Glad to hear you bagged a few pips there. Protect them. Making money in this business is not the hardest thing…it’s keeping the money that throws us all for a loop.
Always keep in mind that trading is not easy. Anyone can put on a trade. Wheter an individual trade wins or loses is largely luck, but succeeding over the long run is what takes an enormous amount of mental fortitude and discipline. You need alot of confidence in your system of choice if you expect to be able to trade it through difficult times. And, as you said, they will come.
One of the best ways to gain this confidence, in my opinion, is through exhaustive amounts of testing. Make sure that whatever approach you use is verifiable through testing, in all kinds of market conditions. If it is tried, tested and true then you should be ok through the tough times.
Sounds like a long time but i am not sitting at my computer from 7pm - 1pm
I am sitting on the couch, watching tv drinking a beer,
when my laptop beeps and i am in the trade then its probably only a half hour or so…in and out is my thing…sometimes that doesn’t happen til 9 or 11pm, there is no set pattern
example the other night i made 23 pips from 715pm to 745pm…didnt want to be greedy so i got out…THE KEY is knowing when to close the trade…Are you a short time trader or do you want to let it ride ??? Letting it ride scares the hell out of me and is TOO much stress … I am happy to make 23 dollars in 45 min…You live to trade another day
The thing I don’t like about daily trading is the overnight interest. It really eats into the profits. On the other hand, I don’t have to be at the computer and it is less stressful than monitoring the computer for 5 or six hours after I get off work. Watching the charts after 6:00 est is like watching paint dry. Actually I think I would rather watch paint dry. I would like to thank all that have posted, I did some hard thinking after reading some of the posts and decided to try to modify a few strategies I have. I just hope after a few more months this continues to work.
I prefer to trade on a daily chart just to maintain a flexible life. I work fulltime 40-50 hours a week. Every night at 12AM EST, I wait for the candle to close, check out my indicators on the various pairs I trade on and make my moves. K.I.S.S.
Something else to consider is the fully automated trading systems that exist nowadays - for example strategy runner - trades can be fired out while you’re at work from a remote server so you don’t even have to leave your computer on.
IMO the biggest challenge is to find a strategy that works consistently!
It seems right now when the the usd is sinking it is easy to make pips on the long term trade. I think though that if they start moving up and down more it will be a lot harder to trade once a day on the daily chart. I think even the uneducated can see the major trends happening against the dollar and that is what is allowing me to make such large gains. Does anyone else think that I am correct in that thinking?
Bizbad, I disagree with not making profits once the downward trend of the USD ends. Sure there will be some sideway movement is some pairs and some channeling. Thats when you switch to a support and resistance method of trading but also the USD will at some point move back up and thats when you start buying USD instead of selling it. Also keep in mind that there are other cross pairs like AUD/JPY or GDP/CHF you don’t have to trade just the USD. Look at other pairs and find the ones that are trending at the time. If there are no pairs that are moving one way or another stay out until the market begins to move again, it will.
Hi!
I have the same problem that others had - i can not monitor charts for hours. I could spend 1-2h every day for trading Forex, so daytrading is not for me. The most appropirate trading style for me or would be like Sam the swing trader has in example at babypips school. I would not prefer to do scalping - I dont think it is suitable for my personality. I’d like to trade with a system that would use limit orders, so I could place them once a day and then leave them as thay are. How could I create such system? I heard a term support/ressistance trading many comments ago, could someone explain it closer? That would be great if someone who trades with once set limit, sl and tp orders could lead me on the correct way. If you don’t mind, would you explain how exactly you do it?
deadalus, could you help me and others explaining how you use fib levels?Thanks in advance.
Emils - I sent you and others who asked questions about fibs an email with some google videos on the subject. Let me know if you have any questions or you didn’t get the email.
its definitely possible to trade with a full time job but you’ll have to trade long term. There are plenty of systems out there that are geared for this type of trading. Check out the swing trading forums and even the free trading systems section for some of these systems. Happy trading!
Emils,
I will try and discribe how I trade and support/resistance. I am more of a long term trader, meaning I will be in a trade from a few days to several months. I never trade more than 5 lots on a mini account, but most of my trades are done at 2 lots, unless I see a very good set up and everything lines up perfect (fundimentals/charts) then I may use 5 lots. I trade on a Daily chart only. My indicators are a 10 period moving average and a 20 period moving average and lower indicator is a stochastic moving index set to (9,3,3). I only look for trades in the direction of the trend. So if I am looking to go long I would enter when the 10ma crosses the 20ma above and the stochastic has crossed the 50% line to the up side and the oppisite if going short. I get out when one or the other (MA’s/stochastic) recrosses. I set my stops going long just below the last lowest price point and just above the last highest price point going short. This system works very well in a trending market but it is not perfect and there are some fake outs. The system does not work that well in a sideways market. Here is where I switch to using support and resistance. In a channeling market the resistance is where the price reaches a high and moves back down than hits a support (low) and bounces and moves back up. If this movement moves back and forth in a channel between the resistance and support lines for awhile you can place trades to go long when the price hits the support and go short when the price hits the resistance. The more times the price moves and bounces off these support and resistance the stronger this sideways movement will be, but at some point the price will BREAKOUT. The trick here is in what direction. Sometime triangles will form (the highs get lower and the lows get higher) and you can kind of predict when the breakout will happen. Sometimes it is best to just wait out for this breakout and begin trading the trend again. A quick note on fib. This is a mathamatical formala of % lines. The use is very popular for a lot of traders. If you place a fib retracment on the chart and watch the price movement many times the price will hit these lines and either consolidate there for awhile , move on in the same direction or reverse and move the other way. There really is no reason for the price to stop at these % lines other than a lot of traders around the world use these lines as a profit target or a place to enter a trade. A lot of times the price will hit these lines and a considerable amount of profit taking takes place and the price will reverse.
I hope some of this helps you out, the forex market does not have to be difficult I try and keep it simple as possible.
Emils - In2Blue - Blackpips, I have tried sending you all emails twice now through this website, but i’m thinking the website functionality may be broken in this area. Rather than post***** this thread I created a new one that we can all discuss the methods within. See you over there!
Thanks for advice.
There are two things that worry me about trading daily charts. I’m afrid that few unsuccessful trades in a row could turn me in losses for long time like a year even if my system is profitable for extended perriod. I would not have enough patiance to accept it as a normal part of trading. Another disadvantage I see is that I would have to use large stop loss, but money management rules would force my to have very small pip value, so even if get the same amont of pips I still have smaller profit.
Before you start trading any system, you have to have an idea of what you can expect as far as (in no particular order):
accuracy
Avg win vs avg loss
Average holding period
Maximum drawdown and typical duration of a drawdown
Opportunity (# of trades per year)
% return
When you have compiled a good amount of this data through backtesting (or forward testing), then you can start to address, prove or disprove your own fears that you outlined above.
It is true you will need to use larger stops but you must compensate for that by trading fewer lots. Your stops might be wider but you are typically going for much more profit when trading the daily thus comensating for the lower pip values. If you find that there is not enough opportunity then you can look at implementing your system across a few currency pairs. Since you are trading longer term then monitoring a few pairs is not so hard
You also have to realize that in many cases depending on what type of system you trade, patterns become more reliable on the longer time frames. It’s all relative and you must keep the right perspective
Emils
I agree with you it is scary on the daily charts and it is the biggest thing to get over outside of greed. It took me a long time to move past the fear of having losing trades. I have had many just getting to the point I am now and I am by no means a expert at forex, but every trader must get past that fear of losing. This is why I still trade only 2 mini lots per trade. On EUR/USD that is $2.00 per pip, yes with a 100 pip stop loss that would be a $200.00 loss. However this is where you have to learn a system that you are comfortable with and trust it. I have learned to trust my system and it was not easy. Yes there are times when it fakes me out and I have hit my stop loss and lost a couple hundred, but when it works I do well. If you can get a system that works 50% of the time and your money management is sound and your winning trades make more than your losing ones even if it is $100 more compounded over time you will be profitable. Here is example: On 9/5 on EUR/USD on the daily chart I entered a long at closing of that daily candle at 1.3642 when the two moving averages crossed to the up side. I am still in that trade and the current price as of this writing is 1.4681 at $2.00 per pip do the math it has been a good trade to this point and there is a good chance EUR/USD is going to hit 1.5000 before this run is over. I have also been moving my stop loss up as the trade has moved so even if there was a major move back I will still make a profit. I had a couple of losing trades recently where I lost a few hundred but this trade has made up for those and moved past them. Yes I would make much more if I traded full standard lot which equals to $10.00 per pip but that does not fit my money management and I never change from that at this point in my trading portfolio. If you compound small gains over time you will be profitable.
You may be right, as I’ve tried to send people e-mails and get no response. Then, again, it may be because you (and those I’ve tried to e-mail) have less than 50 posts.
Im just using PSAR on Daily trades and usually wins a lot.
But i need a to use a big stop loss.
I put it at the dot on the PSAR signal.
I’m still just on demo.
Not ready for real $ .
So far.
