I would say the best advice was first to learn options trading and I don’t mean long OTM calls and puts lottery ticketing; specifically call and put spreads with defined / max risks and assumed probability. Trading these over and over and over you first look at the given probability and are forced by the nature of the spread itself to have a defined risk. Even buying naked calls/puts you still have a defined risk but ATM makes them higher probability of success. Basically, the repeated process of understanding your probability of success and your defined risk amount ahead of the trade. I built a reliance on the probability tools and the defined risk nature of option spreads. Now when I trade forex these two items are must haves and almost physical needs, i have a better vetting of trades; and the stop loss or max loss for a trade is a defined risk in a way. Not using stop-losses is like being naked short options — basically assuming vol will stay the same or decline. You can do these trades but with options trading you develop a sense of how risky this is because your gamma numbers tell you you’re screwed if this option’s price changes too much. The options tools tell you quantitatively how badly things will get out of hand. It’s helpful to have this sense and mental training when trading Fx because you don’t get the same tools necessarily.
"Do you fear your mistakes, or do you embrace them and learn from them?"
By Jarod F. Martinez
This pushed me to journal every position I enter, and I learned from my mistakes. I embraced my losing trades and learned from my mistakes.
My first trading career advice was to read the lessons on babypips
“First - Be consistent with your learning. Only then - you’ll become consistent with your trading.”
Actually just got this advise from Rayner Teo and I think its brilliant and I already know this will affect my thinking and trading. “If you take care of your losses, your trading will take care of you. If you don’t, your parents will take care of you” The truth is, I did NOT take care of my losses, only focused on what I could win and you know what it did? It made me fat!! I don’t start to pray, I start eating.
Aaaand we’re now ready to announce the TWO winners of the BabyPips.com t-shirt and other merch!
As mentioned, we have the first winner with the most likes!
This answer would have been @anon46773462’s at 18 likes (as of 11:59PM of January 28, 2019):
However, he did reach out to us a few days ago to say that he’d be kind enough to give it to another member instead.
With that, we have TWO winners vying for most likes: @BaconSandwich and @justshell who both received 9 likes (again, as of 11:59PM of January 28, 2019).
But here’s the kicker and by no means was this intentional…
Justshell’s answer is also the BabyPips.com team pick! Her answer received majority of the votes from the BabyPips team and was the clear winner!
This means our two contest winners are:
@BaconSandwich and @justshell!!!
Congratulations to you both!
I’ll be in touch with you guys shortly to ask for your mailing addresses!
As always, we’d like to thank everyone who participated in this contest! You guys have given so many wonderful pieces of trading advice. We’re 110% sure it will help (if not already) so many newbie traders in the coming days.
If you joined this time but did not win, not to worry as we have another contest/giveaway coming up soon! Stay tuned.
Way to go folks. your super! wear the Shirt in good health and don’t forget to wash it once in a while!
well done @justshell!
However, as I said in my post (not expecting to win) I’ll donate it, with pleasure of course.
If your a size 8 with blonde hair, single and very very wealthy then give me your number… ok ok I’m joking.
It’s fair to say I said I’d send it away, so drop me your details. First in takes it. Thanks BP
Congratulations to you both!
This competition was a very interesting concept and it really intrigued me to see how many people would actually have a source of inspiration and what it would be.
Hopefully, everyone who reads through this thread, will be a winner through realising their own source of inspiration or being inspired to find one!
Thanks sooooo much you guys! And thanks to everyone that liked my post I’m on here literally everyday lol I’ll continue helping out as much as I can. This is only the beginning for me
Congrats to the winners! Mods, may I suggest you make hoodies? Some of us are trying to stay warm in this -30 degree cold snap!
That would be awesome! Black and white options lol also a nice BabyPips hat would be cool also
This one’s something we’re working on, actually! We’re still trying to see how they’ll turn out though. Stay tuned. Although I think for your temperature, we’d need to make puffer jackets! @piptrip
@justshell Yessss! We’re already looking into getting those made don’t ya worry! Although we didn’t think of the black option - that’s a great suggestion.
I know this contest is closed, I didn’t see it earlier, but I still thought I should share this, it could help some traders out here.
Hmm, My most memorable advice.
That would be on Big banks. I was told to never be among the popular traders, that is, do away with popular trading methods and indicators. I was taught how the big banks make money.
Let me explain that a little. First thing we should know as traders is that all the retail traders put together cannot influence the direction of the market as opposed to the Big banks. What i mean here is, if we all decide that the EUR/USD is going to fall (based on all our analysis or news) and we take short trades, lets say we all sell a thousand lots, a big bank, due to their large capital, could buy two thousand lots (they go long), no matter how strong our signals are this will make the market bullish. So, what do the banks do? First they have access to backdoor information as to the percentage of traders that are long or short THEY CAN SEE HOW MANY BEARS AND BULLS ARE IN THE MARKET, this means they have foresight to where market is going. It doesn’t end here, they then allow the market go in the direction of the most number of trades, at this point most of all our orders would have become positions. They then create a whipsaw, they take positions opposite to the majority, for the mature traders, stops loss get hit, for the novice they conceal huge losses, and where does all this money go? Of cause into their pockets. A good example of this was the EUR/CHF 2015 crash, go check your charts.
Why is it so memorable? I was a losing trader until this info got to me, I changed my strategy, my idea of the market and boom I started making profits.
Based on request I am willing to give more explanations on what I have written above.
Here’s a live example of the above - EUR.USD this week - it’s been a relentless down move, as you can see below…
I wonder if that’s because retail traders were all pretty much long?
Ah yes, 86% of retail traders were long this week c.37,000 lots long
Yeah exactly, if you notice, price went up a few pips triggering orders, giving some profits away, what in the casinos they call the JACK POOL THEORY. While the price went up, a number of traders where in profit expecting to pull some cash, then it happens the market drops beneath the previous level. For the smart traders they cut their losses and run, and for the newbies, well a lot of losses. If you understand this well, your idea of Support and Resistance, Trend Reversals, Oversold and overbought levels, and your approach to a number of indicators will change…