(I am constructing this post primarily to transfer it over to my personal blog, where most of my entries now have to do with spiritual stuff and only rarely return to the topic of trading…) Numerous times in the past I tried my hand at swing trading, testing this idea or that, only to confirm that intraday trading was where I needed to stay if I wanted to continue experiencing consistent success. However, this week and last I began toying with the idea of incorporating a week-to-week trend line I recently settled on into my Multiple Simple Moving Average Envelope Forex trading system (along with its corresponding envelopes) and when I began doing so yesterday using 60-minute charts instead of 5- and then 15-minute charts, the results were very much to my liking. Thanks to some subtle/nuanced modifications to my system’s strategies stemming from some experimenting I did using a Collective2 trial account during the first half of January, I’d already increased the average number of pips I collect per trade from about 5 to perhaps somewhere around 15, but the use of the weekly trend line on a 60-minute chart looks like it could easily lead to some of my trades reaping as many as 30 to 50 pips. Though the approach would at long last enable me to swing trade successfully, I will nonetheless continue to experiment with using it exclusively for day trading in that this technique makes it all the more apparent how the currency pairs have an irritating habit of making moves of up to 50 or more pips…and then suddenly dying…going virtually nowhere at all for the next several hours or even couple of days until the following trade session or next major economic event. I have little appetite for getting stuck in trades for such periods of time, waiting for the next major leg up or down. Moreover, my account is too small for me to feel comfortable putting myself in the position of having to weather 30- to 50-pip drawdowns. Better I should wait for “price” to wander 50 or so pips in the “wrong” direction, and then execute a trade just as it reverses direction to rejoin the dominant trend(s), offering up dozens of pips in the process in just a matter of a short hour or two.
Oanda has no minimum deposit and no minimum trading amounts so you could start with 10 and trade small accordingly to get your feet wet and develop your system.
For example, suppose one saved $10000 by working hard. After one year with 220 days as above, he must have 10K*1.018^220 = 10K * 50 = 500K After 10 years probably his asset of 10K* 50^10 = 50K * 9.765625e+016 might be richer than Bill Gates. Furthermore, most traders have 50 years (from 30 to 80) for trading, how much he will be at 80?
My system is already fully developed. This is not an exercise to get my feet wet in that I already have several years experience demo trading under my belt. Rather, it will be a serious effort to grow a mere$100 into a substantial balance—enough to begin earning a satisfactory income from trading alone. I’d like to begin with $100 so I can enter at least a couple of positions simultaneously.
I’m waiting for a payout I requested for some prize money I won on a website that hosts stock trading competitions. But it’s a new, somewhere Mickey Mouse enterprise that takes approximately 10 days to approve requests for withdrawal, and then takes about another eight days to get the approved check to its destination by snail mail, believe it or not! (I’m amazed they lack the capacity to send it electronically.) Once it arrives, I should be able to get back to my 1.8% adventure. Of course, I will first have to send the check to my Ally Bank account—once again by snail mail—and as soon as it’s processed and credited, transfer the funds to my OANDA account instantly by debit card
Call me a skepchick, but it's easier to spin it out for much longer blaming "lost in the mail, etc.", if you "can't send funds online" for some very strange reason. Good luck with that.
1.8% is easy, aim for 5....Alive at Five, Johnny Number 5...High-Five` Heck, even 10 and 20% daily is possible. -- if you trade the right thing, in the right way. I also use Ally. as a trading broker, not a bank. Ally acquired TradeKing.
That was my original intention, but they required a minimum balance of $250 before I could begin trading whereas OANDA did not. As it turned out, this might have been a blessing in disguise in that upon trading Ally’s demo platform I found that their spreads during periods of low liquidity were sometimes quite unfavorable.