I’ll edit this post in a day or two. We’re back in The Trader’s Arms gang. Happy New Year to each and every one of you
OK, here goes. If the people who know me from the Beginner’s Disaster thread could just stay with me a moment while I bring any other visitors up to speed, it would be greatly appreciated.
I have been trading live now for just over 7 months. And the significance of the picture above is that while in the process of rebuilding my account balance, I lost approx. 40% of my account on one, very careless trade. Which you can see from the P/L section . Looking back, I’m the first to admit that this was caused by taking increased risks and basically just some pretty shoddy money management.
Over the course of the recent holiday period, I pretty much stayed away from trading, just giving myself time to think. But I’m back now, and I’m ready to start doing things the way they SHOULD have been done before.
In the latter stages of the Beginner’s Disaster thread I made a comment that even though I had been trading for some months, and at the time was successfully growing my account, I still had the feeling that I knew nothing. And without realising it at the time, I had fallen into making riskier trades so I could post of my “success” rather than making good sensible trades to grow my account in a consistant, sustainable manner.
While doing this I had also neglected to further my FX “education”.
So now it’s time to go back to the start. To start to learn the way I should have done.
This thread will serve as the record of that process. It will be basic for some time to come. Making initial trading decisions based on nothing more than candlestick patterns, Support and Resistance levels.
Y’see, imho, newbies start out looking for the wrong thing. They start, as I did, looking for a pre-set method or system, that will teach them HOW to trade, or how to become instantly profitable. We find resources like the Babypips School of Pipsology, and believe that will do the job. But it won’t.
Because these resources can only tell you what certain things do, and how they work. It’s only through time and a little trial and error, that we ultimately discover if those things are any good for us as individuals, because we are all individual with different views, likes and dislikes.
I also believe now that newbies set out, again as I did, with the wrong outlook towards FX. The bottom line is that EVERYONE is ultimately in FX to make money, ok that’s a given. But if newbies set out with that attitude, I believe they are destined to fail right from the get go.
If you are new to trading currencies, trying starting with the mindset of defending what you already have first, then worry about making money some way down the line. Might cut out some recklessness.
So this is the intention of this thread, that is the new outlook:
Go back to trading basics. Post as much detail ( ie reasons for entry, entry / exit levels, lot sizes, rik % etc etc ) of the trades I have ALREADY entered. ( I’ll only post details of a trade AFTER I’ve opened the position ). Use more disciplined money management. Develope a system. Go forward with the intention of DEFENDING WHAT I HAVE while trading instead of focusing on making more first.
As I say, this thread will therefore remain pretty basic for a while. Seasoned pros are also more than welcome to pick holes in my thoughts at any time. Although, in fairness, it has always been my experience on this site that the REAL traders tend to offer more constructive advice rather than all out criticism.
For those of you who don’t know already, I live in Glasgow, Scotland, and work a full time job which takes me out of trading for the London session and into the New York session. So I’ll have to work around that for now.
Also, my starting account balance for this year is $206.16. It was always my intention to stop posting my account balance on the Beginner’s disaster thread when I got back to my original $400 starting point. We’ll see how that goes if I ever do get back there.
I usually provide a snapshot, like the one above, to verify my account balance. However, I’m on my little one’s new pc at the moment and haven’t been allowed to download my tading platform on to it yet ( will need to do that when she’s sleeping LOL ) so I’ll post that when I can.
Also, as a last point, I have self promoted myself out of the ranks of NEWBIE. I think the normal progression in most martial art disciplines is whhite belt, then yellow belt. So after my rollercoaster last year, I think I may be allowed to don the yellow belt now, but still very much a beginner.
So I think that will do for now. New visitors to my thread will soon become accustomed to posts that can turn into stories quite quickly, so I’ll cut it off here.
I suppose the next post will start with the basics of what I’ll use on my charts. I forgot to mention to new visitors that it’s a MICRO account I trade.
So HELLO AGAIN to the people I already know, welcome in to the people I’ve yet to meet. The Trader’s Arms is now open !
HoG