as rational as a horoscope (and plenty of people base their trades on those, too!).

Just my perspective. Those of others, doubtless, will vary.

Good luck!

Thanks for the links much appreciated The fib and Stochastic are there as I want to use them to eliminate them from the arsenal. I want to keep this like I like my ****tails - simple but sophisticated.

What platform do you trade from? Also is there anyone who uses tradingview.com for analytics?

thanks

[lexys]

What platform do you trade from?

I happen to use NinjaTrader, myself (in spite of its occasional problems) because I like it, and for other reasons mentioned here.

My view is that, in general, it probably doesn’t matter too much as long as you [I][U]avoid[/U][/I] Metatrader (MT4/MT5 - there are specific reasons for this: I’m not saying it [B]just[/B] because I think it’s a piece of junk, though that’s also true).

This thread (including post #13, which actually deserves far more weight than its appearance suggests) may be helpful: [B]301 Moved Permanently

[sebastiano]

Hello Emilio,
Thanks for your comments.

If you want to become a full time trader, then you should definitely take a look at the two suggestions I made in my first post, for people that want to quit their jobs and trade their own funds (1year of expenses and a big capital).

Another thing you want to consider is to have a back up plan in case things go wrong. In my case I have 3 strategies, A, B and C, all of them profitable. Strategy A is better than the other two so it is my main strategy, and I have the other ones in case something happens. So what is the plan? For example there has been a couple of years where I started trading but had a long downswing (bigger than my historical downswing) indicating that some conditions in the market are not favorable for my mainly strategy. So I have to switch to my alternative B strategy, and I was able to recover and made some money at the end of the year. And there has been years where I made money trading only my main strategy. The important thing to remember is that making consistant money is not the only thing; you can not follow your strategy blindly and think that it will work forever. You have to be always analyzing, improving it and developing new strategies that help you when the bad times comes. That is the key to survive in the long term.

My family was skeptical at the beginning, which is totally understood because this is speculation so there is not guarantee of a regular salary, at least not at the beginning. But when you have good results, and people see that you are successful, then all the worries disappear. It takes time for family to get used to. In my case, I am married (not children yet) and I can tell you that the first years are the hardest one. Then it gets easy.

Good luck with your decision and plan every little detail.

Cheers,

Gasanvill, that is a great post. Thank you for sharing your story. The decision of whether becoming a full time trader or not is really hard indeed as the risk is huge and there are so many other factors that a person should consider. And yes, if you have a family to support it becomes even harder. But like you said, we should never give up and we should keep trying until the right moment comes. By joining a community will help very much as well. I agree with you to always have a back up plan, it can saves us so much trouble.