Trading software, practical learning

I’ve been learning a lot of theory through babypips.com, but I still can’t do anything. Is there a resource out there, as structured as babypips, that teaches which software to get, how to use it, how to make a first trade… Practical, hands on, step by step application of what we learn at babypips’s “school of pipsology”?

You can check it here @LongNgu

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I think, YouTube videos would be helpful to you. Right now, there have so many good Forex channels on YouTube.

There aren’t.

There are very few of them, among hundreds of spam, nonsense and garbage channels mostly there for promotional reasons.

And the people who are trying to learn are - by definition - exactly the ones who can’t reliably tell them apart, because some of the crap and nonsense ones look quite professional.

It’s a dreadful, terrible way to try to learn.

Unfortunately, however many experienced members keep pointing this out in thread after thread, there are also many others with little experience and naive ideas - also posting to try to help - who advise the exact opposite. :frowning:

That’s yet another illustration of why online information is bad. There’s no quality control and you can’t tell who to believe.

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Exactly right.

For exactly the reasons Lukas explains, we should be advising forex beginners to avoid trying to learn via YouTube, not to try it.

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Perfect! I’m still at “high school” so I didn’t see that was coming.

In that case, can you point me to some online resource that you consider quality content? I’m watching those youtube trading videos to see people actually doing live what I’m learning here at babypips. I don’t know where else to learn from hands on application.

@LongNgu You have asked this question to @LukasVisser.

However, In my opinion, you should first complete the entire course of Pipsology. Then open a Demo account and try to practice what you learned in the school step by step.

If you try to consult so many sources at once you won’t be able to digest them rather you might be confused.

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You will get practical trading experience through demo trading. All the questions that you have asked like how to trade… a step by step experience of trading is only possible through demo trading. Again Youtube is a big site for learning. At least I have learned a lots of things from cooking to diaper changing of your babies. There are few trading broker in the market who have educational resources of their trader. If you are interested you can try them.

It definitely is.

And for the reasons explained above, that’s one of the reasons why the overall success-rates for learning to trade forex are so terribly low. People making the error of trying to learn that way are worsening their own chances of success.

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It’s true, most of those channels are making promotional videos! But, I see, few channels are doing really well on fundamental analysis.

That might be right, but it isn’t way for retail forex traders to learn or to make money, because “fundamentals” are one of the areas in which retail traders can’t possibly compete with the big financial institutions who have both economic analysts and faster exectution-facilities than any retail trader can manage.

I’m not saying fundamentals should necessarily be ignored altogether, but those of us who used to be institutional traders and now trade our own accounts independently have all learned that fundamentals are, overall, a hopeless long-term approach for retail traders - even well-informed, experienced ones.

But the important, broader point, as discussed above, is that Youtube is one of the things people learning how to trade need to AVOID.

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This is true.

Institutional forex is not just a bunch of individuals trading individual, speculative positions with huge size and who are ten times smarter than the retail guys and gals. Sure, individual traders within an institutional dealing team do have their own trading limits but the overall forex operation within an institution covers a wide range of operations only some of which are purely speculative.

It is worth remembering that the largest professional forex participants are not just banks. The forex operations of many companies and pension funds, for example, are bigger than the average banks in the market and even within the banking industry their core business is not about speculative currency trading.

But even in these institutions, with all their specialist research and advisors, technical analysis still plays a major role in providing a visual representation of what is going on.

Often we hear people warning that the technical indicators are lagging and therefore unreliable - even on short term timeframes. But the monthly economic release calendar is far more lagging , and even a previous months figures are updated together with the latest release. If anything can be described as driving forward by what you can see in your reverse mirror, then it is a retail trader trying to trade purely on fundamentals…and just to make it even more complex, one is trying to trade a relationship between two different currencies, each with its own fundamentals.

Technical analysis, whether it is PA or indicators, adds structure and context to a chart, but it does not add intelligence. The reading of what TA is presenting is where the rubber hits the road as far as the trader’s skill (and profits) is concerned.

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No way to avoid your point, but I think, learning from video is much interesting than reading, and I’m sure gradually YouTube will be more effective to learn.

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Thank you for your opinion, but I don’t think so. [quote=“LaughingCharlie, post:12, topic:145859”]
Youtube is one of the things people learning how to trade need to AVOID.
[/quote]