Thank you I’m going to look into this.
If trading the news is the main factor for your success ,good luck to you
It is possible to trade purely based on technical analysis but it is worthwhile monitoring what events are coming up in the near future such as important calendar releases, national holidays, central bank announcements, etc. These need to be taken into account because they can affect price movements in the periods before they occur in ways that are not normal market activity. E.g. speculative traders adjusting their positions.
Technical analysis is not something “independent” of fundamental events. It is just another way of analysing the same thing! You have a choice:
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Either you read the news and decide what you think prices will probably do and trade your view, or…
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Analyse what the entire market is actually doing (as reflected in the price movements) in response to the news and trade that instead - this is TA!
The only thing that we are interested in is the opinion of those participants who are active in the market. Since forex is a non-centralised, free market then we can assume that price moves in response to the imbalance in buying and selling pressures at the present time. TA is a method of measuring these underlying pressures and enabling us to identify any distinctive features such as a trend or range or patterns.
But TA, or any other form of analysis, cannot tell you with certainty what will happen next. That is where reading the TA becomes an art or skill. But it does provide a method to assess the probability of the near term price movement.
I am not sure what you mean here by trading the news. It can mean deliberately taking positions immediately prior to, or after, news releases, just looking to gain from the immediate reaction. Or it can mean forming a view on likely future direction based on a fundamental analysis of the current changing economic condition.
So the choice is to either form your own view based on news or analyse the “crowd” view of the news based on analysis of price movement, i.e. their collective action in the market.
I think a hybrid of the two is not a bad solution such as holding a view but waiting for TA to confirm to you whether the majority of market participants are also holding the same view - and acting on it.
There are two kinds of participants. There are the speculators who take positions because they believe price should be higher or lower than where it is now, and then there are the commercial interests who are active because the current price suits their business purposes as it is. E.g. import/export business.
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[quote=“schoolwagger, post:21, topic:643187, full:true”]
Yes and the difficulty is not knowing whether the potential sweet spot you are spending time on is going to eventually result is a successful strategy. I’m having big issues Deciphering between luck and logic…
[/quote]lots said about " swanky" strategies and sophisticated methods.I believe the bare bones of success or biggest factor is money management.
This is a very perceptive point. 
The importance of managing one’s capital is very underestimated, but in the long term, it is crucial to the overall success of a trading account. And not only in its success, but also in its optimisation.
It is often claimed, and I agree with it myself, that a good trader can make profits from even a mediocre strategy, but a poor trader will manage to screw up their account even with a top-rate strategy.
One needs to ask oneself why that may be. And if it is true then the answer is somewhere else than in the strategy…
Risk and money management are restrictive, boring and difficult to keep in mind consistently. But therein lies one of the major differences between trading and gambling. And we all know that gambling rarely ends well!..
[quote=“SovoS, post:26, topic:643187”]
often claimed, and I agree with it myself, that a good trader can make profits from even a mediocre strategy, but a poor trader will manage to screw up their account even with a top-rate strategy.
[/quote] Yes I agree .In layman’s terms it about finding entries where the potential of the profit, is greater than the loss .I remember a while back listening to a video on YouTube "What successful traders do " one of the points ,was they cut their losers early, let their winners run. Im not entirely sure of the second half of that statement, as catching the trend is far from straightforward.I have used both tight stops and a wider stop to give the trade breathing space, am contemplating reverting back to a tighter stop ,one can always re enter the trade later.
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I possibly don’t cut losers early enough. I almost never find that a losing trade goes to 50% of my risk and then recovers to a profit. Which suggests I could easily halve the entry to stop-loss distance.
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I guess it what your comfortable with as a trader
My post was not directed at you.
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You have a very good grasp and understanding of the core basics underpinning successful trading! 
Certainly, exit strategies, both target and stoploss, are the key to an optimised trading experience.
It is relatively simple to find trade entry methods but it is still possible to lose overall if the exit rules don’t function.
If stops are too far then losses are too high, but if they are too near then its death by a thousand cuts! 
Equally, a winning trade cut off early ruins the overall profitability but holding on to a winning trade too long runs the risk of a sudden collapse and loss of a big chunk of the potential gain.
Putting money management and exit strategy together shows that traders need to focus on their overall returns rather than the P/L of each trade separately. I.e. a loss is not a mistake unless it is due to a rogue trade, it is part of the overall strategy that encompasses and accounts for a percentage of loss.
That is what trading probability is all about. We know and accept that in order to win we have to accept loss. But the name of the game is two steps forward one step back rather than vice versa!
Your posts are good!
loss is not a mistake unless it is due to a rogue trade, it is part of the overall strategy that encompasses and accounts for a percentage of loss.This is one of the main underpinning reason I believe why people fail,providing the trader has a reasonable empirical grasp of trading.
I was very rude, uncalled for. Apologies.
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It isn’t lol, I’m still learning. I am figuring out how to trade the momentum resulting from calendar events but even that’s taken some time.
Comes down to size of data set so you can ride out any good variance you might be experiencing.
It is possible but I would just use an economic calendar just to avoid high volatility with red folder news