When you first started trading, what did you do to try to speed up the role of learning from experience? For example: Read in-depth material in spare time Analyze journals, rules, trades Trade forex in spare time (since 24-hour) Study charts continuously I'm trading mainly stocks, but I'm in the forex market in my spare time and spending a decent amount of time working on my rules and reading. What did you do to speed the process, or did you just trade and trade until experience began to bring gains? Thanks for your help. Best Regards, Greg
I'm also considering paper trading only every other week to start, to keep my my mind fresh and focused on learning. I think this would also help me just soak in the market rather than worry about my performance, if you know what I mean. What do you think?
with trading you just have to do it. Nothing else comes close for learning. its like a sport. you can read a book about how to ski..... open an account with one of the bucket shops that allows mini FX trading, and trade. just use tiny amounts. Don't paper trade once you have the basics down. Not even close to the real thing as the emotions don't kick in. Once you think you can make money, close the bucket shop acct, and go with a broker that charges commission ( they don't have mini trading). You will come out way ahead when your broker actually wants to give you the best fill possible. or open a futures acct and trade currency futures. (what i do).
With regards to wisdom... Wisdom is not something I lack, I know what I want, I know how to get there, and I know how to keep myself focused, even though I hate studying constantly. Regards, to teaching... I have noticed this. I like answering questions on investing forums (I wouldn't call myself a trading guru enough to answer questions here, but I know enough about the market to answer a lot of questions). Regards to paper trading... I take my performance very, very seriously. Whether I have money on the table makes no difference for me. If I lose 15% of my paper account, I am crushed. As long as I don't feel like I need to make quick money immediately (I don't see how anyone could trade with this sentiment), I will be unaffected. I am sure of this. I do not have enough money to start in futures, but I appreciate the suggestion. I will continue trading, but I have a lot to learn about options spreads in my spare time. I would appreciate any further suggestions. Thanks for your help, Greg
I think forex.com has a demo account. As far as I know, they say you have to make sure the forex broker acts as an ECN and not a market maker. Apparently oanda was hitting people's stops before the price got there. I can't say I've made it yet but I just wrote my first trading plan on July 27, 2008. I plan to paper trade even when I start with real money. Why? Because I absolutely want to "drill" these new ideas into my brain until it becomes an automatic thing. So far, after only a few paper trades, I've found I needed to modify my original trading plan because it didn't work as effectively as I thought. No, I'm not going to try to make it into an absolute science and filter things to death until I can't do a single trade. I did however wanted something realistic .
Went to family party once as a kid with a blackeye. My grandfather laughed and said "I know what happened." I was a bit stunned and after some silence he said "You were talking when you should have been listening"
To trade without knowing sufficient is a story retold and retold and retold on ET. This so-called sort of experience comprises endless stories of losses, failure or disappointment. Sadly the only thing most amateurs can speed up is exiting from trading altogether. There is no speeding up. You hate doing the work of studying constantly, you tell ET. Is there any hope for you? What is it EXACTLY you are doing in stocks if you are asking such a question as yours?