Hi guys, This is my first post here, so sorry if this is in the wrong place. I'm a complete Novice when it comes to trading and have only tried a couple of demos. I've read a few books on Forex for Beginners as well as videos/webinars and other articles. At first I was going to start trading Forex but after further reading, it sounds like the Dow E-mini (YM) is a good place to start, what do you think? With this in mind, which platforms do you recommend? As for brokers, I've been looking at Interactive Brokers, as I want to move to Forex at some point. I'll only be using a small capital of around £500 and I'm developing my risk/money management model right now - probably only pledging up to 5% per trade, and decreasing if/when I increase my capital pool. Any and all thoughts welcome, and thanks in advance Chris
Plenty of people doing plenty of things, but I would make these observations. This is just me personally, I'm sure others will disagree or offer their own advice. - Avoid forex until you have a reliable and consistent 6 month paper trading track record. After that, you'll probably ditch forex out of your increased understanding of it. - Avoid anyone with a website charging you money for their "elite" circle. I'm of the belief that good traders trade, bad ones quit, and mediocre ones sell their program. - YM is good to start. - Avoid the first and last 45 minutes of the day. - Watch the $TICK.
Think you need $2000 Min for a proper futures account so FX Broker that lets you trade the YM cheap spread wise, FXCM is 4 pt spread on that, not great. Trading DAX would work better, trades all day till 9pm, 1 pip spread on FXCM!! may not be able to trade it on a Micro account though ?? Think Mini account needs more cash, but there is a way around that if you open it up via " TradeInterceptor " they give you full mini ability with micro opening cash ( chart / trading software on your phone / ipad I use, haven't got to use if you don't want to ofcourse ) Forex is beatable given the time and experience!!
Thanks for the advice. I'm being very careful not to get sucked into something charging me for unnecessary things, but good advice. Is tick better than volume? Which platform/broker would you advise a novice to use? Thanks!
$6 per pt on YM would eat up a £500 account way to fast anyway, margin requirement is generally $500. Got to go spot really, I started with $300 did the TradeInterceptor route to get DAX and Gold!
One more. A lot of platforms will let you set alerts quite easily. If you're tempted to make a trade but aren't totally sure, just set an alert. If it dings with whatever hit, you'll know you were right. If it doesn't hit the alert, then you can study what you did wrong. This is mainly for intraday stuff. This helps me overcome my desire to "do something" when I'm bored watching YM or ES.
1pt spread till 5pm then 2, rather than 4, similar range of movement, trades well 7am till 9pm, where as YM isn't much use till 1:30pm US premarket. I trade DAX and Forex depending on what's moving better for me. You can open an account with TI, super easy and quick but sadly no YM or DAX available through it, unless they've added it recently.
Ah I see. I thought you said to use TI for DAX? What platform do you use? Is FXCM Trading Station any good?