Hi! I’m a beginner when it comes to trading forex. Current about 1-2 months into researching forex and all things forex related. However, the more I research and the more I watch these YouTube videos, the more lost I get. The sheer amount of different ways that people can trade is overwhelming. While surfing through piles of videos and articles, only one thing stood out to me, smart money trading. So, as a beginner, should I be looking to build more on my fundamentals or should I be touching different types of trading to find one that works for me, back test it, then forward test with demo. Please point me in the right direction. Thank you.
PS.
Are online gurus who offer courses a scam? or are all the bad reviews just from people who haven’t really dived into it.
Welcome aboard. As you have found out, there is no substitute for experience, which is key to eventual success. There is no short cut.
Educate yourself first by practising and experimenting on a demo account, see what you like, and what type of trader you want to be. Then focus on your own strategy, which can be very simply buying on a 200MA uptrend and selling on a 200MA downtrend using the Daily chart.
For most newbies, however, they want immediate results and here lies the social media marketing hype encouraging them to opening up a live account - which spells doom for over 80% because they are naive.
FX trading is similar to a casino set up in their favour. Which means you could lose money - a fact that the 80% newbies do not realise or accept as it happening to them. Hell, just press a few buttons on a phone app and join all the smiling faces when gold dust pours into their account.
Fantasy land.
So the first lesson is to learn how not to lose money. Best of luck.
I suggest finding someone else’s strategy if you don’t have your own. Or maybe even two. Trade those two simultaneously if possible or one by one if you get several trades open. But do that for several weeks. Regardless of performance, you’ll get experience following a system, you experience actual trading and maybe some emotions, so observe your reactions. And I would suggest, while you do this demo trading, open a trade journal and record your trades, mindset, outcomes, entries, exits, all of that. After a couple systems traded for weeks and months, you may feel ready to move onto a new system, or something you’ve developed for yourself.
Hellooo. I definitely agree with the others that demo trading and creating a strategy are some of the things you should focus on right now. I guess it goes without saying, but hopefully, as you go along with that, you also get to discover more about what kind of trader you are and the style that best fits your personality and lifestyle. No need to rush! Forex really takes time and effort.
Hi and welcome,
I would definitely do the Baby Pips School of Pipsology course at this link: https://www.babypips.com/learn
and take the quizzes at the end of each learning session. This covers fundamental analysis and technical analysis. The concentration on either of these areas may depend on the time horizon in which you think you want to trade. For example, if you are a scalper, the fundamental analysis will not impact your short timeframe (except news events), so it would be more productive to look at technical analysis. On the other hand if you felt more comfortable as a swing trader (holding trades for multiple days looking for the less erratic and more predictable longer term trends, then fundamental and technical analysis may come into play. As you develop more knowledge in formal training or just reading posts in this or other Forex forums, it will become less confusing not more confusing. To help you along the way, it may be useful to at least partially answer these questions in this chronological order:
What are my goals and objectives when contemplating spending my time on learning how to trade Forex?
Would these goals be better served more quickly or at less cost if I choose a different interest other than Forex? If so, which other interest would suit my character, my current skillset and knowledge of any other area.
Can I quantify my objectives?
Eg. I want to earn $5,000 more next year with a side hussle (a pursuit independent of my main income - or not associated with my job)
Eg. I want to find a way to pay my bills without working 50 hours per week and getting into more debt
Eg. I wonder what pursuits could return 25% per year on my invested capital with the least amount of management work involved?
Once you have contemplated if your goals and objectives could be achieved in any other way, then do an options analysis. This doesn’t need to be formal. It could be like this:
Am I better off trying to buy and sell stuff on eBay?
What would be my “equivalent earnings per hour” from Forex including all the time I need to spend to learn how to do it properly? Note that a surgeon spends about 20,000 hours learning his basic trade and another 20,000 hours perfecting his skillset.
OK, I’ve decided it is going to be Forex.
Now I need a strategy. Will I scalp, day trade, swing trade or just invest for a long period and trade in and out of my “investments” not more frequently than once per three months?"
OK, I’ve decided to day trade (a sensible early decision)
What underlying stuff shall I trade? Commodities, metals, indices, currencies, crypto?
I like the idea of currencies - it s a 5 trillion dollar per day market (whatever that means - let me check with School of Pipsology)
So I am going to trade currency pairs as a day trader. Which pairs? 1, 2, 5, 10, 28?
OK I read some more and I am going to trade all 28 pairs, but will start only with the USD first pairs.
That is a strategy finished. This is what (5 pairs) and why (to achieve my objectives)
Now to the plan. This is the when, who, how? That’s enough for you to be getting on with, but I hope it will help to put all you are learning into time-allocated boxes so you know what to concentrate on first and what to leave until later.
Hi am forex_swiz
i think demo trading and creating a plan is some of the main things you should focus on right now whereas beginner means someone who is just starting at something, or has only recently started. Then gradually you become a lover or amateur and etc
Good day, you have to start from the School of Pipsology, then back test different strategies that you will learn from the school, and choose the strategy that is good for you.
Work on your money management, trade psychology, trade entry.
Strategy No.1 -
Look for an uptrend on the daily charts. Look for a dip in the uptrend. Buy as price recovers from the last dip. Set a stop-loss just below the dip. Take profits when price has risen by the same height above entry as the depth of the dip. Then do it again.
I started with the school of pipsology here. It was a very good starting point to get an overview of the markets and some indicators, and other stuff.
You should also take a look into institutional trading or smart money, since they are the ones moving the market after all. Regardless of if you apply smart money concepts afterwards or not, it is still a good way to expand your knowledge about the markets.
I recently started looking into wyckoff and pips of persia has some good videos on wyckoff trading. He also has a course, but I don’t care about that one. He has enough free content on his channel and there are other free resources as well. What makes you good in the end is enough practice on your own.
If gurus are a scam or not, doesn’t really matter. They can still have valuable knowledge you didn’t know before, even if they themselves aren’t good at trading. Just collect what they give you for free and see for yourself if it works or not.
Yes, this is a profitable leisurally strategy synopsis, and stress free.
For those who trade the volatility route, this is my scalping set up on the 1m chart of the DAX (GER40) Index. It is only for the brave and quick fingers at around opening time of the London session. The volatility from 5m before and after 8am is unbelievably high on most days - blink and you’ll lose it - but broker spreads are small (great).
Setting up five indicators which can be used on any time frame for any FX trades:
Three EMA - 8 -22- 44 Revised to an Ichimoku 5 day trading set-up…
PSAR - 0.09 - 0.40 sensitised
MACD -3 -10- 16 which is the most sensitive signal set up for opening (and closing) a trade. Been tested over 100 times.
Only consider a buying trade when the price action is above the 44, and the 8 above the 22. Vice versa for selling trades.
Both the MACD & PSAR are fractionally lagging on the 1m chart. Use the MACD histogram to reach zero on (say a dip as above), and the latest PSAR ball which switches to an upward directional change. You could wait one more candle to confirm the signal, but that carries the risk of missing out at 60 seconds before and after 8 a.m.
Set a pending buy stop limit with a S/L in place, and be ready to hit the close trade quickly when activated (or set a pre-profit target). First few times use the smallest lot size to practice on.
On a FX currency pair chart same set up and same MACD and PSAR signals, albeit it won’t be a candle movement it will be two price action movement signals confirming a recovery from the last dip.
I use the PSAR balls to set my S/L & T/P target levels e.g. just below the dip and the same height above entry of the dip. Of course on a winning trade, you could let the T/P run.
There is a ridiculous amount of overwhelming information out there. At first I would suggest focusing on technical analysis and trading surrounding support and resistance areas and areas of Consolidation.
I agree with you
And focus on some technical analysis like the following; 1. Know the Markets, make a plan and stick to it, practice, forecast the weather conditions of the market and know your limit.
Thanks
Brilliant post which I am sure will help a lot of people. You will get many answers a lot of which dont specifically address the question you asked but here is (are) my two cents.
There are a few things I believe will shorten your learning curve if you focus on them and they are as follows:
Don’t even think about opening a live account, anytime within the next 6 months unless it is with an amount of money that your really couldn’t care less if you lost, because that is almost certainly going to be the fate of that account.
Start with a simple strategy.
“I follow trends, and buy on 50% retraces, and sell on 25% extensions, with the Stop Loss behind the 100% retrace.”
Then start building up an image, of when this simple strategy is likely to work, and when it is likely not to work.
Perhaps add some Moving averages, and a momentum oscillator (or two) into the equation, and see what signals they commonly give it out when ur strategy works, and what signals they give out when your strategy typically doesn’t work.
No easy way of doing this and even if you do luck out in the beginning, you will pay for that luck in the long run.
Takes most people around 2-3 years to get to any reasonably competent level…and some never do.
P.S. I shall give you a headsup on this. At some point in your journey of trial and error, you are going to realise that trading a strategy on a single timeframe is a mugs game, and you are going to want to be looking at 2 or 3 different time frames i.e. 240m, 60m, 15min, before forming any kind of bias or opinion on the market. This will be a long way off for you, but I will at least tell you this now.
The fkn dunce whose trading courses I paid for, told me NOT to do this, when I started figuring out that it might be a good idea. You now at least now know, that multiple timeframe analysis is something you are going to have to end up doing at some point, if you want to achieve consistency.
I have checked out a few training courses and ‘gurus’.
If you are willing to shell out the bucks, I would recommend Ezeetrader for forex trading. These guys have proven track record and strategies that work in an intraday FX/Futures environment. They are a couple of dickbags, but they are good at what they do.
Or if you are on a lower budget, there is [Removed for Forums Policy violation].
Despite the name, it isn’t really a signals service. What you do get are 3 experienced traders, who provide their views on the markets 3-4 times per day. They also have an ‘education’ section.
There is the beginners section, given by Andrew Lockwood who despite his years of experience on the LSE floors, I don’t rate as a trader, but you will learn a lot of the core concepts there. Once you are done with him, you could head over to check out Max Norbury’s section (who I do rate as a fkn brilliant trader). Max trades ‘equilibrium theory’ which will cut right out, all the utter fkn red herring wild goose chase b.s. you will learn in places like this, from many books on trading, and from many educators.
Max Norbury is a diamond in amongst all the rough, and you could get access to his methodology for peanuts…
…if you do join ForexSignals, just be aware that their is a vocal minority there, who dominate all the trading chat, who are complete fkn clowns, talking absolute b.s. most of the time. Don’t be suckered into believing a word these muppets say. Just head to where the value is, tune into the mentors video briefs, and ignore the clown show.
I definitely agree with the others that demo trading and creating a strategy are some of the things you should focus on right now. 
Forex really takes time and effort.