Ok…maybe not trials and tribulations, but it was the best I could think of. Just for the heck of it I figured I’d take this little corner of the forums to allow others to follow a newbie trader from beginning to mega-riches…or something like that. I would just create a blog somewhere, but there would likely be little constructive advice and way too many invites to ‘hot chat’…whatever that is. Anyways, I’ll do my best to follow up on this post if others are interested, perhaps I should’ve put this in the newbie area, but I just posted a question there and it would seem a bit selfish to see two of my posts sitting on top each other. If there’s interest and feedback…great! If not, well then I’ll simply lurk around and laugh at everyone elses silly posts in my parents basement while I watch reruns of Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
Guess I'll give a bit of background just for kicks so you know where I'm coming from and I do wish for good advice as always, though these boards are full of excellent information. I'll be starting with a very small micro account on Oanda, on the demo accounts (about three months) I did quite well with between 8-10% profit a day when I devoted the time to it. I enjoy and seem to have a knack for scalping, but I have done well on longer term trades mainly because I got distracted and didn't take my profit when I usually would've. I enjoy trying to explain a short position to my wife (heh...that almost sounded dirty)...and getting the 'I still don't get it' from her. I'm attempting to get a better grasp on many of the basic systems and will attempt to use them as I feel I understand them. Again, feedback is encouraged as I'm learning and hopefully others can learn from it also. So...here goes....
Day -2/-1
Here are the things I need to start before I can really start
Money…ok, have a bit, I’m going to add a bit to it weekly, but yes, have money
Bank account…I set up a new account seperate from my ‘real’ bank account so I don’t get crazy and pull money out and suffer the wrath of my wife
2 Forms of Picture ID…I assume this is the same for all platforms so I have my passport and since one of them had to have my current address on it, I finally went and got a drivers license today here in FL since I’ve been here for 8 months…guess I’m staying
Account verification, sent all my pretty pictures to Oanda, they responded and authorized me within about 8 hours…pretty impressed
Waiting…well just waiting for the part of my bank account to be set up so that I can transfer money out to be up and running, then I’ll have to wait for Oanda to recieve and accept the money…guess that will be the next update.
Ok, I’m stuck until step 5 happens…please follow up for the exciting …
Chapter 2: Why $100 bills make great toilet paper…or…Do I get a bulk discount on Ramen Noodles?..coming soon:)
BTW: By very small start I mean $60…I’ll drop another $500 in there soon, but yup…it’s $60 to start this account
‘There are no facts, only interpretations’
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Good for you. Excellent, sensible and safe start. Your wife should be proud of you. Oanda is good just beware of the major spread changes at news time and good luck. I shall certainly enjoy following your story and I think you will do a great service to those who dont realise what it takes to move from demo to ‘real’
Thanks for the support…will be a few more days than planned as apparently this new bank I’m using takes about two days to set up the abililty for me to se online banking, that should be set tomorrow…transfer money…looking at Monday at the earliest to start. I’ve been trying on demo accounts to buy very small quanities to get myself accustomed to only seeing tiny little gains and losses…and there will not be a whole lot of room for losses here. I guess as I update on progress I might as well put my account balance too, it seems customary to protect that information, but what the heck…it might actually be interesting. Thanks again and I’ll update soon (I hope).
Well, new snag here which will most likely push my start to the beginning of the year. In my mind a ‘wire transfer’ would be no different than setting them up as though they were a bill that I would pay from my account…not so. After contacting my bank they’ve informed me that it is $25 to send a wire transfer, this wouldn’t make a bit of sense since I’m only sending $60 or so, this leaves me with the options of a paper check or PayPal. I haven’t written a paper check in about three years and I’m not about to start now so that leaves me with PayPal.
It will take 3-5 business days for the money to make it to my PayPal account, then another day or so to appear in my Oanda account, putting me at almost next year. Apparently the charges through Oanda are .30 per transfer +2.9% of the transaction, out of annoyance I simply moved the money over and now thinking about it, I should've moved over a few hundred extra so that I don't have to go through this hassle too soon again. So that's where I'm at now, guess I learned a bit and hopefully someone else does also.
‘There are no facts, only interpretations’
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Yes, a wire transfer is a different animal from paying a bill through your bank account. Not only does it cost more, but it takes longer, too. :mad:
PayPal is a huge convenience if you have your bank account connected to it. Naturally, Oanda won’t pay the service charges, so you’ll have to figure that into your deposit to make sure that you’ll have what you need after those charges are deducted.
yo guy, One of the options with my broker was to write a check to (I’m patient - and being patient pays = no 25$ fees). Forget the transfer and go for a MONEY ORDER. Contact oanda first of course before you do and I’m willing to bet they will accept it the same as if it were a check b/c well, they won’t turn down money in no form lol. I too am check illiterate, but I can make a mean MO
Josef…out of curosity, where exactly is ‘the outskirts of Detroit’? I’m originally from Michigan and just recently moved to Florida. I’m pretty sure that they will accept a money order but I wanted to know the quickest way that it will work for me for moving money in later, now that I know I’ll simply move more money into PayPal and transfer it as I need it…the seperate bank account that I set up doesn’t have any paper checks…well…maybe it does, but I didn’t ask for any…anyways, perhaps when I move over a larger amount of money I will simply use a check to avoid the PayPal fees…thanks for the input though, guess I just had my heart set on doing everything from my computer.
‘There are no facts, only interpretations’
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Well, finally got my first taste of live trading, took awhile for the money to get there and was out of town Friday, but got to play around a bit on Thursday evening. I’ll give ya’ the breakdown of money in a second, but did learn some very valuable lessons. First, investing in and against the same currency is a bad thing it would seem, second having a stop/loss in place is a good thing. I was originally going to only put in $60, but I ended up putting in $150.79 (after fees, etc…). I’m happy to say, at least I didn’t lose money, the amount I made was pretty small, but as a percentage I can’t complain.
$155.00 -original deposit
$ 3.89 -Pay Pal fees
$ .30 -Oanda fee for deposit
$ .02 -fee to change leverage
$150.79 left to play with…
$ 3.79 profit for the day or 2.5%
Nothing too exciting, I was up by about $17 at one point, but as everyone knows, that can dissappear rather quickly. It was nice to finally get started and to not lose money on the first day, I know $3.79 isn’t too exciting, but when looking at it as a percentage…I’m OK with that.
It’s great to see that you jumped on the live train…I was thinking the same things as you were when I started live, and yes, it seems easy from first glance(and for the first few weeks)…but with only that much money in your account, and the amount you feel you deserve to make after making several winning trades, you may be tempted to overleverage big time…and just like at one point you made 17$ (which for your account size, you shouldn’t have been making in the first place) you can just as easily make 3-500$ at one point, and lose it all in a minute and thensome…
They say it happens and has happened to the best of them, and you won’t see it until you’ve expereinced such drawdown yourself on your real account. Then things really start clicking then…the trick to this is to stick through it, get back on your feet, and re-fund the account and keep at it until you get it right…funny thing is that eventually most failed traders would, if only they wouldn’t throw in the towel so quickly…
Well, end of my first week of trading, an odd week to be trading with all the holidays, but I couldn’t wait any longer. Ended up for the week up after a few losing days…what I’ve generally done so for is set up a pretty low stop loss and left my take profit open until I get jittery about it. With a smaller account and money that I can afford to lose, I’ve been somewhat aggressive, more aggressive than I would be if it was ‘real’ money at stake, I know that I need to figure out what my tolerance for loss is and also trade a bit smarter and less aggressive…so without the entire run down of the week, this is how it went…
Starting $ 150.79
Ending $ 160.79
Profit $ 10.00 or 6.6%…not much but still nice for a percentage
If I had set my stop/losses with a bit more space I would’ve made more, but I basically set most of them at a point where I was making money, then let them ride until I woke up or got home from work. It is strange using a micro account as the strategy seems to be a bit different as noted in an earlier post, but hopefully I’ll continue to find what works for me and thank you all for your comments and suggestions! Happy New Year all!
Well Dwerth…have been attempting scalping sort of…when I’m able to sit in front of the computer I’ll take 2 or 3 dollars when I can, but that didn’t work out so well for the most part, was down about $13 on Friday morning, but I took a look at the 3 hour history, then the 10 second history of EUR/GPB before I went to bed, watched some TV and saw a very nice increase of about $18 which would at least put me back into the positive for the week. I reset my stop/loss for there which I would be happy with at about 5am and went to work for the day. My stop/loss kicked into affect about 5:30 with about $28 profit, leaving me with around $10 for the week after my previous losses…if I had set my stop/loss a bit less I would’ve made much more than that, but at least I left the week on a positive note.
It is odd with such a small amount to start with so I'm more concerned about % than anything, but I'm dedicated to see that it can be done with a small initial investment. If I hadn't lost money on earlier scalping attempts my profit would've been more like 19%, but I'm not compliaining...this is a learning exercize for me. Thanks for the question and please feel free to toss in any tips, I'm hoping that other new investors can at least learn something out of this thread.
My normal trading patterns are on the EUR/GBP and the USD/CHF myself, and last week was good to me indeed. I don’t have the time to scalp due to my job, so I generally go for trends on the 2hr - daily timeframe.
Well…many lessons learned this week, mainly that most of what people suggest you do comes from experience and is…well…good advice. This is one of the main reasons I started with a small account as I know I needed to use real money, but I also know that I need to actually lose it to learn something, which I did quite well this week. So, how did I find ways to lose money this week you ask? Quite a few ways, one was being on the wrong side of way too many trades, which happens to everyone I know, but I was actually on the correct side of more trades than on the wrong side, but there was a problem with that.
My problem is that even when I was on the correct side of a trade, I set my stop/loss without enough room to weather the quick little spikes that happen all the time, you know the ones that pop on the 5 second chart just long enough to take your money, then drop right back out. I kept trying to convince myself that I was on the correct side of the trade, would do the same thing again, and lose money again within a few minutes...this is a very, very stupid thing to do, yet I did it over and over, basically nickle and diming myself to death with them this week...on top of investing way to high a percentage in each trade.
So, as my weekly update, here goes...it's not pretty, but the lessons I learned were worth every penny.
Starting $ 160.79
Ending $ 83.95
Losses $ 76.84 or 47.8%…glad I’m using a micro account
Well, hopefully someone else will learn from this, I’m happy about the lesson and the money was disposable anyways so wish me luck next week!
As you say your experience reinforces the wisdom of starting with a micro account. Remember this game is all about controlling the losses which you havent done well. Those spikes are often the pros taking out the weak holders who are trailing far too close. Less than $100 for these lessons, a bargain I would say!
It sounds like you need to relax the stop losses significantly. What would the outcome had been if you would double your stop loss - or triple it?
Stop losses IMHO are an improperly used part of many traders psyche. They use them to limit risk which is spot on, but they use them inappropriately and place them carelessly and it ends up doing MUCH more harm than good. Relax the stops so you don’t get whipsawed and hold your trades till it hurts.
How many good moves have you been in recently that you got kicked out of only to see the trade go onto work further? If you can answer >1 you need to adjust something here because your current rules aren’t working effectively.
This isn’t the end of the world, but its a signal you need to heed and modify your setups accordingly.
Very true on the stoploss part, it’s what killed me this week. My first week I set them up for what I was willing to risk, then somewhere along the line it became more of how little I could risk with going for a big gain…kinda’ like trying a ‘hail Mary’ pass on every play…or to continue a sports analogy (which I hate), at about 20 at bats, I hit 1 homerun. My biggest problem was that I did well in demo, made money my first week live, which made me over confident and attempting to over protect my gains instead of using them wisely.
My first week my stoploss was closer to 40-50 pips when I felt confident, this week was more like 10-15, and since on every purchase you start a little in the hole, one tiny little spike killed me. I'd say 2/3 of my investments would've been correct if my stoploss didn't kick me out first, 1/3 were not good. Sad thing is, with the gambler mentality that you have to get caught up, it only makes it worse. I was almost hoping to lose money the first week as I knew this would be a problem for me, but I guess it's this week instead.
Again, I'm quite OK with this, it's a learning experience and I'm not familiar with another thread that covers the 'hey, new live investor stumbling...take a look!' angle. I'm just glad to learn this now and hopefully get a solid, realistic plan for myself before I drop a bunch of cash into this.
Thanks for the input though...if I x2 or x3 my stoplosses last week...I'd be golden, I'm currently only in 1 pair and have adjusted accordingly, I'm going to attempt something a bit more like my week 1 strategy than my failing 2nd week strategy.
Hey, stop me if I’m wrong, but it seems that you’re trading the small time frames right? Do you mind saying which exactly?
Well if it’s under 15min, I’m guessing that the SPREAD is a large percentage of your profit target. Now I could say those timeframes are harder to predict accurately, but that’s just my personal opinion. The fact that the spread is eating away at your profits, starting you off way behind percentage wise, is definitely going to kill you. You can profit, but if you could profit that way, then you could doubly profit on larger timeframes. And with less trades comes less transaction costs from the spread. Trading something like USD/JPY which usually has a low spread anyway, would you rather gain 110pips in 10 trades or 100pips in 2 trades assuming 3pip spread which hasn’t yet been included into your gains. Think about that!
Goodluck to you, I enjoy your thread so far and hope you continue
Been following this thread with interest, congratulations on your
candour Azumel.
I have highlighted the one piece in your post which struck me the
most, the old saying is “if it works don’t try to fix it” This of course
refers to “live” trading, if you were in demo mode I would say tinker
as much as you like, demo is where all of the wrinkles should be
ironed out.
Also took this from daedalus’ post, this would be in line with your
1st week’s profit.
It sounds like you need to relax the stop losses significantly. What would the outcome had been if you would double your stop loss - or triple it?
This thread should be a beacon to all newbies, if they bother to read
it of course, keep up the good work.
