I use GFT and I trade micro lots… with them… even Mini’s are available… 10 cents a pip…I like micros as I trade 1.5 lots and this gives me options in adding to or scaling out of a position… Glad to hear you are near the end of your search for your type trading… I trade alot like your choosen path… also.
Good Luck Ken
I just chatted with GFT, the guy at customer support had no idea they offer micro lots, when I pointed him to: GFT: Above all, Integrity he asked to call me back…
This was GFTUK I chatted with, since I’m in Europe.
We’ll see what comes of this.
Anyway, thanks a lot Ken for making me aware of this! I hope they do offer micro’, in which case my decision is made.
Time to get some hours of bliss now
Haven’t heard from GFT yet, I’ll give them a little more time, then I’ll contact them again.
On another note, I found this book which seems interesting. I ordered it yesterday. A review will probably appear once I’ve read it:
[B][B]Beat the Forex Dealer: An Insider’s Look Into Trading Today’s Foreign Exchange Market, by Agustin Silvani
[/B][/B]
The writer has been some sort of important person at swiss broker MIG:
Futures
The book promises an insider’s view on retail forex. Looking forward to this one.
Whereas MB may not yet meet the minimums, I’ve never heard one single negative word when it comes to safety, withdrawals, service or any of the things that we traders worry about.
In alpha testing on their MT4 platform, they cannot be beaten as a substantial “player” for your money.
If you should decide to go with them, there is one thing I might advise, and that is, if they continue their level 2 “depth of market” information on the MT4 platform, turn it off.
As a new trader, the constant movement up and down will psychologically affect how you trade, causing confusion easily as what you are seeing is a numerical representation of a “tick chart”, and that type of chart is very offputting to one not used to what it is saying, and if you’re doing longer term trades, will actually make you insecure about your position.
Once you see it, you’ll understand pretty easily.
Well, I’ve been waiting for a rep to contact me, but tonight patience ran out and I opened their live chat.
Below is the chat session:
Welcome to GFT! Please wait for a site operator to respond.
Chat InformationYou are now chatting with ‘GFT30’
GFT30: Thank you for chatting with GFT. May I please have your name and email address to better assist you?
you: Hi, I’ve contaced GFT twice in the last week
GFT30: Ok
you: Been promised an answer to my q
you: still not heard
you: Question is: do you offer micro lots or not?
you: GFT: Above all, Integrity
you: says you do
you: but you haven’t been able to confirm this
GFT30: We do not offer micro, only mini
you: A fellow trader says he has micro lots with you, and the above link says they’re offered
you: so which is it?
GFT30: We have never offered micro lots. I do not see on the page where you find that. And please tell me where you clicked on our home page to get there
you: I found the link through googling GFT forex and micro lots
you: try it yourself
you: Up to 400:1 leverage on accounts ranging from $250 to $1,000,000 and micro lot sizes of 1,000
you: cut and paste from the link
you: under the text about price alarms
you: in the benefits section
GFT30: Let me look at it, one minute
you: sure
GFT30: I see it but I have never seen this page before. We did you click from our homepage at gftforex.com
you: haven’t found the link that way, found it through google
you: looks to be correct though as far as I can tell
GFT30: That is not the way our home page looks at all - I don’t know this site but I do know 100% we do not offer micro lots
GFT30: How much risk capital do you have?
you: enough for mini really, but I absolutely want micro lots anyway
you: ok, well it’s good to get a straight answer at last. thanks and good evening
GFT30: Take care
you: same to you
I do believe Ken Lee, so I’m guessing there’s some confusion inside the company. Anyway, GFT is ruled out for me at the time being.
My choice is now between Oanda and Alpari
I had ruled out Oanda earlier due to their use of java, which I really dislike, but they offer trailing stops that are serverside, so this sort of levels the competition with Alpari, since MT4 has a large flaw in that area.
Oanda also has the advantage that they’re accessible through any computer, whereas with Alpari you have to have MT4 installed.
Choice made.
Filled in the online application a few minutes ago.
I chose Oanda in the end. That felt right for me.
Going to scan my ID and confirm that part asap, then it’s time to fund the account.
Live is close now.
Waiting for my funds to reach Oanda now.
Got Silvani’s book yesterday and started reading. Was too tired so I only skimmed the first chapters. Seems promising.
Yes indeed, funds reached my account friday afternoon and I couldn’t resist making my first real trade.
I had little expectation of getting a winner as the setup wasn’t the kind of quality I want, but I wanted to get the first trade over with.
I ended up losing 0,3% of my account, which is fine.
Actually it might be pretty good to start with a small loser to remind oneself that trading isn’t easy.
I’ve finished Silvani’s book btw. Absolutely worth reading. I got a better picture of how retail trading and overall FX trading works. It’s a dirty game to say the least. He gives the advise to always take a screenshot when you enter a trade, just in case. He says that even pro traders do this.
Other things he mentions are that using multiple lots is a very good idea and that pivot points aren’t so bad either. He also talks about money management, that it’s all important.
Silvani turned out to belong to those who do not advocate using too many indicators. Since that’s my view of trading also it was nice to get that view from a proven professional.
He contradicted himself slightly I thought by first stating that forex tends to yield better results if you trade based on technicals, than if you trade based on fundamentals. Later on in the book however he showed quite clearly that fundamentals also play a role. I guess he meant that most traders don’t trade such long timeframes that fundamentals play a big role.
His chapter on stops and stop hunting and why it’s a good idea not to place too tight stops etc was very interesting. If anyone was wondering, according to Mr Silvani, yes - stop hunting is a very real phenomenon.
He also points out that pro’s tend to fade moves, while retail customers tend to buy breakouts, most of which turn out to be fakes.
In another chapter he mentions how you can get a good view of why a currency pair is moving: look at the crosses.
For instance, if EUR/USD is moving down, is that due to euro weakness or dollar strength? Looking at euro crosses and/or dollar crosses may answer that. If euro is weakening against other currencies as well while dollar crosses show mixed results, it’s probably euro weakness.
It may then pay to choose the euro pair with the nicest potential move. Maybe EUR/GBP is at a strong support level, while EUR/JPY is at a strong resistance level. Guess which would be the best choice to short then?
He talks about news trading, how dealers position themselves before, how they act depending on expectations and actual news numbers etc.
I can really recommend this book, quite good. He also includes some tips about setups to beat the dealers in the last chapters.
Let’s end this somewhat confused review with a Wall street saying quoted in the book: “A broker will only make you broker”
Silvani mentioned in his book, as I’ve read elsewhere also, that retail traders positions are a hot commodity.
Pro’s like to look at what the retail losers are betting on, since that is almost certain to be wrong - ergo, betting against, or contrary, must be right.
I couldn’t help but feel a bit happy when I found out that Oanda actually publish info on their customer base’s average positions of longs and shorts on the major pairs.
I’m not sure as I haven’t looked into it properly - just found it minutes ago - but it seems that this might be used as somewhat of a contrarian indicator.
Taking EUR/USD, apparently a little over 50% of positions are long on this pair as of this writing, which is great since I’m bearish.
Worth looking into more.
Oh, and speaking of what positions pro’s are holding, looking at the CME cot report further suggests that there’s a short bias on EUR/USD.
Latest info is from 24/3 - a bit out of date. But still, retailers such as I will have to make do as best we can.
Thanks mh for all the information. Its much appreciated, especially about your problems with GFT.
The books sounds useful. Could you post its ISBN.
isbn 978-0-470-72208-4
Yesterday was my day off and I spent it in front of the computer, in front of Oanda to be more precise.
I would say that yesterday was the biggest and best learning experience I’ve had so far.
Trading live is not a bit different than demo - it’s more like another planet. There’s no way to prepare oneself I think. I thought I had it pretty well figured out and still live trading came like a punch in the face.
Not that it went bad, in fact I ended up increasing my account about 1%
But that’s not the whole truth. I should add that I was up more than 2% at one point, not to mention down 9%. That happened when I got ****y and broke all my rules. Of course Oanda’s service went down world wide at the same time, so it was just luck really that I was able to close later and end the day in the green. This brings me to what I’d like to comment on.
I’ve learned:
[ul]
[li]My method works, when followed[/li][li]I’m an idiot who didn’t follow it[/li][li]I lack more than I thought in the way of mental trading discipline[/li][li]I get greedy and bored easily which can, and almost did yesterday, turn out to be deadly to my account.[/li][li]I need to move up to 15m-1H for more reliable candle formations, to easy to get whipped on 5m[/li][li]In strong trends my method only gives signals when retracements start, I need to work on that. I’m thinking about using my BB MA’s as dynamic trendlines and trade candle formation bounces off of those areas[/li][li]I’m good at sensing what the current overall trend is, which saved my trading ass:[/li]NEVER trade countertrend, I got in trouble when I broke that commandment - the trend is truly your friend
[li]Low leverage is good for me as it stops me from opening to big positions[/li][li]I need to stay small - very small, in order to not get nervous and make bad decisions on open trades[/li][/ul]
So, I promise myself this:
I will never force a trade again
I will follow my method of trading
I will focus on not losing money, instead of on making more
If the gambling devil reappears I will defeat him
Never could I have thought that I would show such poor behaviour, but I did. Lesson learned. Like my old friend used to say: learning by doing is the ONLY way to really learn.
Yesterday I DID and it didn’t help that I had read all of those books and threads and what not. Nothing can beat experience. To fellow beginner’s out there - make sure you survive long enough to get that experience. That is now my number one goal - to not lose money and learn
Hi mh,
That is exactly what I’m going thru too…lol
In my case I didn’t do the revenge or greedy trades, it was more like chickening out when the trade was in drawdown, and I took the loss fearing it could get worse. Probably due to the no stop loss conditioning I had while demoing. Then there’s the missing-a-perfectly-good-setup due to doubt…arrgh!
So now that we know what we need to work on, I believe we will work it out!
Absolutely. Of course we will.
Even though day 1 didn’t go as planned, it feels good to have it over with. For me, as the excitement dies down over having gone live, I’m sure emotions will be easier to control.
Luckily I didn’t do any revenge trades at least, just greedy ones. Bad enough, I know.
Recognizing that there’s a problem means we’re on our way to the solution already.
We will get there!
Hi MH, I wish you the best of luck in the days and weeks to come.
Just one point. You said as many others have said before you, to never trade against the trend.
Well, maybe I’m not as sharp as the rest but to what time frame are you referring to?
If a daily trend is blatantly downward and you wish to open a position on a lower Tf, say 15 min, and that is a blatant upward trend ( and I’m assuming you were daytrading ) would you have taken a long or a short position.?
Oanda has 3H, not 4H which most other brokers use. (just to clarify why I’m not writing 4H)
Dr Alexander Elder suggested to look for trend direction (or lack of trend) at a time frame about 4x longer than the time frame you trade from.
For me that means I could either trade from 15m and determine trend using 1H, or trade from 30m and use 3H for trend.
So, if 3H is showing a down trend, the option of buying is out. I would then seek to sell when price on 30m retraces against the 3H trend and forms a reversal formation suggesting that it’s about to resume the main trend.
Your last sentence wasn’t very clear Mh.
Can I take it to mean that once the 30 min chart retraces and follows the same dirction as the 3 hour chart you would then sell?
Yes, when price on the 30m stops going against the main trend and turns back into the same direction as the 3H, then I’d sell
Trying to buy the dips and tops so to say. Tops in this example.
Just reread what i wrote in that post. No… not crystal clear was it;) Probably means bedtime.
Thanks mh I’ve got it now