There is a very thin line between craziness and genius Now, Augustus, if you so desire the Golden Wonka Ticket, then you must first be prepared to fall into the sea of chocolate and get sucked up, head first, a big fat pipe, when at the same time, be prepared to listen to the little green "Ulliel Umpas" do the "twiddley do twiddley de" tune..."have I got a message for you" Charlie Bucket was the most unlikely character to be awarded the ultimate dream, but as he was plain and simple, he was chosen above all the other "false" children:eek:
I came across this thread yesterday and it took me a good few hours to read it in its entirety. However, I can safely say that this is THE most useful thread I've seen posted on this website. I am a true novice, in every sense of the word, and until recently I was also one of the idiots. I used to make a few bets and some of them turned into big wins. This used to make me feel like I knew what I was doing. I look back on those days now and laugh. But then I had a run of losers, not massive, but big enough to make me stop trading and starting thinking. I sat down with some price charts, removed all the bullsh*t indicators and started to ask myself some very basic questions. These were some of the same questions that this thread should be making you think right now. There's no point me telling you what questions I asked myself. You need to come up with them for yourself. As the OP stated very early on in this thread...he or I could summarise the "obvious" in a couple of sentences and the vast majority of you would just dismiss it out-of-hand. The "obvious" is only obvious when you have sussed it out for yourself. Whether you believe me or not, the OP is actually doing you all a massive favour by NOT telling you what the "obvious" is. I consider my time as an idiot an apprenticeship. I genuinely needed that time as an idiot in order to to learn some necessary lessons. I just count myself lucky that I didnât have to pay too high a price for my apprenticeship. However, whilst my apprenticeship is now over, I must remember that I am still (and always will be) a total novice. My own personal struggle is DOING what I know needs to be done. Luckily I am a professional software developer and with the help of a bit of code I can coax a computer into thinking as I now think and, more importantly, DOING what I find so difficult to do. For those people looking for plain and simple answers on this thread, you wonât get them. Nobody making money from the markets will give you plain and simple answers. Why? Because they are making money from you!? If you get the feeling that you are a sucker then you most certainly are! And I love you for it. However, if you engage your brains then everything you need to make the leap out of the paddock is contained in this thread...some of it slightly too blatantly for my liking. Here are some important facts to always keep in mind: Trading is not a zero sum game as some will tell you. Thanks to spreads, slippage and commission it is a negative sum game. There is always money being taken out of the market. Therefore, the market needs suckers constantly injecting their hard earned cash in order for the professionals to make any money. 99% (not 80%, not 90%, not 95%) of all retail traders lose money. Preservation of capital is EVERYTHING. As the OP stated, the only measure of whether your strategy is working is your bank account. Forget optimal F and all that sh*te which has no place outside the fixed odds environment of a blackjack table. Keep reminding yourself that drawdown is your mortal enemy. Remember, it takes a 200% gain to recover from a 50% loss. People trying to make money from writing books about trading or delivering seminars are doing it because they are not making money from trading. Why would you want to waste your time and money on these people. Think about it for just a second. The people making the real money from trading are not going to be interested in extracting $20 from your bank account in exchange for a PDF. They are however very interested in extracting everything from your trading account. I'm going to repost something that riskfreetrading posted quiet a few pages ago. Posted by riskfreetrading on 04-08-09 05:38 AM: Obvious but not obvious: 1. The root of success/failure is yourself. 2. Noise is your friend, and your enemy. Never fight your friend, but fight your enemy. 3. Do not seek opportunity in an instrument, but seek an instrument that has the opportunity. 4. Repetition can be a virtue 5. The best party to join is one where you have proof that eveyone is happy. IMHO these were the biggest giveaway in the thread, especially no. 5. And I will leave you with a question... Successful traders make big money. To make even bigger money these traders need to get their big money into the market. Now how would they do that? All the best
One "option" is W. = I. = S. = E. = L. = Y. = Did I write some of that post, or are some more of the 99.99999999999999999999% going a bit strange Well written, and factual!
@nyse - Same side of the pond I see. Either that or you need to see someone about that insomnia. To those folks that are getting disheartened out there, I am being genuine when I say that I am a total novice. I am not a professional trader. I have a full time job in the IT industry. If I can suss this game out then you can too! Indeed, the "obvious" only became obvious to me a few weeks ago. So stop reading about the next new indicator and all that bollox. Start reading about how the markets actually work. This information is out there and easily accessible but nobody is going to give it to you for free. And one other piece of advice - if you are dabling in the FX market - STOP IT NOW. You only need to spend a single afternoon reading about the mechanisms of the FX market to realise that they place the retail trader at a huge disadvantage. Exchange traded instruments only folks...repeat the mantra..."exchange traded only". All the best.
I don't see why trading FX is any more difficult than trading an index. Prices go up, down, sideways, sometimes it trends, sometimes it's choppy, sometimes volatile, sometimes it's affected by news, sometimes not. There is nothing in an FX chart (and that is what you are trading) that you won't find in any index or commodity futures chart.
@Evil - As with all these things, the devil is in the detail. You need to stop just looking at the charts and understand what the squiggly lines represent. The mechanisms of the OTC FX market are completely different to exchange traded markets. My current thinking leads me to believe that exchange traded instruments with high liquidity offer me the best opportunity to minimise my risk. All of this is obviously IMHO, for as I said, I am a total novice. Anyway, this is all well off topic so I'm going to disappear now for a while and watch what else transpires on this thread. I learn far more listening to the ramblings of the average retail trader than I have ever done reading any textbook. All the best.
For what it's worth I make good money trading CHARTS, not squiggley lines. FX is my bread and butter. Price is all you need. There is a lot of useful info in this thread but a lot of newbies are going to be lead on a wild goose chase. IMHO, all you need to know is written in the Schwagger Wizard books.