Michael, The bit of conceit in my heart wants me to feel the way you feel right now. I want to put in the hundreds of hours that you have already put in, so I can feel the way you do right now. I cannot express with words via the internet how much I appreciate genuine help. I appreciate it so much because I am always so eager to give it. To find someone like me is very refreshing. About that three ring binder now.. Did I mention how much I looooooooove my efax? I'll definitely keep growing.. I believe that perfection is a direction like north, east, south, west. You can never get there, you can never actually get to 'east' but you can head in that direction... If you're not heading that way you're not growing and if you're not growing you're dying.....
I'm sure you responded by telling her that forex wouldn't be so much of a problem if she would use some of that enthusiam with that wooden bat on other WOOD.... But then again, you know what they say about marriage.. They get that selective amnesia.. Unless it was a metal bat and in that case you're probably going to need some cialis.. I have minimal experience trading at all. I have closely followed the S&P 500, as, my flagship product is an equity index Universial life insurance product. I, of course, converted mine to VUL's and they are doing rather well, I might add. Caution noted.. I'm definitely not in a hurry to turn forex trading into another liability..
Seth, I almost expect to lose money at first, as, that's the only way I'm going to learn anything.. I would, however, rather be lucky than good. I have another means of income, and most would say that it is a great income, however, I understand the exponential growth of compounded interest, and anything less than an income with 2 commas in it would be me selling myself short. Forex is marketed by "Freedom Rocks" and other MLM and online Get-Rich-Quick-Scams as being just that, a "way to riches." I will certainly try my best to keep a mindset and work ethic to a level that proliferates success. It's a tough world out there, no one owes me a darn thing. Success isn't a right, it's not guaranteed. It's a decision.
Matt, FX is broken down to this: 1) Scalpers, I can scalp a account up to 30-40% return on equity using maximum leverage in a 24 hr period. And you can imagine what it implies. But in order to do this. The 'pulse/tone' of the market needs to agreeable. Also the second requirement to be able to do this is, TDA(trading dynamic adherence), mean the market in its fluctuations must adhere to some rationale of sorts. That rationale once its grasped can be taken advantage of. When I trade the yen. I wait for 6:30-7:30 orderflow on the open of asian session. It usually bumps up in a particular direction. The prices gap a few pips(10-20) from previous session close. Then if the 'pulse' of the market stays the same, then prices start adhereing to TDA. Sometimes that initial orderflow is a fake out, and counter orderflow starts and the prices trend in one direction for the rest of the session till it approachs European open, then the Europeans 'test' what the Asians printed on the charts, reaffirming the Asian move or countertrending the Asian move. Then the final test becomes USA session. US session has the highest degree of volatility. So when I was trading Asian session once I took advantage of the Asian sentiment I would close out before Europe opened and that was around 2:00 am EST USA time, sometimes earlier. 2) Momentum Traders: usually in GBP/USD, GBP has a tendency to gap and not look back. Mean it moves up 10-20 pips and doesnt retrace 15 pips. The orderflow continues, so this market has trained a lot of people over the globe to follow the gaps, and hope more orderflow is coming behind the initial gap. When you observe a time when you see GBP/USD push up and not retrace, then it means just hop on board. The price tends to usually move 100 pips or so before retracement to some degree. 3) Volatility Traders: they buy/sell in the middle of a price band, but usually in the direction of the longterm trend. And the lot size is the smallest, they would rather take advantage of the volatility and can weather a large drawdown in price on the account. And given enough time on average the price does test the other end of the band. And once it does, they take profit. They kind of treat FX like a stock and dont use maxium leverage. They take advantage of the inherent need of the market to run stops. 4) Swing Traders: as it is implied. 5) News Traders: its similar to momentum traders, they hope on average that price will move in the direction that news implies. They will enter immediately after the news, and make money on the initial gaps then get out. There is a subclass of news traders, they don't actually trade the news, but trade the 'pulse + TDA' that is increased during news times. Non-farm payrolls is the best one. These are some of the ways to make money in forex, again whats important is to recognize the type of market it is. TDA is not always followed. And there are periods of chaos in the market. When the mind can not fixate on what the market is doing except to run stops on any variable direction. Chaos is the enemy of all traders. The setups dont appear and if they do appear, they don't mature. The most important thing in forex is to learn to follow price action and once price action fails in one direction take the otherside. Price action is only elucidated when following tick to tick movements. Chris
Agreed. I have been at this 18 months and I am about BE, down less than 1k. I have had days where I can make about $200 with 1 contract at a time, and a few where I lost a little over $300. The making money didn't happen at all until after 6 months. Right now I am learning a new method and practicing on the sim until I get consistent with it. It takes more time than you imagine to "make it big" in trading, unless you are a lucky gambler make a lucky bet and hit it big.
Now take a look at this chart, the picture changes, Double top. Lots of stops at 120.00. And lots of stops at 119.00. The USD/YEN pair historical is like the equities market, it has a upward bias on average. And time in this period is mostly spent moving up over long periods and then short periods of gap downs.
Chris, This has been the most informative bit of information I have read regarding fx trading. I am copying and pasting this onto microsoft word and breaking it down sentence by sentence until I completely understand everything you just said. I have a feeling that "So when I was trading Asian session once I took advantage of the Asian sentiment I would close out before Europe opened and that was around 2:00 am EST USA time, sometimes earlier." is valuable information. Thank you very much for this post!!!!