Is this good? 30 bucks seems like a good deal...and that makes me leary. Seems like every other tool for learning to trade is like $5,000. I'll go ahead and get it if i get some feedback.
$1,000 is not very much adn will not go to far in the stock world or even the futures world because of the $ per point vaule would blow you out fast. I starte in a similar situation not to long ago but was only familiar with currencies when I began. Just my two cents, take them however you wish, Learn money management adn follow it to the T. It will save you big time. I blew out one ccount and almost another before I woke up to the fact that money managemnt is key to success. With $1,000 proper money management will be almost impossible. Trade small, smaller than you would think is needed. Another hard learned lesson. You would be supprised what trading small will do to your equity curve. Paper trading is for geting comfortable with the brokers software. I didn't really start to learn until I started trading with real money. There is nothing like the prospect of wiping out to make you wake up and realize you better get your shit together. Be preapred to work your ass off. I spend more time working on trading than anything else, despite having a day job and attending grad school (I don't sleep much). Until I started doing this I was loser. I didn't start trading with expectations of instant success and to trade for a living tommorow, I am trading for 5-10 years from now. With onyl $1,000 do not plan on doing this for a living for some time. The reason I chose currencies: I have had the most exposure to currencies, the broker I use is set up so that I can trade in units a little a one penny which allows me to use proper money managment techniques and allows me to scale into a winner with a small account. Real-time charts are free adn the package I use has just about al of the features of other programs costing much more therefore I do not need to spend a significant percentage of capital on charts and data. This is the path that I have chosen and some of my observatios from along the way. Yours may be similar of very different but either way never stop being a student of the game
Sounds like wise advice and good observation. But you need more capital as your commission(pip slippage) is taking most of the move your capturing.... My advice is to get out of currencies as soon as you have a chance...it is a con game....I am so glad the NFA is regulating it now. When the quotes become standardized it would become interesting only if the outragous system of earning commission were re-vamped. Michael B.
I only play the EURUSD right now and get a 2 pip spread. As far as slippage, the most I have ever gotten even on an extremely wild move (a hundred pip spike in a few seconds on an employment figure a few weeks ago) is 2 pips. I almost always get zero slippage adn have even had a pip go in my favor where I paid only 1 pip for the spread a few times. I do not scalp and my real winners usually make upwards of 100 pips from my average entry so it is not that big of a deal. I also scale into my trades which I can do and still maintain my money management rules because I can place an order where the pip value is only a few pennies. Another play that I like to do is if my initial position starts to move against me I can reduce the trade size in half if I feel like it without having to take off the whole lot. This tactic has paid dividends for me as well. I usually play with about 10-30 cents per pip depending on how big of a stop I use (usually 50-100 pips) and if I open with 1% or 2% of my account at risk. If I were to move to futures I would have to keep extremely tight stops and even then I would not be able to practice sound money management. I agree that for futures I am extremely underfunded. I would need about 50K in my account for each contract that I wanted to open if I were using futures in order to keep to my money management and trading plan. Overall for right now the broker that I use provides me with the flexibility to trade the way that I want to with a small amount of capital. I would have to have at least 100K to do the same with a futures account
I understand your dilemma. You are practicing money mangement with a small amount of capital. You are living within your means. I am suggesting that after honing your skills you consider trading other instrments. Do you really believe that you broker is only making 2 pips on you? You really do not know what is going on behind the scenes. The prices that are being reported to you are not even real.....for example if a bank calls up and wants a few hundred thousand they have a different price and the broker actually is on the other side of your trade knowing what the trades will become.... Michael B.
I fully intend on trading more than just one instrument once I accumulate suffecient capital. Ultimately if I stay with currencies I would like to trade on the interbank with an actual bank. But that takes capital to trade in 1 mill lots or larger at the minimum. I realize that the quotes that a FX borker gives are not the actual interbank quotes but then again the interbank quotes are not coming from a centralized source either so different banks quote at different prices as well. The currency world is much different than stock or futures in that the lack of a centralized clearing institution creates a market that does not have a single quote for a currency. My first introduction to trading was with an FX firm that had a reuters quote stream and I could watch the different banks making quotes that were all different. And the quotes on the charting software that they used were slightly different than what the banks were quoting. I do not use my brokers charting package and there is a difference of a pip or two but reraly more than 5 between the charting and the broker. When the difference is greater it has always been my charting that is off which I verify by checking with other quote providers. I wouldn't try to scalp with this setup but it works pretty good for my trading style. The quote mechanism in FX is not refined the way that stocks and futures are so that can present problems for those who deal in absolutes. But overall the price difference is not more than a couple of pips I am fully aware of the fact that my practically insignificant trades are not cleared on the interbank but are kept in house. At this stage in the game it does not bother me. If I get really large then I would switch to a broker that caters to larger accounts. But for right now my size dictates where I play at. Also, I am for all practical purposes still a newb myself with a long way to go and people should take what I say as one persons view on things which may be relevant or not depending on the point of view from which they are looking
No, I was kidding. If you are truly serious about exploring this further, I only see one way that you can get anywhere. Since you have very little knowledge and very little capital... you should look to find a proprietary firm that will sponsor you for a series 7 and train you to trade. Don Bright was advertising a program for $5000 that you might look into. I don't remember all the details, but you can review this thread. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=26520&highlight=bright+trading+$5000 Regardless, this is not any easy way to make money. Those who do make money have spent months if not years learning to trade profitably. Anything is possible, you just have to figure out a way you can make it happen. Good luck.
Burtakus. you are a smart trader. Other traders who want to be winners would do well to listen to you. Sam